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Courtesy Office for Science and Society
The video has racked up millions of views
A Canadian scientist’s Youtube video about an all natural cancer-curing moss is a social media hit.
But it comes with a twist: the health claims in the video are revealed as completely false.
Jonathan Jarry, its creator, is a science communicator whose career focuses on debunking misinformation like the claims found in his viral video.
The video on the value of scepticism has racked up over nine million views.
Mr Jarry, with McGill University’s Office for Science and Society (OSS) in Montreal, said he was inspired to make the video when a former co-worker sent him a Facebook post that claimed cancer could be cured by radio waves.
It was “rife with inaccuracies and omissions” and had been viewed online a whopping six million times, he said.
Evidence-based efforts by OSS, a venture dedicated to promoting critical thinking and the presentation of scientific information to the public, to debunk claims like the radio waves cancer cure theory get barely a fraction of those numbers.
