To whom it may concern: In my opinion IFLS is as much a science website as Hawaiian Punch is real juice. Since this keeps coming up, heres the personal story of how I came to understand this. Almost a year ago (01-25-2014), IFLS and the Daily Mail simultaneously talked about researchers simulating throwing bodies into lava (tinyurl/lc85lct, tinyurl/bl45h6y). The source was a Youtube video with a misleading title (tinyurl/d3gy2xc). An old friend posted the IFLS story in June, and I did some checking. It looked so familiar... ...because it was actually our expedition. That video wasnt a science experiment. That was footage of garbage day. We were disposing of food waste by throwing it in Erta Ales lava lake. Its also almost 13 years old...not current, and for lava footage, *ancient*. [Lava lake morphology can change on timescales as short as weeks to months, e.g. in 2004-5 that one cooled over and disappeared. I cant even tell you if theres a lava lake there today, as the most recent info on Google is from 2011-2, but if there is, it likely wont look a thing like that.] The science of our work was understanding the geophysical signals(s) of magma conduit convection. Roberto Carniel was P.I. In the 10 minute version of the video (tinyurl/q8k4agz), I was the grad student with pale grey shirt and ridiculous leather hat and ponytail who spoke about my ancient field equipment. Without contacting any scientist involved, someone took this misleading Youtube clip title, used it as the source for an *entire story*, and claimed 12-year-old footage was cutting edge research. Why this reflects poorly on IFLS is simple: they didnt fact check. A science website would have. Doing so should have been fast and easy. The long video described our purpose and the paper trail leads straight to us (4+ papers, 6+ conference talks). Yet when I contacted them about this, they didnt even acknowledge me. Moreover they should know better. What they *claim* we were doing is embarrassingly stupid. Simulating throwing bodies into lava? What purpose does that serve? [Would fact-checking Revenge of the Sith have made the prequels better? Mee-ssa no tinkin so.] I therefore concluded, and will caution everyone now, that IFLS functions primarily as clickbait. Dont assume its science reporting is accurate or even factual. I consider them a website of the ooooh, wow, shiny thing! variety, intended for people who like to watch sparklies, but who dont care to learn what makes the sparklies shimmer.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 23:49:34 +0000
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