When Donald Trump tweets fake news: What he needs to know about real diamonds
- July 19, 2021
Today’s headlines in science:A major new study found that, even when a study found the opposite of what it claimed, fake news about diamonds remains a problem.
Read moreThe study was published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE.
In the paper, researchers at the University of Arizona and University of California at Berkeley found that while real diamonds are a real source of revenue, the vast majority of the fake news they found was about diamonds and other precious metals.
Read MoreOne example of a diamond news story in the study was an article about the real-world impact of the carbon tax on mining and fossil fuel extraction in California.
In fact, the article said the real carbon tax, enacted in December of 2016, would have “killed the entire mining industry in California and devastated the diamond industry in the United States.”
But the fake article said that the “real impact” would be a reduction in carbon emissions of the mining industry by 25 percent, the authors wrote.
It also included a graph that showed that in California alone, the carbon emissions reduction of mining industry emissions were down 20 percent from the previous year.
The researchers also said that when the real impact was calculated, the real “real diamond” in California had a carbon emissions rate of just 1.8 percent.
“The real diamonds that the public is buying are the ones with high carbon footprints,” the researchers wrote.
“And the real diamonds sold by the real diamond companies are not diamonds at all.”
The study concluded that the real economic impact of a carbon tax is “much lower than what is claimed in some of the most popular, sensationalized, and highly trafficked stories in the mainstream media.”
Read MoreThe study also found that the stories that have the most impact on consumers are the fake ones.
They found that a whopping 92 percent of the stories about real-life carbon emissions were about diamonds.
“This study highlights the need to educate consumers about the fact that the only real source for diamonds is diamonds mined and traded on the global market,” the authors concluded.
