It has since been revealed that the scientists who made this claim fiddled the figures.
Their attempts at performing the calculation were thwarted by the population of the metropolitan area of McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas which is the most obese in the USA.
The rotundity of these people made it impossible to form a square so they were omitted.
As a footnote:-
While sitting at home waiting for his next fast food delivery a resident of Mission, who was upset at being omitted, modeled the scenario using pizza crust crumbs and dried slices of pepperoni. He claimed that there would have been no major deformity of the square except for the Eastern edge where the bulge would have extended only roughly half way across 5th Ave.
Unfortunately his wife ate the evidence before his claim could be verified.