The Mohs Hardness Scale for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCLXII

talc (left) and gypsum (right)

Few occurrences are more frustrating for our scientifically competent staffers than witnessing a scientifically illiterate liberal arts graduate pretend to explain something in the reader's wheelhouse but botching the explanation... badly. Sadly, that's pretty much the business model of the website formerly known as eHow.com, at least the portion that now lives in Sciencing.com.¹ For your consideration today, we offer an example of such work: J-school grad Christina Martinez and her unsuccessful attempt to share "How to Tell the Difference Between Talc & Gypsum."

Oil Fields for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCLX

This ain't no desert, Jason

One of the staffers "quiet quit" the petroleum industry a few years ago (before everyone on the planet decided to switch jobs, for what it's worth), but still retains all the basic knowledge necessary to fact-check some of the rubbish our DotD nominees have pumped out over the years. Given the average person's ignorance of the petroleum  industry, it's no surprise that misconceptions and misinformation are the rule rather than the exception; which is why she's rarely surprised by freelancer dumbassery about the oil business. Once in a while, though... and today's one of those days. Back to take another bite of the oil biz apple, once again demonstrating complete ignorance of the industry, is Jason C. Chavis. This time he's answering (NOT!) the eternal question "What is an Oil Field?" for the WiseGEEK.com niche site AboutMechanics.com.

Image Resolution for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCLVII

Out of focus does not mean low-resolution

As the adage has long told us, "'Close' only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades." That's pretty much true everywhere and when it comes to imparting information, it's spot on. When you ask someone for a definition, you don't want "close": you want "correct." Although many of our nominees receive an award because their work is just plain rubbish, sometimes they get "close." Sadly, that still doesn't cut it. Such is the case of Nicolette Calhoun, who tried valiantly to transfer some technology in the OurPastimes.com post "What Is Considered a Low-Resolution Image?" Well, she got close... sort of.

Major Landforms for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCLVI

Most agree mountains are a major landform

We suspect that they never thought so, but in our opinion one of the major flaws of the eHow.com business model was an inability to understand the sources of all those questions their stable of freelancers (allegedly) answered. Take the question, "What Are the Seven Major Landforms?" that nominee Andrea Askins glommed onto back in 2011 for AZCentral.com: it's fairly obvious that some middle-schooler was trying to answer a question about a specific region, such as "What are the seven major landforms in North America?" We say that because no authoritative source lists seven major landforms, only four (mountain, plain, plateau, hill). Askins got those, but she had to stretch the definition of "landform" beyond the breaking point to get the other three...

Horizontal Drilling for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCLIV

horizontal drilling

Staffers at the Antisocial Network realized years ago that some freelancers are just plain shameless. A case in point is one of the more frequent contributors to WiseGEEK.com, who we have determined is neither wise nor a geek. Partially due to her claimed educational qualifications but mostly to her obvious unfamiliarity with her subjects, she's become our "go-away-from" contributor at the site and its niches; with a back-list of crapola that rivals such greats as Joan Whetzel (eHow, HubPages) and Lacy Enderson (eHow). Here, making her sixteenth appearance at the awardee's podium, is Mary McMahon and her AboutMechanics.com post, "What is Horizontal Drilling?"

Buoyancy for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCXL

Buoyancy: how things float

So, the newbie staffer logged into the morning meeting and immediately chirped that they'd found the perfect candidate in just one sentence. Several of us who were already Zoomed in chuckled and allowed as to how that's not all that rare, especially when a freelancer with an English (or "communications") BA tries to reword something even slightly technical. Since this was their first nomination, though, we agreed to listen... and darned if the kid wasn't spot on. Without further ado, then, here's a sendup of multiple award winner Megan Shoop and her attempt to explain "How to Make Things Float in Water" for Sciencing.com.

Visible Light for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCXXIII

cartoon of photons

A not-so-surprising number of our nominees for DotD are caught by our staffers because of errors in common sense. Take, for instance, the ignoramus who thought a normal human could operate a stationary bicycle at 500 RPM... Ignorance of the topic should be no excuse, but hey: when some website offers to pay you fifteen bucks for 300 words of bullshit, why not pump out as many posts as possible? Whatever the case, much of what we've found at the supposedly more technical websites (Leaf Group's Sciencing.com or WiseGEEK's AlltheScience.com, for instance) has been at least somewhat suspect because of an author's weak comprehension of the topic. You know, like Bill Richards when he tried to explain "How to Convert Photons to Joules" for Sciencing.com.

Methane for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCXXII

Methane molecule

Believe it or not, there was once a television show called "Kids Say the Darnedest Things." That was, of course, before seven-year-olds had their own TikTok feeds and broadcast their darnedest things for their own darned selves. Be that as it may, we're not here to talk about kids: today, at least, we're here to make fun of liberal arts grads who try to explain science online. It didn't take a whole lot of searching to find the dumbassery in "Uses of Methane Natural Gas," which eHowian Christina Hadley barfed up onto eHow and Leaf Group sent to their niche site Sciencing.com.

Paleontology for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCXII

Not all fossils are dinosaurs...

One of the staffers was recently reading a mystery-thriller when she concluded that the author had avoided taking any science courses on her way to a creative writing degree. Why? because any passage relating to the science was utterly clueless. It ruined an otherwise perfectly good book. We've noticed here at the Antisocial Network that creative writing (and journalism) majors tend to play fast and loose with STEM topics, especially when their "work" is edited by their fellow travelers in the liberal arts. That definitely includes C-W grad Maria Magher, who departed her mommyblogging comfort zone to pen "What Can We Learn by Studying Fossils?" for Sciencing.com.

Mercator Maps for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCIX

Not a Mercator Map

The younger staffers here at the Antisocial Network tend to be more visual than their older coworkers, probably because they came of age in an era marked by the proliferation of videos and millions of click-bait illustrations. We assume that has something to do with the reason why WiseGEEK.com appends the parenthetical notation "(with pictures)" to so many of their titles... such as "What is a Mercator Map? (with pictures)"  Unfortunately, when a  WiseGEEKian freelancer is ignorant of the topic, an ill-chosen image can be a dead giveaway. That's how a staffer caught up with Archana Khambekar for her post.

Diamonds for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCVIII

Diagram of a kimberlite pipe

Anyone who's ever had the chance to watch search queries in real time knows that Google, Alexa, and Siri get asked some pretty doofus questions. Once you get past all the requests for celebrity news and the latest true crime scandal and get down to real questions asked by people who (think they) are real, you notice some strange stuff. A lot of it seems to be about ways to make money without much work. Duh. Besides all of the queries we've found about prospecting for gold or extracting it from household items, we also ran across the rather strange query, "What Type of Soil Are Diamonds Located In?" Even more bizarre, however, is the Sciencing.com post by Deb Lindstrom that purports to "answer" the question. 

Bedrock Geology for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCVI

sample bedrock geology map

A not surprising number of the freelancers we feature in this forum have been nominated because they attempted to share information that, frankly, they didn't have before taking on their "assignment." True professionals – people who are on assignment for a reputable client – can spend weeks or even months researching their topics; but most of these hacks just go out and attempt to reword some website they don't even understand. This is, sadly, often true i the case of STEM topics when the writer has a liberal arts background... which is exactly the reason for today's nomination. Meet theater/screenwriting grad Jessica Ellis and her half-assed attempt to answer the question, "What is Bedrock Geology?" for WiseGEEK.com.

Copper Properties for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCII

copper is ductile

Those of us who are interested in the so-called S.T.E.M. fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) long ago noticed that many journalists are rather weak when it comes to those fields. This seems to be true of both true professionals and self-proclaimed "professional writers." Oh, sure, some people have made a career of understanding science and interpreting it for the masses (the name of Joe Palka comes to mind), but even the recent hires at the newspaper in ANHQ's home city seem bewildered by the most basic science. The worst science writing, however, is to be had at content farms where "editors" who took one elective science course on their way to a BA in English Lit "correct" work by writers with the same level of training... a case in point is the InfoBloom.com post by Jason C. Chavis, "What are the Properties of Copper?" (FYI, InfoBloom is a niche created by the people at WiseGEEK).

How a Dummy Describes Iron's Properties - The Freelance Files MMCXCVIII

Generation of magnetic field

When our staffers come across a liberal arts graduate attempting to parrot some answer they've found to a question in the STEM fields, they tend to watch with a combination of awe and horror. It's no unlike watching the Jamaican bobsled team compete in the Winter Olympics... We've watched from afar as WiseGEEK.com contributor Karize Uy contributed post after post to the stupidification of the internet, and have already awarded her the DotD five times in four different disciplines. Well, Uy's back; this time hacking her way through a post that she apparently thought answered the question, "What Are the Properties of Iron?"

Thermal Contraction for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMMCLXXXVI

We'll never know for sure, of course, but it seems logical that the self-proclaimed "professional freelancers" who tilled those many long rows of posts at content farms like ehow.com and HubPages.com were in such a hurry to get their product online that they didn't have the time to perform due diligence. To put it another way, they didn't run the content past someone more knowledgeable on the topic... heck, sometimes they didn't run the content past a better writer. Take, for instance, returning nominee Kimberley McGee, who is responsible for the Hunker.com article titled "A Pan Lid Is Stuck to My Granite Countertop."

Crust vs. Lithosphere for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLXXIII

Earth's layering

We had so much fun pointing out the dumbassery of one of the folks at DifferenceBetween.com earlier this week that we decided to come back to the site and take another lick at their contributors. Today's nominee has a Master's in linguistics, but decided to attempt to explain some basic earth science instead of staying in their lane. Meet Koshal, who pecked around the edges of the topic "Difference Between Lithosphere and Crust," meanwhile managing to make it pretty clear that any study of geology was pretty deep in his/her past.

Chalk for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLV

Modern coccolithophore

Today's nominee, making another of her frequent visits to these pages, is here in part because she demonstrated a failure to understand one of the most basic tenets of the earth sciences: a rock is not the same thing as a mineral. You can describe rocks in terms of the minerals present and their texture, but you cannot assign to them the physical properties associated with minerals. That the post Mary McMahon dumped on WiseGEEK.com back in 2008 (when she called herself S. E. Smith) contains multiple repetitions of  the same error, however, does not surprise us. Mary has long since proven that her grasp of earth sciences is quite tenuous, and "What is Chalk?" (now at AllThingsNature.org) is one more example of her scientific ignorance.

Stripper Wells for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLIV

Our Antisocial Network staffers tend to look with scorn on freelancers who completely botch an assignment due to ignorance or failure to prepare. Online freelancers who were paid flat fees for their output at sites like eHow.com and WiseGEEK.com have proven among the worst, perhaps because of a tendency to value quantity – and therefore increased income – over quality. The usual "one tiny trick" pulled by these authors is to find something that looks like it answers the question and then reword it (to avoid plagiarism). If the source isn't on point, however, you end up with utter bullshit; just as returning DotD Angie Bates did in her attempt to answer the timeless question, "What Is a Stripper Well" for AboutMechanics.com.

Radioactivity for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLIII

Radioactivity levels

Maybe it's just us, but we are firmly of the opinion that when someone is tasked with writing an informative article about the "Dangers & Uses of Radioactivity," it becomes hard to view the article as authoritative when one of the sections in the post is subtitled, "Radiation In Comic Books." We kid you not, however: that's the title of the last section in the above-titled post Russel Huebsch vomited up on eHow.com back in 2013. It still lives on the internet in the bizarrely-named niche site Sciencing.com. Ptui.

Drain Cleaner Chemistry, the Dummies Version - The Freelance Files MMCXLIX

clogged drain

Sometimes as we read through the dross published by content-farm freelancers, we have to wonder just what factoid some of these people are misinterpreting to spread their brand of stupidification across the internet. It seems to happen most frequently when a liberal arts graduate (typically journalism or "creative writing") tries to explain science. Hard science or soft, these writers' assiduous avoidance of STEM classes on their way to a BA becomes pretty obvious. Take, for instance J-school grad YaShekia King and her attempt to elucidate "Drain Cleaner Ingredients" for Hunker.com.