ABOVE: ISTOCK, NAEBLYS
Last week, a story from The Scientist garnered a surprising degree of attention on social media platforms, causing a spike in traffic to that article on our website. Normally a welcome phenomenon, the increased traffic to this 2015 article about a lab-made coronavirus came with an asterisk. Readers weren’t simply perusing the story, enjoying it, and sharing it with friends. At least some people seemed to be using it to spread misinformation and ill-formed theories.
We at The Scientist have grown to expect a certain amount of misinterpretation, especially when we publish stories on emotionally charged topics: autism, cannabis, and genetically modified organisms, to name a few. We do our utmost to produce clear, accurate, and contextualized articles that communicate the science at the heart of even complex topics in a way that is accessible and rigorous. Still, once injected into the marketplace of ideas, we realize ...
