Cool Cracked article about people's ignorant responses to science news

[Galteeth]

http://www.cracked.com/blog/7-ridiculous-things-people-believe-about-god-particle/

I found this accurate and amusing.

 

[Danger]

That is bloody hilarious! I've bookmarked the site.
One of the funniest and most accurate statements is at the beginning:

In 1989, CERN invented the World Wide Web to transmit important information between smart people, and the world has been using it for the exact opposite ever since.

 

[Curious3141]

My favourite lines were these:

LHC runs generate two terabytes of data a day. That's more than the porn consumption of many entire countries (with some crosstalk as people mistype "hadrons").

 

[genericusrnme]

oh lawdy lawd, that was hilarious

 

[Danger]

Jeez, Curious... I hadn't read that far. Hilarious!

 

[DennisN]

Marvellous and accurate! Bookmarking. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Chi Meson]

I'm printing this and memorizing parts, because I always get toungue-tied when confronted by people. The sheer "where do I begin" aspect is daunting when you realize that most people (90%? 95%? 99%?) don't even understand "acceleration" and yet they believe their whims should have equal footing in any scientific dialogue.

It would be cruel to say that they picked on the font because it was the only part of the presentation they understood, so I'll say that, because that's exactly what happened.

The author of this article is brilliant. This is not the same "Cracked" as the magazine of the 70s, is it?

 

[Curious3141]

The author of this article is brilliant. This is not the same "Cracked" as the magazine of the 70s, is it?

The one and the same. Always been more highbrow than Mad, and the difference is starker now than ever.

 

[Light Bearer]

Awesome article lol, I love that site. Their science articles are generally pretty entertaining.

 

[Ibix]

My favourite was the caption below the "explanation" of the Higgs mechanism by Terry from Des Moines in #3. It just says "We really hope you skipped over most of that".

I did, thanks.

 

[Astronuc]

"being able to understand things" is elitist.


"Previous investigations of apparently pointless physical phenomena led to little things like electricity, quantum mechanics, absolutely everything, the entire modern world. Stuff like that. The most important breakthrough in the last thousand years came from shining invisible light on a piece of metal to watch more invisible bits come out. If scientists hadn't followed up on this odd little detail (aka the Ultraviolet Catastrophe, the most badass-sounding revolution in scientific understanding), the absolute limit of modern technology would be brass and steam."


That's a great article.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

"being able to understand things" is elitist.
\

I really liked that too lol

 

[AnTiFreeze3]

Unfortunately, not all of Cracked's science articles are up to this caliber.

Aside from their regular columnists, (of which there are only 10 or so, who usually publish one article a week) the rest of the articles are published by random people who submit an article to the website, which is then edited by the staff at Cracked, and then shown on the front page.

As an avid follower of the site (not so much now as I used to be) I was appalled at the selection process: People care FAR more about being funny or edgy than being right.

One potential article that I read, that was actually being considered by the editors, made the claim that running long distances (the newspaper article linked only mentioned marathons specifically) can be detrimental to your health. Various semi-funny jokes were made about it, and the whole idea was that you would learn some crazy fact from their website that you would have previously been ignorant of.

I read the article used as evidence for the claim, and found that the only side effect of running a marathon was that, for a VERY brief time after finishing a marathon, the right ventricle's efficiency dropped slightly. Not to mention, the study was only done on 40 people.

All in all, it's an awesome website for humor, just not for scientific information. The editors and publishers there are looking more for a shock 'n awe effect with their articles than they are looking to spread the truth.

 

[Chi Meson]

Unfortunately, not all of Cracked's science articles are up to this caliber.

Aside from their regular columnists, (of which there are only 10 or so, who usually publish one article a week) the rest of the articles are published by random people who submit an article to the website, which is then edited by the staff at Cracked, and then shown on the front page.

As an avid follower of the site (not so much now as I used to be) I was appalled at the selection process: People care FAR more about being funny or edgy than being right.

One potential article that I read, that was actually being considered by the editors, made the claim that running long distances (the newspaper article linked only mentioned marathons specifically) can be detrimental to your health. Various semi-funny jokes were made about it, and the whole idea was that you would learn some crazy fact from their website that you would have previously been ignorant of.

I read the article used as evidence for the claim, and found that the only side effect of running a marathon was that, for a VERY brief time after finishing a marathon, the right ventricle's efficiency dropped slightly. Not to mention, the study was only done on 40 people.

All in all, it's an awesome website for humor, just not for scientific information. The editors and publishers there are looking more for a shock 'n awe effect with their articles than they are looking to spread the truth.

I don't think anyone here is about to follow Cracked as an information source. I'm hoping this author gets the opportunity to go on to better things. Writing for Colbert, perhaps.

 

[AnTiFreeze3]

One comment that I loved:

"Why did they bother curing polio.. how did that help cure cancer? What a waste of money."

 

[AnTiFreeze3]

I don't think anyone here is about to follow Cracked as an information source. I'm hoping this author gets the opportunity to go on to better things. Writing for Colbert, perhaps.

There are a few authors who could be doing much more with themselves, yet stay writing for Cracked. Then again, the website does get millions of viewers a day, so I'm sure that they enjoy the exposure, and in some cases, the captive audience to promote their books.

I also don't underestimate the visitors of this website, I just felt like playing Devil's Advocate, for once. Good for humor; bad for information.

 

[physicsboard]

Overall, I think this article is just another group back-patting pandering to intelligent people. It's well written, and although the humor is somewhat static, it's pretty funny too. However, it's the reason I don't like Cracked. The underlying theme is 'look how dumb/arrogant these people are, isn't that hilarious?' It's a lazy form of humor that gets a free pass because it makes us feel better about our own shortcomings. Yes, people are ignorant and stupid. Yes, these features are typically amplified on the internet. But it's just not funny anymore. There's so much posted content out there now on almost any world event that making jokes like this a bale short of a straw man scenario.

When someone says something dumb in a live conversation, the kind of person they are along with the context can make it seem really funny. However, when the context is a world event, there's always people out there saying dumb things about it. There are always conspiracies, there is always a weird religious angle, there are always the 'more intelligent then thou' guy with all the wrong answers. A quick search on Google and Twitter with the right keywords gives you all the content you need for an article of this nature.

And I think 'What's the point?' is a valid question to ask, especially for those who don't have a scientific background. Of the three cherry picked comments, only two outright state that it's pointless. The last comment can be taken as aggressive, but it could also be a genuine question. The LHC was a lot of money, and some people don't understand how the costs of science now translate into future benefits. Does someone with little to no scientific background deserved to be mocked because they don't understand the general benefits of scientific progress? I don't think so.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

The most important breakthrough in the last thousand years came from shining invisible light on a piece of metal to watch more invisible bits come out. If scientists hadn't followed up on this odd little detail (aka the Ultraviolet Catastrophe, the most badass-sounding revolution in scientific understanding), the absolute limit of modern technology would be brass and steam.

Aka the photoelectric effect. The ultraviolet catastrophe was not a revolution, it was an incorrect conclusion based on classical thinking. It is, however, quite badass sounding.

 

[Zarqon]

I think this SMBC strip gets the main point across in a good manner:

SMBC - Particle collider

 

[AnTiFreeze3]

Overall, I think this article is just another group back-patting pandering to intelligent people. It's well written, and although the humor is somewhat static, it's pretty funny too. However, it's the reason I don't like Cracked. The underlying theme is 'look how dumb/arrogant these people are, isn't that hilarious?' It's a lazy form of humor that gets a free pass because it makes us feel better about our own shortcomings. Yes, people are ignorant and stupid. Yes, these features are typically amplified on the internet. But it's just not funny anymore.

I dislike Cracked now for the very reason that it always tries to categorize its viewers as lonely, pathetic, anti-social nerds, and a ridiculous amount of the jokes there revolve around that assumption.

 

[Galteeth]

Overall, I think this article is just another group back-patting pandering to intelligent people. It's well written, and although the humor is somewhat static, it's pretty funny too. However, it's the reason I don't like Cracked. The underlying theme is 'look how dumb/arrogant these people are, isn't that hilarious?' It's a lazy form of humor that gets a free pass because it makes us feel better about our own shortcomings. Yes, people are ignorant and stupid. Yes, these features are typically amplified on the internet. But it's just not funny anymore. There's so much posted content out there now on almost any world event that making jokes like this a bale short of a straw man scenario.

When someone says something dumb in a live conversation, the kind of person they are along with the context can make it seem really funny. However, when the context is a world event, there's always people out there saying dumb things about it. There are always conspiracies, there is always a weird religious angle, there are always the 'more intelligent then thou' guy with all the wrong answers. A quick search on Google and Twitter with the right keywords gives you all the content you need for an article of this nature.

And I think 'What's the point?' is a valid question to ask, especially for those who don't have a scientific background. Of the three cherry picked comments, only two outright state that it's pointless. The last comment can be taken as aggressive, but it could also be a genuine question. The LHC was a lot of money, and some people don't understand how the costs of science now translate into future benefits. Does someone with little to no scientific background deserved to be mocked because they don't understand the general benefits of scientific progress? I don't think so.

I don't know. I have observed, even amongst otherwise intelligent-seeming people, a certain kneejerk anti-science attitude that has become popular. I can't count how many times I have been exasperated by some version of the statement "Science is based on faith."