Erosion for Science Dummies

soil erosion

Cynical or not, we realize that there are people out there with some form of writing degree who are capable of rendering scientific jargon into something the "unwashed masses" can understand, just as there are scientists who are incapable of doing so. As we understand, it takes either in-depth knowledge of the science or willing interview subjects (for an example, see anything written by Mary Roach.) Sadly, many liberal arts grads – J-school, creative writing, English lit – decided they were perfectly capable of doing it all by themselves... hence, the plethora of DotD awards for scientific illiteracy among liberal arts grads. Continuing in that grand tradition today, we find eHowian John Mack holding forth on "How Does Erosion Affect the Earth?"¹ for Leaf Group's Sciencing.com.

Leveraging his BA in philosophy, Mack bursts onto the science scene with this marvelous construction:

"Erosion occurs every day all over the Earth. It is a natural process involving wind, water, the sun and many other forces at work on the planet..."

...at which we ask, how are water and the sun "forces," not to mention how is the sun directly responsible for erosion (yes, we know, indirectly...)? John apparently took a few creative writing courses on the way to that BA, which is probably where he got the notion for scintillating prose like this: "When raindrops fall, they cut through sediment and even rock to form channels where water can flow more freely. The path eventually becomes more pronounced, forming a path along which other raindrops can follow. Over sometimes long periods of time, erosion continues to do this to form waterways such as the Colorado River. Rivers can also form through glacial erosion whereby glaciers cut through the ground, leaving a basin for water to fill."

Uhhhh, yeah, it's like that... it appears that Mack watched an episode of Wild Kratts or some other preschooler-targeted science programming. Oh, and, John? you entirely omitted gravity from that description, and those "basins" that glaciers carve? they're called "valleys."

We liked some of his other mangled factoids almost as much:

• "Landslides usually occur after extremely heavy rains that loosen the soil so much that the land can no longer support itself." – Well, we'd like to point out that landslides occur when the force of gravity overcomes the internal cohesion of the soil, but we suppose "the land can no longer support itself" will have to suffice (not).
• "Sometimes events like heavy rains and wildfires cause soil erosion." – Wildfires themselves do not cause erosion, John, it's the loss of ground cover that increases soil erosion.
• "Erosion from the ocean is causing many beaches to lose their sand. The force of the oceans' tides hits the sand, breaking it up and taking it out to sea." – Our staff sedimentologist suggests that Mack learn what a beach actually is, not to mention the difference between waves and tides.

Creative writing and philosophy classes notwithstanding, Mack clearly has no idea what he's talking about and just cobbled together something from his "rocks for jocks" class notes. Heck, he didn't even bother to say what erosion does: it moves soil and rock from one place to another. That's pretty much all we needed to name this yutz our Dumbass of the Day.

¹ The original has been assigned to the rewrite team by Leaf Group, but it can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/info_8570460_erosion-affect-earth.html

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