Science Factoids for Dummies

Schematic of Earth's layers

The successful freelancer at a content farm like HubPages.com reworded source material at a furious rate; often dumping out several related "hubs" in a day, all connected by similar titles and topics. The problem with this methodology was, of course, that the freelancer was merely rewording material about which he or she knew little or nothing the day before and, in the process, often made a helluva mess of specific facts. Here's a prime example, one we found this morning with just a few minute's trolling through the bazillions of hubs. It comes to us courtesy of livingsta, a Hubbie who claims to be a physicist, but probably isn't. Come see some of her bullshit from the article "Planet Earth for Kids - Shape and layers of the Earth" at the Hubpages niche site, Owlcation.com.

livingsta's hub, as locals call it, is little more than a skillfully reworded article scrounged elsewhere on the net - perhaps Wikipedia (a favorite source). Unfortunately, she did a poor job of copying, and as a result screwed up some factoids:

"...the crust... comprises the continents and ocean basins...[it] is composed mainly of alumino-silicates [sic]." Ummm, no: the continental crust is mainly aluminosilicates, but oceanic crust is mostly ferromagnesian silicates. It's a very important difference, one that she actually got right later on! "The interior of Earth reaches temperatures of 5270 kelvins." We find it strange that a self-described scientist would (1) fail to capitalize Kelvin,and (2) get the number wrong: it's almost 6,000 K. "Ca-Al-rich inclusions (inclusions rich in calcium and aluminium), the oldest known solid constituents within meteorites that are formed within the solar system, are 4.567 billion years old..." While basically correct, it's readily apparent from the munged-up wording that livingsta is simply copying text. She doesn't know what inclusions are, and makes a mess out of both the definition and the logic.

While much of the article is informative and relatively well-written, the Hubbie failed to do due diligence and, as a result, spread bogus factoids. Despite being "mostly" right, for her small part in the stupidification of the internet livingsta is today's Dumbass of the Day. We'll be nice and not tag her with "scientific illiteracy..."

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