DOCTORS
ARE NOW WARNING: IF YOU USE ALUMINUM FOIL, STOP IT OR FACE DEADLY CONSEQUENCES
How
could I resist taking a look? I don’t want to die. Like many people, I have
used aluminum foil with some frequency and I have some readily available in my
kitchen.
In the
blog post, I saw a couple of red flags immediately. First, there’s no named
author. One would think that an article about a serious health issue might be by
a doctor of some kind. However, since readers have no way to know who the
author is, there’s really no way to discern whether he or she is even qualified
to write authoritatively on the topic of the post.
Second, there’s no about page for the website. Websites take time and effort, and they are built for specific purposes. More often than not, they are published to promote an agenda of some sort. For example, my websites are intended to expose readers to my brilliant writings in the hope that they will click through to Amazon and buy some of the books.
In the
case of Poliside, there are three items on the navigation bar: Health,
Lifestyle, and Love. However, there’s no explanation of Poliside’s agenda or
who the website owners are. Looking at the pages, there is no advertising, per
se. However, at the top of every article page, there are nine links with
provocative titles and photos. The website appears to have been designed to
attract readers so that they will click on the links at the top and move on to
other websites. Clickbait.
The
second paragraph mentions an explanation of the problem by an unnamed “medical
expert.” That’s like an anonymous source in the New York Times or The
Washington Post. Also the title referred to warnings from doctors. However, no
M.D.s are named in the article. That leads to the question, What doctors? Why didn’t
the author, whoever he or she is, name any doctors or medical experts? Dr.
Essam Zubaidy, the only authoritative voice quoted in the article, is a
chemical engineer.
There
are several reasons why the article is so popular. First, aluminum foil is
ubiquitous. Most people have used it and most have some in their homes. If it’s
actually dangerous, it’s something that people would want to be aware of.
Also,
the second paragraph mentions Alzheimer’s Disease, another thing many people
are very concerned about. The article is also short at a little over four
hundred words and it’s well-written. People can read it in a minute or two and
feel like they’ve learned something of value, something worth sharing with
their circle of friends.
Similar
articles to the Poliside piece are easy to find. The case against aluminum
foils has also been made in the Huffington Post. Meanwhile, there are many
articles which say that the dangers of aluminum foil have been overblown. One
that I liked was posted by Snopes.
Here’s
an excerpt.
“At the moment the field remains mixed on the role of aluminum as a possible risk factor for Alzheimer’s. Both the Alzheimer’s Society of Canada and the international Alzheimer’s Association’s official stance is that aluminum is not a risk factor for the disease. … More recent studies have come to light that may end up reinvigorating the debate, but both the connection of aluminum to Alzheimer’s and its mechanism for causing the disease are far from settled science. That being said, it’s incredibly unlikely you are exposing your brain to high concentrations of aluminum by cooking with aluminum foil in the first place.”
Most people realize that there’s
lots of fake information on the internet. Still, many
let their guards down and pass along information that’s not very reliable. The
Poliside article about aluminum foil doesn’t appear to be very reliable.
Nevertheless, people are passing it along: 403,000 shares in about five weeks and counting.
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