The Zoro spider was the victim of tabloid news in the US earlier this year Counterpoint / Photo via Getty Images
In an Internet environment where election results and talk of global warming are full of misleading claims, scientists have discovered that even spiders are not immune to this web of misinformation.
In an article published last week in the journal Current Biology, researchers pointed out that articles about spider bites are often false. They analyzed more than 5,300 news articles from around the world and found that 43% contained sensational language, while 47% contained factual errors. The New York Times, Oliver Wang.
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"A lot of spiders are about scaring and hurting people," said Catherine Scott, a spider scientist at Canada's McGill University and one of the authors of the paper. Science News, Betsy Mason. But "spiders never bite people," he says.
While there are about 50,000 known species of spiders, very few are dangerous to humans. Instead, Science News may play an important ecological role in hunting domestic and agricultural pests, Mongabay's Cassie Freund wrote in May, when the article was still under peer review and published in preprint.
To identify sensationalism in news articles published between 2010 and 2020, the researchers looked for the use of words such as "monstrous," "murderer," "terrible," "evil," and "nightmare."
He also pointed out factual errors, including mistakes about the spider's anatomy and exaggerations about how dangerous the spider is. Sometimes, some stories attribute it to bites from non-living spiders, while others report symptoms that are not caused by spider bites. scientific reports,
"In many spider bite stories, there was no evidence that a spider was involved," Scott told WebMD. scientific reports,
Misinformation about spiders was more common in articles based on interviews with medical and pest control experts than with spider experts. Mongabe, "Even doctors don't always have the best information and often misdiagnose bites," Scott told WebMD. times
The analysis also shows that sensational stories often start in regional media before they are published in national and international publications and spread around the world. Times: "The world press was able to pick up on a spider incident in a small town in Michigan, which surprised me quite a bit," explained Stefano Mamola, lead author of the paper and an ecologist at the Italian National Research Institute Council Mongabay.
This pattern of misinformation spreading from local to national media parallels how misinformation spread about the 2020 presidential election, said Javon West, an information scientist at the University of Washington who was not involved in the spider study times.
Mongabe says the study can serve as a lesson in how to avoid spreading misinformation. Journalists can get information from subject matter experts, and readers can be wary of stories with highly emotional language.
Greater awareness of the Internet's sensitivity could benefit spiders and other animals, scientists say. If there was less misinformation about spiders, people might try to kill them less often with pesticides harmful to humans and other species, Scott told WebMD. scientific reports,
"Spiders are unique in that they seem to be really good at getting people's attention," says Lisa Taylor, an archaeologist at the University of Florida who was not involved in the research. Science News: "If this attention is combined with anecdotal information rather than sensational misinformation, I think spiders are well-suited to serve as miniature ambassadors for wildlife in general."
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