

A pair of UCLA geographers did not claim to have found Osama bin Laden — despite screaming headlines to the contrary.

Professors Thomas Gillespie and John Agnew made a semi-educated guess about the Al Qaeda chief's whereabouts, based on a combination of urban myths about the jihadist leader, oversimplifications about his behavior and the creative employment of biogeographic theories — methods for "predicting how plants and animals distribute themselves over space and over time."

The geographers admit that their brief paper, suggesting bin Laden's hidey-hole could be narrowed down to three buildings in Pakistan's tribal backwater, is just a thought experiment. "What we have attempted to demonstrate is that it is possible to narrow down where Osama bin Laden is by ruling out where he is unlikely to be," the UCLA researchers write (emphasis mine). That's far from claiming that they've nailed down Osama's new headquarters.

What's more, the geographers' paper suffers from a classic data-crunching problem: garbage in, garbage out. In this paper's case, the trash includes some hoary urban myths about Osama. First, the professors accept as fact that bin Laden requires a kidney dialysis machine. That means he must need to be close to an electrical grid or generator, the UCLA pair reason. Too bad the thing is complete folklore — debunked again and again.

An intelligence community source also warns that the UCLA paper grossly oversimplifies how tricky a terrorist mastermind can be. The geographers use a "distance-decay" model to argue that bin Laden couldn't have traveled more than 12 miles from his last known location. They figure that he might be in the Pakistani town of Parachinar. It "has a long history of housing mujahideen," after all. And "residing near or in a large city should reduce bin Laden’s chances of exposure."

Well, sure. Assuming bin Laden plays by UCLA rules. But maybe he thinks a rural location is a better place to hide. Or that it's a bad idea to do something as obvious as stay in a town that traditionally supports militants. "The dude, and [his] methods of hiding are more complex than anyone thinks," the source tells Danger Room. The UCLA methods "would work if they [al Qaeda] were complete idiots. We would have had him by now."

"Admirable attempt, weaksauce methods," the source adds.