All About Clay, the Dummy Way

Clay soil sample

Here at the Antisocial Network, we never cease to be amazed by how poorly the average liberal arts (or J-school, or business...) graduate grasps basic scientific concepts. When one of our researchers with a scientific background runs across internet content posted by such a freelancer (of the money-hungry variety, of course) the misinformation tends to be pretty obvious. The problem with that? It's not obvious to a student or someone else doing basic research when they run across the miscreants' misinformation and misinterpretation. Take, for instance business graduate Kyle Lanning, JD, who mangled the basics of "How is Clay Soil Formed?" for – you guessed it – eHow.com (now moved, for some unknown reason, to the niche site Hunker.com; finally relocated where it "belongs" at Sciencing.com).

Perhaps the biggest shortcoming of Lanning's post is that the writer confuses clay soil with shale. That becomes crystal clear in his final paragraph, where Kyle babbles,

"...clay soils differ in their composition, usually based on the geological process that created the particles (erosion, weathering or diagenesis). Clay soil created by erosion is responsible for a large part of mudstone creation. Mudstone is a valuable part of the sedimentary environment, covering about 60 percent of marine continental shelves. In addition..."

...after which he blathers a bit about bentonite. After reading that, it's no secret that Lanning has no idea what "soil" is or how it forms if he is going to call upon erosion and deposition: soil, Kyle, is formed in situ by a combination of weathering of bedrock and addition of organic matter. In other words, most of what Kyle said in the first 80% of his post is unrelated to the formation of soil; it is instead a (half-witted) primer on shale.

Not only that, Lanning also manages to pepper the information he does provide with misinformation and misstatements such as

"clay particles... are tightly spaced, which is why clay is notorious for having poor water or air movement throughout..." -- the "spacing" of clay "particles" isn't the cause of shale's notorious low permeability, the shape of the grains and their internal structure are the chief reasons "...clay particles have a very strong affinity for water and, when exposed to water, they swell up and adhere to each other (a process known as cohesion)" -- the "strong affinity" business is fairly accurate, although not all clays are swelling clays. "...clay deposits only form under a limited range of geological conditions. Soil horizons, continental and marine sediments, geothermal fields, volcanic deposits and weathering rock formations are the only environments under which clay soil deposits can be formed..." -- sounds like a pretty large range to us. "Clay soil is essentially composed of several minerals that deposit together and, over time, form a hardened clay deposit." -- no, that's not "soil" -- that's rock. Learn the difference, dumbass!

...along with numerous other, equally poor, examples of the sort of copy-reword-paste that permeates eHow.

Besides reinterpreting information that didn't need to be reinterpreted (and getting it wrong in the bargain), Lanning just plain screws up by failing to understand the difference between clay soil and claystones (including mudstone and shale). You know what that means? Yes: Kyle Lanning is the proud owner of a Dumbass of the Day award.

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