this is a silly discussion p[alpatine is sidious. He has to be. Not only do palpatine and sidious look identical , in the rare shots where you can see a little of sidious face (say his chin which has the same dimple etc as palpatine) but the scene in TPM where palpatine becomes flusterd when the queen decides to go back to naboo , something he wasn't expecting. Palpatine ooozes evil and snake like personality in TPM and looks like sidious , we know he has the same goals in the end as sidious , talks like sidious and at the end of TPM says to anakin 'we will watch your carear with great interest'. If this isn't enough at in the funeral scene when it talks about the sith master it focuses on him!!! What we have to remember is while these are obvious indications to us the older audience of who he really is , the kids the 6 year olds probab;ly wont get it' It is very very obvious that sidious is palpatine.
If you look at the Palpatine one, they are clearly referring to gim as seen in ROTK because they mention his Force Lightening and his affiliation is listed as Empire, Sith.
I would therefore suggest the height measurements are correct as the ROTJ era Palpatine walked with a visible stoop of the spine, thus making him shorter.
Yeah, I went through the stage of thinking it was a big trick as well, and while I won't absolutely rule anything out, the more time goes by the more this looks like a very simple thing.
Anyway, it's hardly as if a sudden twist here will actually improve the story. We know the score, we know the good guys will lose, so let's just roll with it.
Anyone read the Ian McDiarmid interview in the Star Wars magazine?
He described some of Palpatine's character in Episode 2. He's convinced that he's supposed to be evil, he talked about his ability to "turn it on", referring to a scene in Ep2 where he's close to tears. Interesting stuff, which backs up the whole Sidious = Palpy idea.