Mussels downstream of wastewater treatment plant contain radium, study reports

Radioactivity from oil and gas produced water accumulated in freshwater mussels

PENN STATE

 

IMAGE: 

RESEARCHERS FROM PENN STATE’S DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENT ENGINEERING ANALYZED THE COMPOSITION OF MUSSELS DOWNSTREAM OF A WASTEWATER TREATMENT FACILITY IN WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA THAT HAD ACCEPTED AND TREATED FRACKING WASTEWATER, AND FOUND THAT THEIR TISSUE AND SHELLS CONTAINED RADIUM. 

view more 

CREDIT: POORNIMA TOMY/PENN STATE

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Burrowed into streambeds and rarely moving for their decades-long lifespans, freshwater mussels are biomonitors, meaning they indicate how clean their environment is, according to Penn State researchers. As the bivalves feed on organic matter and filter the water around them, their inner tissues and hard shells begin to reflect whatever is in their environment — including radioactive particles. 

A pair of researchers from Penn State’s Department of Civil and Environment Engineering (CEE) analyzed the composition of mussels downstream of a centralized treatment facility in Western Pennsylvania that had accepted and treated fracking wastewater from the oil and gas industry for at least two decades. The now-decommissioned facility stopped accepting oil- and gas-produced wastewater in 2019.  

The researchers found that, even years later, the tissue and shells of mussels contained radium that could be traced to wastewater from fracking in the Marcellus Shale. The rock formation stretches underground from West Virginia through New York and is the largest natural gas field in the country. Their findings are available online now and will appear in the June issue of Science of the Total Environment.  

Though most facilities in Pennsylvania do not accept oil- and gas-produced water now, from 2008 to 2011, Pennsylvania’s rivers and streams saw a significant volume of treated wastewater that originated from fracking in the Marcellus Shale. Wastewater treatment facilities remove major contaminants, including radium, before discharging the water into surface water, like rivers, according to researchers. However, the treated water still contains trace amounts of contaminants and is five to 10 times saltier than ocean water.  

“With a much higher salinity than the surrounding environment, the discharged water has a different chemical fingerprint than what the mussels are used to,” said Nathaniel Warner, professor of CEE and corresponding author on the paper. “Mussels that were closest to the water discharges died off. Further downstream, the mussels found a way to tolerate the salinity and radioactive materials and instead absorbed them into their shells and tissues.”  

He explained that other types of wastewater generally do not contain many radioactive particles, but oil and gas wastewaters found deep in the earth and brought out by fracking often contain specific unique element ratios — a kind of signature that can be traced. The unique ratios of radioactive elements allowed the team to identify that the source of the contaminants is likely the treated Marcellus Shale wastewater. 

To collect the samples for radium analysis, Katharina Pankratz, a doctoral candidate in CEE and first author on the paper, contacted the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to get a permit to sample mussels in the Allegheny River. DEP biologists, who offered to help with collection, identified the species that were present, then randomly collected 10 eastern spikes — a common type of mussel — from four designated locations along the river. 

The researchers found that half a kilometer downstream of a discharge site, mussels had approximately double the total radium levels as those upstream of the discharge site. And mussels five kilometers downstream of a discharge site had less than the mussels closer to the site, but still had a measurable amount of radium.  

Radiation exposure is measured in dose units known as micro-Seiverts (μSv). The researchers compared the radioactivity of the sampled eastern spikes to Brazil nuts, which take up radiation from the soil in which they grow. A 28-gram serving of Brazil nuts contain 0.47 to 0.80 μSv, while the maximum value calculated for a single mussel collected by researchers in the study was 63.42 μSv. The International Atomic Energy Agency recommends that individuals limit their annual exposure to no more than 1,000 μSv. Any more exposure can lead to health problems.  

“Along with nutrients, mussels also filter contaminants present in the water column, like metals, microplastics, synthetic chemical compounds and other emerging contaminants of concern,” Pankratz said. “Depending on the contaminant and its chemistry, if it is small enough to pass through the gills of the mussel, it has the potential to accumulate in their tissue or precipitate within the hard-shell structure.” 

While these mussels are not harvested for human consumption, larger species, like waterbirds, raccoons, muskrats and otters, regularly eat freshwater mussels, meaning the contamination could pass up the food chain, Pankratz said.   

“It raises concerns about potential impacts on other aquatic life, particularly endangered species more vulnerable to contaminants,” she said. “This information may help shape future regulations for wastewater disposal to surface water, especially in regions where mussels are harvested for food. I hope this study will inspire further research into the ecological consequences of these disposals worldwide.”  

The U.S. National Science Foundation supported this work.  

---

JOURNAL

Science of The Total Environment

DOI

10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.172151 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Radioactivity from oil and gas produced water accumulated in freshwater mussels

 

Cognitive declines preceding Alzheimer’s diagnosis lead to credit card, mortgage delinquency

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER

(May 31, 2024) — In the years prior to an Alzheimer’s disease or other memory disorder diagnosis, credit scores begin to weaken and payment delinquency begins to increase, concludes new research led by Georgetown University. The findings show consistent deterioration in these financial outcomes over the quarters leading up to diagnosis. The findings also show that credit card and mortgage delinquencies, specifically, both increase substantially prior to diagnosis. 

The research was released today by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY). (“The Financial Consequences of Undiagnosed Memory Disorders”).

“Most memory disorders aren’t diagnosed until symptoms are severe, yet, given the progressive nature of disease, cognitive decline usually starts many years prior,” says health economist and the study’s lead researcher, Carole Roan Gresenz, PhD, a professor in Georgetown’s School of Health and McCourt School of Public Policy. “The earliest changes in cognition might not be noticeable by family members and friends, but may be quietly compromising financial decision-making.” 

For the study, Gresenz teamed up with collaborators from Georgetown, including a neurologist who specializes in memory disorders as well as researchers at the FRBNY. They examined the effect of undiagnosed memory disorders on credit outcomes using nationally representative credit reporting data merged with Medicare data (all anonymized). Credit cards and mortgages are the primary components of debt among those 70 years and older. 

According to Gresenz, increased credit card delinquency was observed more than five years prior to diagnosis, while mortgage delinquency was seen three years prior. 

“The results are striking in their clarity and consistency,” she added. “The financial decline we observe mirrors the cognitive decline that these individuals are experiencing: credit scores consistently decline, quarter by quarter, and probability of delinquency consistently increases as diagnosis approaches.” 

The work builds on previous research conducted by Gresenz. That work, which used survey data on roughly 10,000 households, showed that prior to an Alzheimer’s diagnosis, a person in the early stages of the disease faces a heightened risk of adverse financial outcomes — a likely consequence of compromised decision-making when managing money  and financial exploitation by others. The research was published in 2019 in the journal Health Economics.

Gresenz added, “In addition to the human toll, a diagnosis of this type can be financially disruptive to families and exacerbated by the harmful financial effects of undiagnosed memory disorders. Our findings substantiate the possible utility of credit reporting data for facilitating early identification of those at risk for memory disorders.”

###

In addition to Gresenz, authors include Jean M. Mitchell and R. Scott Turner of Georgetown and Belicia Rodriguez and Wilbert van der Klaauw‖ of the FRBNY. The authors report having no personal financial interests related to the study.

The research was supported by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health (R56AGO53272 and R01AG080623). The content of and views expressed do not necessarily represent the official views of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve System or the National Institutes of Health.

 

---

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

(May 31, 2024) — In the years prior to an Alzheimer’s disease or other memory disorder diagnosis, credit scores begin to weaken and payment delinquency begins to increase, concludes new research led by Georgetown University. The findings show consistent deterioration in these financial outcomes over the quarters leading up to diagnosis. The findings also show that credit card and mortgage delinquencies, specifically, both increase substantially prior to diagnosis. The research was release

 

Wealthier neighborhoods in Boulder saw lower bee diversity

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER

 

IMAGE: 

ASIA KAISER CHECKED ON THE JALAPEÑO PEPPER PLANTS THE TEAM GREW IN THE COMMUNITY GARDENS IN BOULDER COUNTY.

view more 

CREDIT: JOHN RUSSELL/CU BOULDER

Community gardens in higher-income Boulder neighborhoods have fewer varieties of bees than their medium-income counterparts, new University of Colorado Boulder research suggests. Scientists suggest that people in these neighborhoods tend to apply more landscaping practices, such as using fertilizers, which could impact bees’ habitats.

The finding appeared May 22 in the journal Urban Ecosystems. 

“Bees are so important for local ecosystems through their pollination services. The landscape would not look the same without our pollinators,” said Asia Kaiser, a doctoral student in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at CU Boulder. 

The result came as a surprise to Kaiser and Julian Resasco, assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the paper’s senior author, because it contradicted previous studies. 

Prior research showed that wealthier urban neighborhoods tend to have more trees and green space. As a result, a greater diversity of animal species tends to live in these areas, a pattern called the luxury effect. 

Ecologists Kaiser and Resasco wanted to explore how insects in urban gardens respond to the neighborhoods that surround them. Specifically, they are interested in how the urban environment could affect insects like bees that pollinate garden crops. 

Last spring, the team planted about 70 jalapeño pepper plants in seven large community gardens across Boulder and Louisville. Using traps, the team collected more than 3,000 insects and other arthropods such as spiders from the gardens. 

The researchers found that neighborhoods with more artificial structures—pavement, roads and rooftops that prevent water from soaking into the ground—had lower numbers of pollinators. At the same time, wealthier neighborhoods had fewer species of bees.

Landscaping practices and the type of plants that are more common in wealthier neighborhoods may contribute to lower bee biodiversity, Kaiser said. These communities tend to have more mature trees, which are different from plants found in native bees’ habitats. People living in these neighborhoods may also use more pesticides, fertilizers, water and mulch to support these plants, creating worse soil conditions for bees to nest in. 

“Most of the bees found in these gardens, such as long-horn bees and squash bees, nest in the ground, so they are sensitive to changes in the soil,” Kaiser said. 

In addition, the jalapeño pepper fruits grew larger in gardens with higher bee diversity, suggesting the important role that pollinators play in ecosystems.

Other arthropods—including pests like beetles and pest-eating predators like spiders—thrived in wealthier neighborhoods, the team found. It remains unclear why these critters were doing well, but Kaiser suspected they might be benefiting from the abundant food sources in the urban gardens. 

 the urban gardens may be providing sufficient food for them. 

“It’s interesting that different animal groups are being impacted by different features of the urban environment,” Kaiser said. 

She added that Colorado residents can plant more native plants and provide natural cover such as bare soil and downed wood for insects to nest in to promote bee diversity. 

Next, the team plans to expand the experiments to community gardens in Denver. This will allow them to evaluate pollinator diversity in neighborhoods with a wider range of urbanization and socioeconomic status, including lower-income areas. 

“Urban community gardens can be really important sources of nutrition in cities where nutritious food is often hard to come by,” Resasco said. “Understanding how different aspects of urbanization affect arthropod biodiversity and how that in turn affects the yield of these crops is very important.”

---

JOURNAL

Urban Ecosystems

DOI

10.1007/s11252-024-01560-y 

ARTICLE TITLE

The impact of impervious surface and neighborhood wealth on arthropod biodiversity and ecosystem services in community gardens

 

A greener, more effective way to kill termites

Natural compound is appetizing to wood eaters

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - RIVERSIDE

 

IMAGE: 

WESTERN DRYWOOD TERMITES. 

view more 

CREDIT: DONG-HWAN CHOE/UCR

UC Riverside scientists have discovered a highly effective, nontoxic, and less expensive way to lure hungry termites to their doom.

The method, detailed in the Journal of Economic Entomology, uses a pleasant-smelling chemical released by forest trees called pinene that reminds western drywood termites of their food. They follow the scent to a spot of insecticide injected into wood.  

“We saw significant differences in the death rates using insecticide alone versus the insecticide plus pinene,” said UCR entomologist Dong-Hwan Choe, who led the discovery. “Without pinene, we got about 70% mortality. When we added it in, it was over 95%.

Native to North America, western drywood termites are environmentally important. They are drawn to dead wood above ground, and consume it with the help of microorganisms in their guts. “They are recyclers,” Choe said. “And they’re very common.”

Unfortunately for humans, the insects are unable to distinguish between dead trees and the wood used to build homes. Of particular concern in California and Florida, as well as parts of Canada and Mexico, no dwelling is immune to them. “It’s only a matter of time before termites attack a house, especially in warmer parts of the states,” Choe said.

Fumigation is one of the most common drywood termite control techniques. Homes are covered with tents and then bombed with gas that kills the insects. In the U.S., California uses this method more than any other state.

The pest control industry is under pressure to find new methods because the chemical, sulfuryl fluoride, is both a greenhouse gas and is also toxic to humans. Additionally, fumigation is an expensive process that does not provide lasting protection against termites. 

“Even though it is very thorough, a home can be infested again soon after fumigation is completed,” Choe said. “Some people fumigate every three to five years because it doesn’t protect structures from future infestations.”

Localized injection is an alternative strategy to control drywood termites that does not involve gas. Technicians drill holes into the infested wood to reach the termite “gallery” or lair, then inject poison into the hole to inundate the bugs. 

“This is a more localized treatment, and in theory, it is a better strategy when you want to control drywood termites with fewer chemicals. It’s less expensive, and the treated wood may also stay protected from future infestations,” Choe said. 

The challenge with localized injection is figuring out exactly where the bugs are hiding. Typically, this method uses a contact-based insecticide, meaning the insects must touch the poison for it to work.

Using an attractant like pinene eliminates the need to hunt for the termites. “Even at low concentrations, pinene is good at attracting termites from a distance,” Choe said. 

“We don’t think it’s functioning as a pheromone,” Choe said. “We think the scent is more associated with their food. Smells nice… dinner time! That’s the concept that we had in mind.”

The insecticide they used, fipronil, is also used to control ant infestations. It can be toxic to aquatic insects and pollinators if it gets into the environment. In this case it is injected into the wood, so chances of off-target effects are low. 

Choe’s laboratory generally studies the chemical communication systems of urban insect pests to develop strategies like this one for western drywood termites. 

“Our study shows that if you understand insect behavior better, it’s interesting by itself,” Choe said. “Then there are also important implications for more effective pest management, so we can use fewer chemicals without compromising efficiency.” 

Western drywood termites are attracted to pinene, a chemical found released by forest trees. 

CREDIT

Dong-Hwan Choe/UCR

---

JOURNAL

Journal of Economic Entomology

DOI

10.1093/jee/toae101 

ARTICLE TITLE

Potential use of pinenes to improve localized insecticide injections targeting the western drywood termite (Blattodea: Kalotermitidae)

 

An unlikely hero in evolution: worms

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

One of Earth’s most consequential bursts of biodiversity—a 30-million-year period of explosive evolutionary changes spawning innumerable new species—may have the most modest of creatures to thank for the vital stage in life’s history: worms. 

The digging and burrowing of prehistoric worms and other invertebrates along ocean bottoms sparked a chain of events that released oxygen into the ocean and atmosphere and helped kick-start what is known as the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event, roughly 480 million years ago, according to new findings Johns Hopkins University researchers published in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.

“It’s really incredible to think how such small animals, ones that don’t even exist today, could alter the course of evolutionary history in such a profound way,” said senior author Maya Gomes, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. “With this work, we’ll be able to examine the chemistry of early oceans and reinterpret parts of the geological record.”

To better understand how changes in oxygen levels influenced large-scale evolutionary events, Gomes and her research team updated models that detail the timing and pace of increasing oxygen over hundreds of millions of years. 

They examined the relationship between the mixing of sediment caused, in part, by digging worms with a mineral called pyrite, which plays a key role in oxygen buildup. The more pyrite that forms and becomes buried under the mud, silt, or sand, the more oxygen levels rise. 

Researchers measured pyrite from nine sites along a Maryland shoreline of the Chesapeake Bay that serves as a proxy for early ocean conditions. Sites with even just a few centimeters of sediment mixing held substantially more pyrite than those without mixing and those with deep mixing.

The findings challenge previous assumptions that the relationship between pyrite and sediment mixing remained the same across habitats and through time, Gomes said. 

Conventional wisdom held that as animals churned up sediments by burrowing in the ocean floor, newly unearthed pyrite would have been exposed to and destroyed by oxygen in the water, a process that would ultimately prevent oxygen from accumulating in the atmosphere and ocean. Mixed sediments have been viewed as evidence that oxygen levels were holding steady. 

The new data suggests that a small amount of sediment mixing in water with very low levels of oxygen would have exposed buried pyrite, sulfur, and organic carbon to just enough oxygen to kick-start the formation of more pyrite.

“It’s kind of like Goldilocks. The conditions have to be just right. You have to have a little bit of mixing to bring the oxygen into the sediment, but not so much that the oxygen destroys all the pyrite and there’s no net buildup,” said Kalev Hantsoo, a doctoral candidate at Johns Hopkins and first author on the article. 

When the researchers applied this new relationship between pyrite and the depth of sediment mixing to existing models, they found oxygen levels stayed relatively flat for millions of years and then rose during the Paleozoic era, with a steep rise occurring during the Ordovician period.

The extra oxygen likely contributed to the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event, when new species rapidly flourished, the researchers said. 

“There’s always been this question of how oxygen levels relate to the moments in history where evolutionary forces are ramped up and you see a greater diversity of life on the planet,” Gomes said. “The Cambrian period also had a massive speciation event, but the new models allow us to rule out oxygen and focus on other things that may have driven evolution during that time.”

---

JOURNAL

Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta

DOI

10.1016/j.gca.2024.04.018 

ARTICLE TITLE

Trends in estuarine pyrite formation point to an alternative model for Paleozoic pyrite burial

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Jun-2024

 

Syracuse University biologist calls for protection and more studies of natural time capsules of climate change

Ancient rodent nests—or middens—offer critical ecological and evolutionary archives of the last 50,000 years

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

NEOTOMA RODENTS (WOODRATS) IN A NEST, ALSO KNOWN AS A MIDDEN, AT CITY OF ROCKS NATIONAL RESERVE IN IDAHO. PICTURED ARE BOTH A MODERN AND ANCIENT MIDDEN.

view more 

CREDIT: SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

Packrats, also known as woodrats, are the original hoarders, collecting materials from their environment to make their nests, called middens. In deserts throughout western North America, for instance, packrat middens can preserve plants, insects, bones and other specimens for more than 50,000 years, offering scientists a snapshot into the past. Packrats and numerous other rodent species in dry environments around the world gather plants, insects, bones and other items into their nests from a radius of about 50 feet and urinate over them. The urine dries and crystallizes, hardening the fossils into rock-like masses and preserving the items inside.

Ancient rodent middens have allowed scientists to reconstruct the ecology and climate of semi-arid ecosystems in the Americas, Australia, Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. These natural time capsules are unparalleled archives for observing how plant, animal and microbial species and assemblages have responded over millennia as environmental conditions have changed. Researchers have learned how populations of plants and animals were impacted by climate change in the past, which can provide clues about how populations might respond to future rapid climate disruption.

Today, with advanced molecular technology, scientists can learn more than ever about the ancient organisms that once inhabited the area in and around these middens.

Now, scientists are calling for improved preservation of middens, new research in existing archives and a revival of field studies, according to a prospectus paper recently published online in Trends in Ecology & Evolution. The paper is the result of a multi-year effort involving collaborators from 10 different institutions in the United States, France and Chile, according to Katie Becklin, lead author and assistant professor of biology in Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences.

“New technology in DNA and chemical analysis also allows us to get more information from smaller and smaller amounts of materials,” says Becklin. “We can start to understand what traits are important for predicting which species could do well in the future as climate change continues to impact natural systems.”

But most midden collections are stored at individual institutions where they could be lost or discarded as researchers retire. Midden fossils in the wild meanwhile are vulnerable to destruction by human development and ongoing climate change.

The authors recommend establishing regional depositories for midden materials, which could provide long-term access for researchers. Additional middens must be collected and preserved to stem accelerating losses from land-use conversion, mineral resource extraction, increased wildfire frequency and climate change.

“This is an invitation to the next generation of scientists to take advantage of these resources, to build on the legacy of midden research so far,” says Becklin. “We need to protect these records and make them accessible to the global scientific community and bring in new ideas and people to continue this work.”

Researcher Francisca Diaz, a co-author on the study, sampling middens in the Atacama Desert in South America.

Syracuse biology professor Katie Becklin, lead author of the study.

CREDIT

Syracuse University

JOURNAL

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

ARTICLE TITLE

New uses for ancient middens: bridging ecological and evolutionary perspectives

 

Misleading COVID-19 headlines from mainstream sources did more harm on Facebook than fake news

New MIT Sloan research shows that unflagged but misleading content on Facebook was less persuasive, but much more widely seen, and thus generated more COVID-19 vaccine skepticism than flagged misinformation.

MIT SLOAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 30, 2024 – Since the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine in 2021, fake news on social media has been widely blamed for low vaccine uptake in the United States — but research by MIT Sloan School of Management PhD candidate Jennifer Allen and Professor David Rand finds that the blame lies elsewhere. 

In a new paper published in Science and co-authored by Duncan J. Watts of the University of Pennsylvania, the researchers introduce a new methodology for measuring social media content’s causal impact at scale. They show that misleading content from mainstream news sources — rather than outright misinformation or “fake news” — was the primary driver of vaccine hesitancy on Facebook. 

A new approach to estimating impact

“Misinformation has been correlated with many societal challenges, but there’s not a lot of research showing that exposure to misinformation actually causes harm,” explained Allen. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, the spread of misinformation related to the virus and vaccine received significant public attention. However, existing research has, for the most part, only established correlations between vaccine refusal and factors such as sharing misinformation online — and largely overlooked the role of “vaccine-skeptical” content, which was potentially misleading but not flagged as misinformation by Facebook fact-checkers. 

To address that gap, the researchers first asked a key question: What would be necessary for misinformation or any other type of content to have far-reaching impacts? 

“To change behavior at scale, content has to not only be persuasive enough to convince people not to get the vaccine, but also widely seen,” Allen said. “Potential harm results from the combination of persuasion and exposure.”

To quantify content’s persuasive ability, the researchers conducted randomized experiments in which they showed thousands of survey participants the headlines from 130 vaccine-related stories — including both mainstream content and known misinformation — and tested how those headlines impacted their intentions to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Researchers also asked a separate group of respondents to rate the headlines across various attributes, including plausibility and political leaning. One factor reliably predicted impacts on vaccination intentions: the extent to which a headline suggested that the vaccine was harmful to a person’s health. 

Using the “wisdom of crowds” and natural language processing AI tools, Allen and her co-authors extrapolated those survey results to predict the persuasive power of all 13,206 vaccine-related URLs that were widely viewed on Facebook in the first three months of the vaccine rollout. By combining these predictions with data from Facebook showing the number of users who viewed each URL, the researchers could predict each headline’s overall impact — the number of people it might have persuaded not to get the vaccine. The results were surprising. 

The underestimated power of exposure

Contrary to popular perceptions, the researchers estimated that vaccine-skeptical content reduced vaccination intentions 46 times more than misinformation flagged by fact-checkers. 

The reason? Even though flagged misinformation was more harmful when seen, it had relatively low reach. In total, the vaccine-related headlines in the Facebook data set received 2.7 billion views — but content flagged as misinformation received just 0.3% of those views, and content from domains rated as low-credibility received 5.1%. 

“Even though the outright false content reduced vaccination intentions the most when viewed, comparatively few people saw it,” explained Rand. “Essentially, that means there’s this class of gray-area content that is less harmful per exposure but is seen far more often —and thus more impactful overall — that has been largely overlooked by both academics and social media companies.”

Notably, several of the most impactful URLs within the data set were articles from mainstream sources that cast doubt on the vaccine’s safety. For instance, the most-viewed was an article — from a well-regarded mainstream news source — suggesting that a medical doctor died two weeks after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. This single headline received 54.9 million views — more than six times the combined views of all flagged misinformation. 

While the body of this article did acknowledge the uncertainty of the doctor’s cause of death, its “clickbait” headline was highly suggestive and implied that the vaccine was likely responsible. That’s significant since the vast majority of viewers on social media likely never click out to read past the headline. 

How journalists and social media platforms can help

According to Rand, one implication of this work is that media outlets need to take more care with their headlines, even if that means they aren’t as attention-grabbing. 

“When you are writing a headline, you should not just be asking yourself if it’s false or not,” he said. “You should be asking yourself if the headline is likely to cause inaccurate perceptions.” 

For platforms, added Allen, the research also points to the need for more nuanced moderation — across all subjects, not just public health. 

“Content moderation focuses on identifying the most egregiously false information — but that may not be an effective way of identifying the most overall harmful content,” she says. “Platforms  should also prioritize reviewing content from the people or organizations with the largest numbers of followers while balancing freedom of expression. We need to invest in more research and creative solutions in this space – for example, crowdsourced moderation tools like X’s Community Notes.”

“Content moderation decisions can be really difficult because of the inherent tension between wanting to mitigate harm and allowing people to express themselves,” Rand said. “Our paper introduces a framework to help balance that trade-off by allowing tech companies to actually quantify potential harm.”

And the trade-offs could be large. An exploratory analysis by the authors found that if Facebook users hadn’t been exposed to this vaccine-skeptical content, as many as 3 million more Americans could have been vaccinated. 

“We can’t just ignore this gray area-content,” Allen concluded. “Lives could have been saved.”

---

JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adk3451 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Quantifying the impact of misinformation and vaccine-skeptical content on Facebook

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-May-2024