Some people are just no good at not being in charge. - John Scalzi

“I don’t know,” Davidson said. “Maybe it’s not about politics. Maybe these guys are just assholes.”
“Seems the simplest explanation,” I said.

Obviously, the Rraey have some way to predict, with a high degree of accuracy, where our ships are going to skip. How do they do that?"
"I don't think you're supposed to be able to," I said.
"That's exactly right. But they do anyway. So, quite obviously, our model of how skipping works is wrong. Theory gets thrown out the window when observation proves it isn't so. The question now is what is really going on.

That’s physicists for you. Not exactly brimming over with poetry.