Submarine Volcanoes for Dummies

Mayotte seismic activity

We have no idea why the people at Leaf Group decided to let some of their "contributors" start writing what could only be charitably called "science news" for their Sciencing.com niche site; and, to be honest, we haven't seen many posts that are supposed to fill the void. We did come across one not long ago, however, and based on the hack job freelancer Rachelle Dragani performed on a Popular Mechanics article in "This Mysterious Seismic Event Could Have Birthed a Giant Underwater Volcano," we wonder whether the reason is because she was the only one willing to stick her neck that far out of her J-school/creative writing comfort zone.

Dragani's unsuitability to reword the original information, which appears to have been written by yet another J-school grad from Brooklyn, was revealed almost immediately when she chirped that,

"For one, the seismic waves the blast gave off were super low and were only at a single frequency. Typically, seismic waves would operate on several frequencies."

Wait, what? Besides the cutesiness of "super low," where did Dragani get her bullshit notion about frequencies? From her buddy Dave Grossman? Hell, he's the moron who thought that the event was caused when "a vast amount of magma shifted on the ocean's floor." Add that to the claim that this seismic event was a "blast," and you have scientific ignorance of monumental proportions.

But Dragani wasn't done there... no, in her zeal to present a tabloid version of the science and ratchet up the fear factor, Rachelle trotted out other "amazing revelations" and half-nonsense factoids. We're talking such drivel as,

• "As fantastical as they sound, underwater volcanoes are a pretty common phenomenon." – They may sound "fantastical" to someone more interested in fashion and celebrities than science, but lots of people know plenty about subsea volcanoes. Heck, the entire Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a line of subsea volcanoes!
• "Kolumbo is an active submarine volcano off the coast of the popular Greek island of Santorini. It exploded in 1650..." – Most people would say that the volcano erupted. But this yutz? "exploded"!
• "...and the volcanic ash, lava and gases that the explosion created killed about 70 people." – The "explosion... caused" ash, lava and gases? No, idiot, the eruption consisted of ash, lava, and gases. Sheesh.
• "Imagine you’re in your backyard on a sunny July day and, out of nowhere, there’s a sudden seismic event and a volcano begins to form." – Wait, "out of nowhere"? Even Grossman mentioned that "scientists" had been monitoring a swarm of earthquakes in the area of Mayotte for months before this event.
• "...scientists are looking forward to discovering more about how this happens underwater..." – We're at a loss to understand why Dragani thinks submarine seismism is puzzling. Seismic events within the ocean basins are fairly common.
• "What they learn could unlock even more secrets about the mysteries deep inside the ocean." – We included that line because this makes it seem that Dragani is so scientifically illiterate that she actually thinks this all took place "inside the ocean." No, Rachelle, it took place within the oceanic crust.

This is precisely why allowing self-appointed "professional journalists" to reword someone else's reword of science news even when they know nothing of the topic is so irritating. And it's also why Dragani is collecting another Dumbass of the Day award, her fifth award – in, we note with some dismay, her fifth different scientific discipline. Leaf Group, heal thyself!

By the by, we're still trying to figure out where Dragani came up with her claim that "the seismic waves... were only at a single frequency." Perhaps she thought that the "low" prefix in "low-frequency" somehow refers to a count? Sheesh... 

SI - VOLCANOES