Will 154,000,000 Pieces of Plastic from Christmas Crackers in the UK Wind Up in the Ocean in a Single Year?
Here’s how the rumor about hundreds of millions of pieces of “crackers” becoming ocean plastic got started.
that’s not how science works
Spooky Season, Activated Charcoal in Food, and Medication
A viral social media post warns users not to fall for a “spooky season” trend, claiming that activated charcoal in foods can decrease the efficacy of certain medications and contraceptives.
‘There are 30,000 Gun Related Deaths Per Year by Firearms’
An authoritatively worded social media post about guns is a long-circulating mixture of decontextualized statistics and opinion.
Did University of Findlay Students Discover a Chemical Compound that Kills Glioblastoma?
Post and tweets contained claims that student researchers had made a major brain cancer discovery, which were immediately followed by conspiracy theories.
Did Lemons Evolve Naturally?
A meme about the “when life gives you lemons” adage claims that the sour citrus fruits were originally created by humans.
Is Menthol Shaving Cream (or Foam) a Remedy for Sunburned Skin?
A June 2018 Facebook post recommending menthol shaving cream (or shaving foam, as it is called in the UK) to alleviate the pain of sunburns has accrued more than 230,000 shares. A repost by another person with the same photographs was also shared thousands of times: The original post has since been edited based on the …
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Does an X-Ray Show Hundreds of Undigested Boba Pearls in a Young Chinese Patient?
In June 2019, a number of websites and news outlets reported that a young girl in China was treated for symptoms related to the discovery of “hundreds” of undigested boba pearls in her digestive tract via x-ray. Notably, headlines for the story often indicated that elements of it were mostly likely unedited and unvetted: Doctor …
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Wrist Freckle Myth
The hunt for an “identical wrist freckle” among women on social media went viral in May 2019 following a widely-shared tweet: In it, the original poster included four images of a purportedly identical wrist freckle on four different people, and wrote: ladies….. u got a freckle on the middle of ur wrist or is this …
Is a 1989 ‘U.N. Predicts Disaster if Global Warming Not Checked’ Article Authentic?
On May 14 2019, a Facebook user shared the following screenshot (archived here), purportedly showing a 1989 Associated Press item prognosticating “disaster” by the year 2000 if “global warming” remained unchecked: In the screenshot, text from an unlinked Associated Press article’s headline and first sentence was visible (with indicated emphasis), reading: U.N. Predicts Disaster if …
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Are ‘Cow Fart Bags’ Being Used to Fight Climate Change?
On May 14 2019, a Facebook user shared the following post (archived here), purporting to show “cow fart bags” advocated as a climate change solution by “fringe leftists”: It was almost as if a post lamenting that “you can’t make this stuff up” was a clue that the poster had indeed made that stuff up. …
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