Fake News: No, NASA did not discover THC on a meteorite.
Introduction
One of the topics of the moments is the rover that NASA sent to Mars, which has captured the first pictures of that planet. The name of this rover is Perseverance, and it was sent to Mars with the mission of seeking signs of possible ancient life, and also to collect samples of rock. This news are incredibly important for human history, since it is the first time that a rover that was sent to Mars, gets to arrive in one full piece, and it will collect samples so that on a future mission, another rover can be shipped so it can collect the samples that Perseverance collected over this period of time. It is the closest that we have been to another planet. This is why there have been lots of stories and controversies happening on social media, from news about some images of Mars that appear to be fake to posts on social media about some strange discoveries that NASA is making. For the last couple of weeks, there has been a story circulating on Facebook about what it appears to claim that NASA discovered THC on a meteorite fragment. However, after careful examination and research, it becomes clear that this is just another example of fake news that is propagating on the Internet today.
Research Results
According to what looks like a news headline being shared online, NASA discovered tetrahydrocannabinol or THC. THC is the active ingredient in marijuana. THC is the ingredient responsible for some of the effects of marijuana which, according to scientific evidence, include minor hallucinations, increased sensitivity to colors and sounds, and a heightened state of relaxation.
The article was flagged as fake news on Facebook as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed.
“A team of astrophysicists at the University of Hawaii have created somewhat of a stir within the scientific community after the discovery of trace amounts of Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) on a meteorite found in the Nevada desert in 2010.” reads the text below the headline.
The post also cites a website: thehealthdisorder.com.
I googled the story onthehealthdisorder.com, though when we clicked on the link the website was dead.
I couldn’t find any credible news stories corroborating the headline in the post. But it appears it’s been online for several years now. In 2016, High Times Magazine reported that it seemed to originate on a website that publishes fake news stories. In this same article, the author comments about one of the site that is running this story about the THC found in outer space. The website is called World News Daily Report, which has other headlines for different topics such as “Russia: Man grows gills after having fish genes added to his DNA”. This website is known to use Click Bait in many articles, in which you can find yourself interested after seeing such fantastic titles and most times when you read the article they can’t cite a specific author, or website or study, and if they do and you do bigger research you might see that these doctors aren’t actually doctors, or these websites never really had the information they claim it had. Finally, I would like to site what Phishlist said about this topic. “The purpose of this satire web publication and fake news article about marijuana being found on a meteorite is designed to gather website traffic off of false information,” Phishlist explained. “It uses a provocative title in order to cause anxiety, shock, or intrigue unsuspecting online visitors to visit the website. More traffic for the website means that more people are likely to click on Cost-Per-Click advertisements embedded into the satire website. More traffic will also raise the impressions for a given webpage and help the website generate a higher volume of revenue off of the unsuspecting reader. It’s a cruel way to make a quick buck!”
In the end, I found no evidence that NASA discovered THC on a meteorite fragment.
Here’s the article that I with the help of some resources found to be fake.
Conclusions
Nowadays, it is very common to come in contact with lots of articles that have fake information. The Author of these articles simply creates or proclaims fake stories to make Articles that can go viral on social media, that way they can get people to click on his ad or article, and they get paid by how many people go on his website to visit his story. This is why it is very important to do our own research to find the information we want, and confirm that we aren’t believing fake news.
Resources
Other than the Article that I wrote about, these articles helped me develop my own with information or opinion from them.
