This is a great question. And one that is hard to give a simple answer to because there are many reasons. I would say the number one reason that I started this website is because I believe in science’s ability to solve problems. I believe it is the tool that we have as a society that is going to propel us forward. It is the tool that will allow us to analyze our biggest problems, analyze the possible solutions and will allow us to charge into the future with confidence. This is from a society point of view.
From a personal point of view, I believe the more people that understand science and are excited for it, the better off we all will be. I also believe that science is a phenomenal personal tool that helps protect yourself from being manipulated. And in this day and age, that is something that we need desperately.
Science literacy as a society has been slowly eroded over the past 30 years in spite of the fact that we live in an age where we have access to more information than any other time on earth, and we literally have in our pockets devices that can access the entirety of human knowledge. Misinformation is being spread faster than truth. Scientific reality is lost in a sea of misinformation. Or perhaps more succinctly put, you’ve heard of the quote:
Let me give you a few examples. Let’s start right there with the most ironic example: a quote about lies, falsely attributed to someone who never said it.
The quote above: “A lie gets halfway around the world before truth puts on its boots.” Is most often attributed to either Mark Twain, or Winston Churchill. The problem is, neither of them actually said it.
Here is an exhaustively studied article written on the topic with citations:
I won’t go through the whole analysis, but the conclusion from the analysis is:
“At this time, there is no substantive support for assigning the saying to Mark Twain or Winston Churchill.”
The bigger problem here is that if you google search that quote and the name Winston Churchill, or Mark Twain, you can find about 10 or 11 different sources that give either one of them credit for saying it. All to some extent referencing one another, and not based in reality.
Let’s look at some more examples. Here is a headline that was featured at Business Insider in 2018:
Scientists have found that shampoo is a source of the same dangerous form of air pollution made by cars
The article itself is massively misleading. Here is a quote from the article:
“A new study has shown how household products such as shampoo are sources of the same air pollution as traffic fumes.”
Now technically that is true; in the sense that pollution from traffic fumes has a large component that is comprised of VOC’s (Volatile Organic Compounds). A VOC is any organic chemical that has a high vapor pressure, (just meaning it goes from liquid to gas easily at room temperature). In the study scientists measured for VOC’s inside home products as well and found high levels of VOC’s in them as well. The problem with that measurement is that VOC’s are a HUGE class of chemicals and range from formaldehyde to rose oxide (the chemical that makes roses smell sweet).
There are thousands and thousands of VOC’s that range from very toxic to not toxic at all, and many of them are completely natural and not hazardous at normal levels. If you smell something, it is most likely a VOC, whether it’s from a candle, a flower, the smell of fresh cooked food, or a cleaning product.
There are VOC’s literally all around us all the time and are not necessarily hazardous. So saying that household products such as shampoo are sources of the same types of chemicals as traffic fumes, is the same as saying that Plutonium Bromide is the same type of chemical as table salt. Technically they’re both salts, but that doesn’t necessarily give you any information on how dangerous the are as chemicals.
As you can see, the article is written in such a way that stokes fear into people. The article it is really the equivalent of saying, “New study finds that chemicals are everywhere and some of them cause cancer.”
So why do these misinformed articles get published? That is a hard question to answer. In my opinion it’s because there is so much money to be made from views. The internet is a space where everyone is trying to get your eyes on their page, website, advertisement, or video, and where you yourself have been designated to be a promoter by your ability to share, re-tweet, post, and like. Because of this, these outlets and publishers have evolved special tactics to get you to view and share in the attempt to get them to go viral. Publishers are using our basest instincts against us to try to get us to share, like, and spread their pages.
From what I’ve seen the biggest two tactics that I’ve found that these outlets use is
- Fear
- Tribalism
How many news stories have you read that you can tell are designed to make you terrified but completely leave out context of how likely the occurrence is? They are everywhere, and they know it works.
The second I think is more insidious because it preys on our want to fit into groups, to think that the group that we are in is the best and any opposition is wrong, or the enemy. It divides us as a people.
Perhaps you saw this headline spread over Facebook:
Male birth control study nixed after men can’t handle side effects women face daily
I personally, saw several people, post, comment and share this article on Facebook (and I’m not on Facebook that often). You can see right from the title of the article, that it’s designed to pit women against men. And women in droves shared and commented on the articles.
The problem is, the article was not based in fact. The study wasn’t nixed, it just ended early and moved on to the 3rd trial. Also, the study showed that 75% of the men that took the drug said that they would be willing to take the drug despite the side effects, so it had nothing to do with the fact that men couldn’t handle the side effects.
Popular science did a great write up on the misinformation so I won’t go through it bit by bit, but I will leave the link to their article here if you want to read up on it:
The problem with allowing these outlets to use these methods is that they work, especially when it’s something the person already wants to believe. It is a powerful tool and they’ve realized that the content of what they are publishing doesn’t matter if it’s based on something that was once true and it doesn’t really matter if it’s massively misleading.
Over the past few years, I’ve had many instances where friends and family send me links, articles etc. asking my thoughts on them. So, after hundreds of instances, I wanted to reach out to more people instead of just replying to friends and family emails.
I’d like to start giving people tools in terms of understanding the world around them and give them a place where they could ask questions about science, or the reality about different articles that they read, or even just how things around them work, because believe me when I tell you this universe around us is amazing.
So that’s why I started this website. I want to provide a place where people can come to learn, ask questions, and spread truth, not misinformation.
If I can get you to take away one thing from this website it will be this: before you like, share or post something, ask questions, especially if it is taking advantage of you feeling part of some group identity, or if it is fostering some level of fear.
I hope you like it and if you have any questions feel free to reach out to me.
Thanks for reading. I’ll be updating this every other week on Sundays (sometimes more often if the questions are easy). Feel free to subscribe to our newsletter, friend us on Facebook, or follow us on twitter.