In a fitting end to the ridiculous year of misinformation that it was, this fake news story on spiders being attracted to a particular brand of body butter caught my eye.
It’s clickbait, it’s misinformation, it’s disinformation…and it’s a great illustration of how the online universe creates more complex challenges for science communication.
According to the story, a customer wrote a negative review on the website of a popular cosmetics brand claiming that a particular body butter, when applied appropriately, attracted spiders (specifically, wolf spiders) to them. Other people then jumped on to various social media platforms claiming similar experiences with the same body butter.
This phenomenon is not biologically plausible, and I sympathise with the numerous experts who had to interrupt their holidays to explain to multiple journalists that no, it was extremely unlikely that the body butter was bringing all the spiders to the yard.
It also appears that the anecdote is likely false and the customer probably fabricated the claim for fun/to get attention/some other reason. Redditors reported that the same ‘customer’ had left almost identical reviews on other cosmetic products over the last few years.
The story got an undeserved amount of attention across a whole range of news media, from junky tabloids that hyped the drama to well-respected platforms that tried to seriously debunk the story with science. Maybe it was a bit of end-of-year newsroom desperation, or maybe just because spiderphobias always seem to get more news attention than they deserve.
The news coverage mostly focused on whether spiders are/are not attracted to cosmetics, but the real story here is how anecdotes disproportionately fuel broad-scale misinformation.
Why is it so easy for an unverifiable anecdote, once shared, to become embedded in people’s minds as if it’s scientific fact?
I’ve written before about the flawed windscreen phenomenon anecdote. It never seems to lose its appeal, despite continuous expert debunking. We’re seeing similar during the ongoing covid pandemic and climate/biodiversity crisis. Climate deniers, extinction deniers, pandemic deniers… they all follow a similar playbook.
All anecdotes are either fabricated or flawed. I teach my students that anecdotes are the least certain of the types of ‘evidence’. They make you think, they can help create new hypotheses for research, but they can’t be taken as evidence of any pattern; even if they aren’t fabricated or exaggerated, they only represent a perception of one place at one time.
But anecdotes have HUGE reach, and potential engagement, online. The more attention (e.g. likes, shares, news coverage etc.) that an anecdote gets, the more people are likely to believe that it’s true. And attention/reach comes from hitting that value spot in a general audience – a lot of people (unfortunately) dislike spiders, so an anecdote that plays on spiderphobias is going to get traction.
According to many communications experts, people don’t want facts, they want compelling stories that confirm their beliefs. This is how brand marketing, political spin and PR strategies work. And this is exactly what the enterprising fiction writer did with their cosmetic-loving spiders story.
Not surprising in a world where reach and engagement, regardless of truth or community wellbeing outcomes, are the markers of success.
Where does this leave science communication? When stories like this make the mainstream, I feel like it’s becoming more pointless engaging in scicomm as an expert; when I’m increasingly engaging with an echo chamber, when fake news and sensational anecdotes engage public audiences more than facts, and when policymakers pander to public interest over scientific evidence.
There are no alternative truths in science. There are facts, bodies of evidence, and expert consensuses. Values and beliefs are extremely important for understanding actions and decisions, but they rarely change the scientific facts. If you hate spiders, that’s totally fine and understandable. But it won’t change the facts that most spiders won’t harm you, and they aren’t attracted to your body butter.
Journalists have a responsibility to inform the public. But at what cost? Do public audiences need to know about every controversial social media post or shocking consumer review? But if journos don’t cover the story of a viral anecdote and attempt to debunk it, will it fuel even more misinformation?
© Manu Saunders 2024
Not a wolf spider, not looking for body butter