On the Limits of Tariq Bhatti's Chemistry Analysis

December 14-15, 2019

edits 6/23/21

A Possibly Excellent Work, But...
Twitter-based anti-Syria hacktivist "Iridium Tea" - formerly Bellingcat commenter DDTea - is now going pro, it seems, publishing under his name Tariq Bhatti as an expert chemist for Bellingcat. He's a PhD candidate in the field, as I gather.* At the same time, he's withdrawing from public discussion on Twitter, putting all his tweets behind a privacy barrier, making it harder to assess his previous record. As I'll show, this was a smart move for someone trying to build a career as a reputable researcher.

* Note 6/23/21: "as I gather" as of now and previously, but had earlier phrased his candidacy as "claimed" in lieu of verification I never planned to verify it really, and that can be seen as raising doubts, which Mr. Bhatti made a big deal of showing my deceptiveness - I suppose a touch of that fit the article's tone, and the way it annoyed him too ... but really,  "as I gather" is the right way to say it. I never meant to actually cast doubt in his education, which could be easily refuted (as I always imagined it would be). More so I was casting doubt on his general trustworthiness. His level of knowledge does seem consistent (AFAIK) w/a PhD candidacy in chemistry. That also shrinks the role he can claim for ignorance - he's more likely to be lying than just confused, in any situation where those seem to be the choices. End 6/23 )

Mr. Bhatti's debut argues for a real chlorine gas release in the 8 April, 2018 Douma incident, at both of two locations, laboring to explain recent claims that relevant compounds were only found at normal, background levels. Mr. Bhatti clearly put a lot of work into this, discussing the molecular mechanics involved, the different kinds of chlorinated compounds, positive vs. negative ions, etc. This is the article:

Chlorine’s Unique Fingerprints: The April 7, 2018 Douma Incident Through A Chemistry Lens
December 12, 2019, By Tariq Bhatti
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2019/12/12/chlorines-unique-fingerprints-the-april-7-2018-douma-incident-through-a-chemistry-lens/

I'm not at all an expert chemist, and cannot verify his work here. And I'm in no position to debunk it, since I actually harbor serious doubts the low-level / no-release claims he tackles. I've noticed these doubts seem to be shared by no one else among those who question the opposition's narrative. But it was not long ago that all visual clues had convinced many or most of us most that there was a chlorine release. It couldn't explain all the deaths, and it clearly came from no helicopter, but the cylinders were put there and seemingly opened up, so that at least some chemical traces could be found. That never HAD to all be true, but it did SEEM to be true.

But then OPCW FFM whistleblower "Alex" said in October - and it seems others there agree with him - the levels of chlorinated compounds they found were no higher than normal. This of course suggests that was probably no release; the valves were never opened or, perhaps, they contained something unusual the FFM never found, or never reported finding.

Now, I find it hard to doubt the whistleblower(s) on this or any point. But I find it harder yet to abandon the clear logic of what I've seen, as compiled here. Therefore I abandon none of it outright, and declare confusion - some review is in order. I've been getting flak and cold shoulders over this stance, but I have to hold it, as it seems NO ONE ELSE is; nearly everyone leapt on the exciting claim and ran with it, seeming to just ignore all the conflicting evidence without even trying to find an alternate explanation for it.

I might still be shown wrong on this count, and I'm including a space below for any additions to that effect that might emerge. But for now, as far as I know and follow, Bhatti's analysis actually sounds good, and might be helpful for everyone to heed. Of course it could be bogus, and I just can't see that in all those details. I admit I didn't even try. But where it seems to me someone at Bellingcat does good work - and it's usually in some narrow area of limited relevance - I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

But even more so than usual, this possibly excellent work is of limited relevance. What Bhatti doesn't get to in that article is the point - what all this molecular stuff has to do with the incident at Douma. The driving issues with this contested chemical release was moral and legal, not chemical. People were killed, and someone had to pay. But there's no mention of injury or fatality or the details thereof, like suffocation, incapacitation, etc. It's all just to argue for the presence of chlorine.

But that gas is hardly ever fatal, not almost universally-fatal as alleged in Douma. He's working with Bellingcat, and we know their agenda. His own record is pretty clear to anyone who's encountered him - he suffers from a need to maintain accusations against the Syrian government, at whatever cost to truth and logic. It's not included in this article, but Bhatti still thinks - as many others think - the chlorine was delivered by Syrian Air Force helicopter, and it's just what killed those people. This flies in the face of much evidence I could relate, But let's just keep it to the related fields of chemistry and toxicology. It's about molecules AND what they do, and if he's to weigh in on both aspects - as he already has - folks should know he either doesn't know that much of relevance, or he's terribly dishonest and agenda-driven, or some of both.

A Partial Record of Bhatti's Twisting of Science

As an example of his faith-based approach to science, I still like Bhatti's bold claims about a fire set beneath the gas cylinder at location 2, among fabric set on top of the rubble linked to the cylinder's impact. The smoke stains are clear on there being a blaze in that corner, but he insisted in a discussion just over a year ago that it was sparked honestly by the chlorine, claiming that gas "starts fires," as if this is a widely-known fact. But it's never been seen in other chlorine incidents in Syria, maybe because, as the Chlorine Institute says, and as all other sources I've seen agree, "Chlorine is neither explosive nor flammable." They add that it "will support combustion under certain conditions," but Bhatti claimed the only condition needed was chlorine gas, contacting some combustible material that had landed naturally on top of the concrete rubble. And his claim was soon contradicted anyway by the OPCW's Fact-Finding Mission, whom he usually defers to; they heard the fire was intentionally set, to decontaminate the room.

FWIW this is probably untrue. I think they set that fire to release the gas by melting out the fusible plug in the valve assembly, and/or to speed up the release - to help contaminate the room and the whole place. That is still open to debate, but "chemistry expert" Tariq Bhatti failed that debate.

I also like his musings on rust. It's a chemistry issue, so let's hold him to account for it. Some moron working with a New York Times "investigation" decided some of the soot from that fire that deposited on the cylinder's underside was actually rust, or a "dark substance" that can appear on metals under corrosive conditions - i.e. darker-than-usual rust. Tariq agreed, noting rust comes in a variety of colors.

The issue was black rust and whether this could be it. I found on research this happens, but mainly in low-oxygen environments, like underwater, on the rebar inside concrete bridges - conditions inapplicable to the Douma incident. And something they all missed, it's tricky: rust happens on metal. This black stuff is on the paint, and it wipes off and rinses right off in the rain, revealing unchanged yellow paint beneath. The actual rust we see is where you'd expect; on the bare steel at the cylinder's neck and on metal items close to it. The color of the rust: regular orange-brown, due to the high iron content of the steel (below: color-enhanced a bit to clarify the issues).

I've had several discussions with Bhatti as Iridium Tea over the year, the most recent being just a few days ago, leading him to mute me just before putting his whole account as non-public. So I can't link to the points he raised then or previously, but they include:

* He repeatedly showed videos of much, much larger one-ton and multi-ton containers emptying chlorine in a violent torrent, to "illustrate" how deadly the Douma cylinder would be, ignoring the gross irrelevance of that comparison. I didn't note just which video(s) he showed, but it was from this series, or similar: Jack Rabbit tests in remote Utah desert, w/multi-ton containers - sizes not all clear.

- upward release, 60 seconds to empty huge vessel - cropped screen-grab at right. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1OMcXxPvuU

- downward release, said to use 20 tons, shown below - extremely thick gas over a wide area. The release runs app. with no edits and regular speed from 0:09 to the end at 4:05, when it's still sputtering but nearly done. So 20 tons released in 4 minutes. (note: the color here is very vivid due to its density, and a more orange than usual, I guess from the low angle of sunlight scattered by all those particles to a lower, redder frequency - the effect is worse on the left side than on the right, suggesting such an optical issue.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnZWTSG9Rc8

I'm not good with volumes, never tried to settle it yet, and the clear answer didn't pop right up in a quick search, so I just asked Michael Kobs. As he tells me, the cylinders have a volume of 120 liters, but usually aren't filled all the way "because Cl2 expands at higher temperatures. You may fill it 88% at 6.5bar at 20°C. … So a cylinder of the Douma kind can be filled with about 168kg Cl2." This is about what the mysterious American officials said to "Alex" and co. - 170kg of chlorine was in each of the cylinders Assad dropped on Douma (via Jonathan Steele - but "the inspectors left Fairweather’s office, feeling that the invitation to the Americans to address them was unacceptable pressure and a violation of the OPCW’s declared principles of independence and impartiality," and they went on to find, whatever the volume, the cylinders were not air-dropped, and their gas was apparently not released). I know we're doubting the claims of nefarious US officials, but they probably had the volume about right.

168kg = 360 pounds. Compared to the 20-ton test Bhatti used as an example, he's showing 111 times the amount of gas. And it's released in a deliberately torrential manner over just 4 minutes, clearly through some large-gauge opening, rather than a passive leak through an opening about a centimeter wide.

* Struggling to make the above relevant, Bhatti speculates the gas release was very quick like those Jack Rabbit test videos show, so most of it would be present at once, rolling in a fast "front" that would hit the victims with massive damage at all at once, sealing their fates and blacking them out with its sheer intensity. But he also likes the frost seen on the cylinder. I agree that (probably) shows it's still actively leaking its contents. The problem is, the video metadata and posting timeline say it was only filmed at or around 10:06 PM. This is some 2.5 hours after the alleged attack, when the leak would have started. To me the frosted area says it's mostly empty, but not far past the shift from the liquid-drip to gas-venting release (that would be where the level of liquid drops below the exit point). As I gather, from discussions with Michael Kobs and it making sense, this last part goes rather slow compared to the initial release. We can say a cylinder this size emptying in probably 3 hours or more is a pretty slow average speed. To be fair, the open question is how fast the first portion would release compared to the rest. But adding this to the above on those desert tests, let's compare the average rates anyway: 40,000 lbs. in 4 minutes vs. 360 lbs. in 3 hours, or 180 minutes. The one test had 111 times the amount released in 1/45th of the time. As I calculate it, that means Bhatti's example flow is 4,995 times greater than the average flow expected at Douma. Now how applicable can that be?

* Bhatti claimed people would only have "seconds" to flee before they were "incapacitated" by this fantasized tsunami of deadly gas - probably leaning on the rambling of Mr. Ward (see below), but also citing the battle of Ypres in World War I; he said just the other day thousands died "where they stood" when the Germans released chlorine gas on them, so "clearly they were rendered unconscious." This is the one I got a screen-grab for, here along with my initial response. But we'll come back to this in more detail. (it was not a good deduction)

* He claims decades of literature (back to the 1920s/WWI era) supports his impression of chlorine as a knock-out gas, but provided no examples. Maybe he read a novel where someone got confused by the chloro-connection with chloroform, a real knock-out substance. I only know of sources that contradict him on balance (see below).

For the less-informed reader, here's the short version of how chlorine harms and kills: it turns to corrosive acid on contact with water, so it burns the eyes and airways. That's all it directly does - nothing neurological like paralysis or seizures, or losing consciousness. The lung damage simply causes fluid to fill the airways, killing by a usually slow suffocation the victims tends to stay awake through.

* Just a few days back, Bhatti finally dug up a few sources that mentioned things like "High concentrations may cause unconsciousness." It may, but infrequently enough that it didn't come up in any of the cases I studied here, including one w/8 deaths. And the definition of "high-level" probably is far above what existed at Douma. Most lists of symptoms do not include loss of consciousness, because it's not a regular one at all. When it does come up, it's explained so: "headache and loss of consciousness are probably due to the hypoxia caused by pulmonary edema." (CDC) An oxygen-starved brain (cerebral hypoxia) causes headache and then unconsciousness, and finally death. But that situation will usually require some minutes to develop, and won't explain 35 people dropping in place rather than trying to escape the gas. But judging from the accepted version of the Douma incident, as Bhatti seems to be, that or paralysis must be very common and the rest of the world needs to revise its science.

* He has researched the fluke cases where chlorine might kill swiftly, like "laryngospasm" - interesting to learn about. Usually, it's a reflexive closing of the larynx that prevents breathing. As I gather, it's rare, frightening, and usually temporary. It's also something some people and not others are prone to. It does not sound likely to be even a partial answer for Douma, and if it were a partial answer, I'm sure that part would be small, irrelevant. It's the kind of thing someone fairly smart but desperate to support the Jihadists' narrative would dig up, and it helps show how even such a sharp and motivated person cannot find anything better.

He recently noted "instant respiratory arrest" occurs "at 2000ppm" - from studies on dogs, I believe he said. That's hella high, and probably true. It's highly doubtful such levels were reached at Douma.

The fastest chlorine can kill is the speed of suffocation, and only in rare cases of sudden and total airway damage, or persistent laryngospasm, or anything else that makes breathing itself suddenly and totally impossible. Even then, unless the person is paralyzed by shock (quite possible AFAIK), most people could still move and struggle to both escape and breathe. It remains a poor fit with this issue noted by the FFM: "The victims do not appear to have been in the midst of attempting self-extrication or respiratory protection when they collapsed, indicating a very rapid or instant onset." They didn't even consider that might be because they were corpses already. Corpses don't protect their airways or try to escape from places. Like it or not, that is consistent. Simple chlorine poisoning is not consistent.

Bellingcat's Prior Tries on Chlorine Lethality
Black-out and thence death from chlorine is common as heck in the poorly-researched claims out of Syria (several cases noted at the same article of mine linked above), and it might be some need to support those claims drives Mr. Bhatti's insistence on being wrong here. But occasionally the opposition's scriptwriters (?) display a bit more respect to the known science. For example at Latamnah hospital 25 March, 2017, it's said some 30 people escaped fine and lived after a chlorine cylinder punched through the roof and filled the place with gas. They say only the surgeon and his patient died because Dr. Darwish refused to reschedule the surgery. It is said that they never fled on their own, so the doctor, the boy, and as assistant who survived had to be "rescued" by the White Helmets. But otherwise, it's a fairly logical story in that regard. (detailed incident analysis here)

In Douma, there would be about the same volume of gas, and probably much better ventilation; things were so bad at the hospital, people said, because it had poor air circulation. But Location 2 in Douma had doors and many windows, many of which had their panes broken out. Yet we're told the fatality story is upside-down from Latamnah: some 30+ people did NOT escape and dropped dead, and just a few (with dubious stories) claim to have survived.

And the area to spread in was probably larger and more varied in Douma. The hospital has a partial mapping from videos by Kobs (included here), but I haven't tried scaling either, let alone comparing them in detail. But in Douma, the spread was a bit like this (my rough graphic below based on Forensic Architecture model used by the New Tork Times for a video report). The gas basically would enter the 3rd floor at ceiling level near the north end of the building, dripping down as liquid (compressed gas) that evaporates into a low fog, slowly filling that level to the point it started rolling down the stairs at the south end. Then it would split between drifting into floor 2 and rolling further to floor 1. There it would again split 2 ways: some into that level, and some out into the street, as the basement does not connect internally. Then of that gas in street, some would drift down to the basement before the people sheltering there could smell it and start reacting.

The darker green lines along the side show these levels, drops, and branch points. The curves up front show the drops (imagine they're inside) and then the street spread. That does go out - it has to in order to go down. The down arrow to show this didn't fit, but it would sink down there. Lime-green indicates the basic area this gas had to spread out in prior to the basement.

Here's the entrance, to help show this disconnect, showing the reverse direction allegedly taken by 30+ people in a badly failed escape - there's no way for people or (much) gas to get from the ground floor or above down to the basement without first moving out into the street. All that "confined space" stuff loses nearly all its meaning at this point - unless one illogically runs back inside.

Considering all that and what's known about the effects of chlorine, a realistic death toll from an attack on the scale alleged at Douma is somewhere between zero and maybe 3 or 4, depending. I could explain that in detail, or just note the opposition's scriptwriters (?) even make a nod to this reality. Most chlorine attacks since 2014 included zero deaths, and even when people pass out and die, it was usually 1-3 or maybe 4 of them (it was somehow 3 at Latamnah hospital). A record of six killed at once reached twice, in a tie for deadliest chlorine attack before Douma broke that ceiling badly. As reported, "more than" a "verified" 42 people were killed. And there's an alarming insider tally of 187 people killed that's credible in that running tallies from many sources claimed up to estimates of 180, 190, and 200 killed before they stopped climbing. And no one wants to say how many "more" than 42 died, and why the rest could never be "verified." So this represents a 7-fold or even a 31-fold increase over the previous highest death toll. It's astounding.

Adherence to low death toll with chlorine was finally abandoned, but not easily. Recall how as the numbers grew in the first days, activists kept claiming sarin was involved. That was back when they were still tying to have the story make a bit of sense, which has been out the window for a long time. Still, the FFM and allies like Bhatti and Higgins at Bellingcat keep the faith in this absurd new science.

And they have help from other professionals like Keith Ward, a FBI scientist type, now consulting with Human Rights Watch, etc. If he's the type I suspect, an expert "prosecution witness" type of "expert" that often help put innocent people in prison and on death row, he knows what the client wants to hear, says that, and pretends that science agrees.

With Ward's help, Bellingcat was able to publish within weeks a "possible explanation for the high casualties and deaths" from the incident - the little-known "lethality of chlorine gas." (There's a reason it's little-known - it's not real) This may be why Bhatti didn't need to mention it; Eliot Higgins will write the overview citing him for the molecular science to prove the chlorine gas, and Ward's analysis to explain the deaths as plausibly caused by that gas. Then he can just defer to the FFM's second-try forensic "experts" to link the gas with a regime helicopter, thus pinning the blame on Assad (it's the FMM's mysterious mandate not to blame anybody that makes their constant blaming of one side seem so credible, I guess?).

But let's pause on Ward's analysis, as it seems pretty similar to Bhatti's own. (The points covered below were first addressed as Ward raised them for a ludicrous New York Times "investigation.") This moron Keith Ward doesn't even know about standard post-mortem opacification of the sclera, or he pretends not to know. Because when he saw it on the corpses in Douma, he declared this "corneal opacification" along with some other points were all "most consistent with exposure to high levels of chlorine, although they do not completely rule out that a nerve agent might have also been involved."

However, all credible sources I've found agree with this one that the symptoms of chemical burn to the eye include redness, and do not include opacity. "Cataracts" do appear as a later "complication." That's scar tissue, and the dead don't heal. Their eyes would be plain red, and then cloudy from basic death. But they're not red, just cloudy. (Small size-image here can be popped out for a better look)

Clouding sets in quickly on open eyes; NIH.gov says "Cloudy eyes can occur as soon as 10 min post-mortem if the eyes are open. If the eyes are shut, the cornea becomes cloudy after 24 h." The same source adds that "Tache noir" or "black spots" (dark spots on the sclera/cornea) "can occur as soon as 1–2 h post-mortem." Tache noir is seen on at least one victim, in later views but not earlier ones. In context, that suggests a very recent death (in the image above, the same eye is shown at right, earlier at top, later at bottom, with someone else's in between - this is just a clue I hadn't put a time aspect on previously).

An honest non-moron with an inkling of relevant knowledge would take this as a sign the victims were dead, and NOT from chlorine exposure. An even smarter analyst like myself might see the clues that exist and conclude they died from whatever (only specific clues eventually ruled out chlorine), and it just never hit their eyes because of the goggles someone fitted them with for some bizarre reason. (see "Douma's mask of death")

Perhaps based on the same kind of ignorance, Mr. Ward crunched some numbers - quite poorly, I suspect - to decide if just "1% of the contents of a cylinder (1 pound) of chlorine made its way into the lower floors and basement of the buildings attacked, that would be sufficient to fill a large space with a concentration of chlorine that would cause death to those sheltering therein within a matter of minutes." The actual volume seems to be more like 360 pounds, not 100, so 1 pound would be less than 1/3 of 1%. So implicitly, he claims that one cylinder contained enough gas to kill all those people in "minutes," and to do it 300 times over.

Also, I showed the spread route above. He doesn't get the layout or, for whatever reason, he does not mention "out in the street" as one of the places that would need to be fatally filled with that one pound of gas. Hence: "this moron Keith Ward."

The Empty Trenches at Ypres
This is classic. Tariq Bhatti, the chemical detective, knows or deduces "Cl2 killed thousands where they stood" in the WWI 2nd Battle of Ypres, on 22 April, 1915, so "clearly they were rendered unconscious." That's not clear, just the inference of a die-hard Douma reality-denier.

I did a quick check to suggest "thousands killed" just by the gas is probably correct, but "where they stood" is the issue. If the fatalities at Ypres mainly dropped in place, we would have a strong support for Bhatti's impression. But Dr. Arthur Hurst, who treated many victims, wrote in his 1917 classic "Medical Diseases of the War," in a chapter 10 dealing with chlorine gas: "When a man lives long enough to be admitted into a clearing station, he is conscious, but restless." Hurst does note that "in severe poisoning unconsciousness follows" but the prevalence of this is unclear, and it seems little was known about why; "nothing more is known about the cases which prove fatal on the field within the first few hours of the "gassing," except that the face assumes a pale greenish yellow colour." (probably the same color seen all over location 4 at Douma)

As for those who died in "the field" - this includes fields and trenches, which they were in to avoid being shot or shelled so easily. I had taken fear of shooting as a reason they didn't flee, but that was inferred. With the distances involved, and bad visibility with the gas, shooting by the enemy would be unlikely. In fact, men shooting themselves sounds like more of an issue (keep reading).

The problem was the scale of release: I read that 150, 160, or 168 tons of chlorine was used - some 833-933 times what the Douma cylinders would each hold. This was deployed from canisters moved into place days in advance, waiting for a strong favorable wind. When the Germans opened those tanks, a huge area of land was covered by the combined plumes. The gas filled the trenches and the air right above them, pretty densely, it seems, up to about nose-level. The air would be so filled to the right, left, and forward, with no escape except maybe up a tree or onto a barn roof. Or one could have run towards the German lines, where you might live to get out of the gas eventually, but then be at the gas tanks, close and visible enough to be shot (which might be a welcome relief at that point).

Here is an aerial photo of this type of attack, at the Somme the following year. Is it any wonder some people never escaped the gas? And a side-note on why Ypres 2 is the most-cited example for fatality: it was a surprise attack, not well-prepared for. The scale of destruction was alarming, and in quick order a crude gas mask was devised and put to service. Just the first couple of attacks could be that devastating. At the Somme and in other cases, soldiers could just sit in the trenches with their masks on and wait out the fog. Hence the switch to the sneakier phosgene and to sulfur mustard, which gas masks couldn't fully protect soldiers from. (Sarin and similar nerve agents were only devised during the second world war.)

I found a few witness accounts from Ypres published at Chemical and Engineering News. Willi Siebert, a German soldier sent in after the gas, described what he saw: "All of the animals had come out of their holes to die. Dead rabbits, moles, and rats and mice were everywhere. The smell of the gas was still in the air. It hung on the few bushes which were left. ... It was unbelievable. Then we saw there were some English. You could see where men had clawed at their faces, and throats, trying to get breath. Some had shot themselves. The horses, still in the stables, cows, chickens, everything, all were dead. Everything, even the insects were dead."

A.T. Hunter, Canadian Soldier, said "Many fell and died on the spot. The others, gasping ... fled." How many fell on the spot? Few enough that, as Siebert put it in the part snipped from above: "When we got to the French lines the trenches were empty but in a half mile the bodies of French soldiers were everywhere." That would be where they died, not "where they stood" but where they were running, crawling at the end, through a half-mile of thick, non-stop, pea-soup colored corrosive fog, with melting eyes and lungs. Clearly they would have preferred sudden unconsciousness, but reality denied it to them.

Some died in the fields, enough that it was described as "everywhere" over a half-mile span. Others would die in the hospitals. Dr. Hurst noted little was known about those cases and what they went through. But for those who died later under observed conditions, he wrote "Before efficient respirators were in use about 5 per cent. of those who reached the clearing stations died within forty-eight hours. Of those who reached the base hospitals between 1 and 2 per cent. died in the second or third week from broncho-pneumonia or other pulmonary complications." I'm not sure, but I think this means 96-97% of those who made it to the hospitals survived. That sounds high, but the problem was quite a few - most of the thousands killed - never did make it that far. Many survivors would be left blinded, or with crippling respiratory issues, but they lived.

If thousands died and that many also lived, it means an enormous number of exposures. The number is known, or estimates are, but I'm done with fresh research for now. The scale of this gas attack makes it grossly irrelevant as a comparison for the Douma incident. But even with that massive distortion, Mr. Bhatti was still unable to scrape up the desired supports for the invented chlorine properties he insists on promoting.

"I might still be shown wrong" ...
… to have doubts about the very popular no-release notion, or I might see a serious challenge to it short of proof - something worth adding to nuance my position. This is A space it might go in if I see it and get around to adding it here. Otherwise, see OPCW Whistleblower: Chlorine Levels, the main place I'm tracking the issue and more likely (almost certain) to be updated, if such an update seems warranted.