Someone on the internet is WRONG!!

Image courtesy of https://xkcd.com/386/

We've all been there.  Someone on the internet is WRONG and we just need to correct them, or perhaps we just found some new "fact" on the internet and all our friends are WRONG.

Here are a couple short vignettes from my own experience how someone was WRONG on the internet....

Vignette #1: Wikipedia can be edited by anyone

Because Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, at any time, major falsehoods have a relatively short lifetime on the site, but relatively minor errors can persist for a very long time.

Story #1: A Major, but Hilarious, Wikipedia Error

For one example of a major falsehood, I am reminded of a time I looked up "grapes" on Wikipedia - I was looking for various varietals and hoping one would be excellent for my California container garden.  Apparently the perfect container garden grape varietal does not exist (have confirmed via direct experimentation), but the Wikipedia article that day had this brilliant and whimsical story about the Grape Battles of Sicily (~4000 BC).  In the story, on Wikipedia in 2008, the grape people had tired of having the flesh of their people eaten by the Sicilians, and organized a massive revolt.  They pulled in the grape peoples from surrounding areas, including a large swath of Europe, and mounted  an attack.  After a long and gruesome war, lasting 12 years, the Sicilians fought back the grape peoples.  To commemorate their victory, Sicilians began a horrific annual tradition of rounding up grapes, stomping on their corpses, collecting the blood and drinking it.  The tradition quickly spread across Europe and into Asia where the blood of rice was substituted for grapes as they had their own Rice Wars to contend with.  Few know the tragic history of the Grape Battles of Sicily, and continue to consume the blood of the grapes (wine) and the rice (sake) without understanding the violence they are supporting in doing so.  #FreeTheGrapes #FreeTheRice

I later tried to capture that perfect moment of Wikipedia gone wild, but only an hour later when I realized the brilliance I had witnessed, it was too late.  Someone had already edited the page, and I was too naive to know to check the edit history at that point in order to capture it.  Please understand - it was such a smooth transition from "real fact" to "whimsical" that no one could identify the exact moment when it ran off the rails.  It was glorious and I am so sorry you cannot witness the art of that writer.

Story #2: A Minor, but Problematic Wikipedia Error

Around the same time as I learned of the great Grape Wars of 4000 BC, I was working on the analysis of aldehydes and ketones, and an easy substrate we had in the lab was fermented beverages.  These weren't for the drinking - a prior grad student and postdoc had done an analysis of these for neurotoxic amines.  The overall study showed that there were relatively high levels of acetoin and diacetyl in the big, bold, buttery California chardonnays, high levels of histamine in fermented rice wine beverages, elevated levels of tyramine in red wines that had undergone malolactic fermentation, and high levels of acetaldehyde in sherries and ports. 

Digression: What does all that mean for a non chemist?  Well, acetoin and diacetyl are responsible for the buttery aroma and flavor you may associate with a good California chardonnay, and are also occasionally used by certain venues to entice you to visit their pretzel stands in shopping malls or the popcorn booth at movie theaters.  As natural byproducts of fermentation, they stand as major off flavors in beer production.  Histamine is a neurotoxic amine implicated in the natural immune response, hence anti-histamine drugs have a high capital in the combat against allergic response.  Tyramine is also a neurotoxic amine, responsible for a hypertensive response in sensitized individuals, leading to headache, heart palpitations, etc.. with potential side effects including stroke and heart attack, even after only one glass of wine, with a majority of problematic symptoms arising approximately 6 hours after consumption.  Acetaldehyde is the primary initial by-product of mammalian metabolism of ethanol, and is frequently blamed for all the deleterious symptoms of the "hangover."

Another compound we found in ALL fermented beverages was formaldehyde.  At the time, Wikipedia had a line item that said that formaldehyde was banned for sale in the EU under REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and restriction of Chemical substances).  This wasn't actually true, and looking into the sources cited revealed that the initial citation was a blog post by an embalmer incited against the idea that they would either have to continue working with formaldehyde or give up its use (there were so many posts in this ring of blog posts that I can't remember any longer who was the first).  A co-author on my study was certain that there was a ban against ANY formaldehyde in the EU, and demanded that we discuss it in the write-up of our results.  This would be particularly relevant for one of the sherries analyzed, which had its origin in Spain.  However, the claim that there was a blanket ban on sale or transport of formaldehyde in the EU was simply false.  I downloaded the legalese and highlighted relevant sections.  I got confirmation via e-mail to EU officials that there was no ban.  I was told that I was just being lazy and not looking hard enough....  I finally edited the Wikipedia page myself to update it with my research.  I used my real name when I did so, and an e-mail associated with the university I worked with at the time.  However, the problem suddenly dissipated and we finally submitted for publication. 

YOU, my friend, have the capability to check Wikipedia's sources, and correct them if they are wrong.  You can also edit it to include the Great Grape Wars of Sicily.  If you do, please drop me an e-mail because that was really a highlight of my life on the internet.

Please realize that the levels of formaldehyde measured were exceptionally low!  Prior to attaining a level of formaldehyde exposure advised against by the World Health Organization you would have to consume enough sherry to be 3.5x the LD50 (lethal dose for 50 percent of the population) of WATER.  If you intend to drink that much sherry, you have much larger problems than formaldehyde.