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Apparently part of my job is assuring people that no, the world is not going to end next year.
Today it was one of the designers, who came to me because I'm a science editor; he had heard some garbled thing about a "dwarf star" that was approaching Earth. It took me a moment to figure out what he was talking about, and that he didn't need an explanation of what a dwarf star is beyond "old and dim, and they're all a long way from here." (Not a long way in astronomical terms, but a long way for the purposes of this discussion.) I did my best, and pointed out that anyone can put all sorts of nonsense on the Internet. My analogy was that I can't even sing, but I could put a video of me singing on YouTube and they wouldn't stop me; someone who knows no science can put nonsense up there claiming to be a scientist.
The friend who had told him this also said something about a Russian, or maybe Chinese, scientist; I pointed out that if it was a real danger, they could point to something in English, and it would be from someone at a place like Harvard, not a random Russian newspaper. (The last I looked, which was a few years ago, Pravda was trying to be the Weekly World News but without Batboy.)
A few weeks ago, I got to do something similar right after the Virginia earthquake; in that case the movie threat was the Yellowstone caldera.
What's explicitly in my job is answering science questions; that's mostly in order to keep errors out of the English/Language Arts books. This means that if someone comes over and says "I have a science question" I will do my best to answer it, including using my Google-fu if necessary (though once or twice when swamped I've suggested they talk to Chris or Marilyn instead). I will freely admit that I mostly enjoy doing this, so I'm not going to start asking whether/how the questions are work-related.
Today it was one of the designers, who came to me because I'm a science editor; he had heard some garbled thing about a "dwarf star" that was approaching Earth. It took me a moment to figure out what he was talking about, and that he didn't need an explanation of what a dwarf star is beyond "old and dim, and they're all a long way from here." (Not a long way in astronomical terms, but a long way for the purposes of this discussion.) I did my best, and pointed out that anyone can put all sorts of nonsense on the Internet. My analogy was that I can't even sing, but I could put a video of me singing on YouTube and they wouldn't stop me; someone who knows no science can put nonsense up there claiming to be a scientist.
The friend who had told him this also said something about a Russian, or maybe Chinese, scientist; I pointed out that if it was a real danger, they could point to something in English, and it would be from someone at a place like Harvard, not a random Russian newspaper. (The last I looked, which was a few years ago, Pravda was trying to be the Weekly World News but without Batboy.)
A few weeks ago, I got to do something similar right after the Virginia earthquake; in that case the movie threat was the Yellowstone caldera.
What's explicitly in my job is answering science questions; that's mostly in order to keep errors out of the English/Language Arts books. This means that if someone comes over and says "I have a science question" I will do my best to answer it, including using my Google-fu if necessary (though once or twice when swamped I've suggested they talk to Chris or Marilyn instead). I will freely admit that I mostly enjoy doing this, so I'm not going to start asking whether/how the questions are work-related.
