  We submit recent claims of a semi-significant detection of primordial tensor
perturbations in the WMAP data to a closer scrutiny. Our conclusion is in brief
that no such mode is present at a detectable level once the analysis is done
more carefully. These claims have their root in a brief debate in the late
1990s about the standard calculation of the scalar and tensor spectra in
standard inflationary theory, where Grishchuk and collaborators claimed that
their amplitudes should be roughly equal. We give a brief summary of the debate
and our own reasons for why the standard calculation is correct.
