  "With five parameters one can fit an elephant". This provocative statement
expresses the fact that when a theory has several adjustable parameters, an
agreement with empirical data can be of modest value. What about a theory which
contains unobserved objects? This is the subject of this paper. It is motivated
by a model of the Ice Ages of the Pleistocene, which postulates a hot planet in
an extremely eccentric orbit. This object has many consequences. It is rather
well defined by the requirements, that it must not be in conflict with laws of
nature, nor with empirical data. It must have sufficient mass to produce a
rapid geographic pole shift on Earth after a close flyby at the end of the
Pleistocene, and also be small enough to disintegrate at this occasion and to
evaporate during the Holocene. These requirements leave hardly any adaptable
parameters. In this situation, the agreement with further data, in particular
the reverse Dansgaard-Oeschger events of the Holocene, represents a significant
support of this theory.
