I really, really hate infographics.

Really.

They’re worse than memes. Well, I guess technically they are memes. They are notoriously inaccurate. They are usually agenda-driven and often spin facts to the point of wrongness. But mostly I just see them as click bait.

I have less disdain for listicles, but they sometimes bug me, too.

Yes, babies sleep a lot. Bet you didn’t know that!
/sarcasm

The only source is a link. The link goes to–surprise, surprise–an infographic.

Ugh.

Actually, it goes to an infographic that was re-posted from another site where I assume it originated (embedded below).

The graphic itself cites sources at the bottom, so I dug in. But before I talk about the source material, let’s take a look at the list.

1. We can only dream about faces we have already seen, whether we actively remember them or not.

Um, what? As opposed to faces that we haven’t seen?

No, we can’t “see” the faces of real people we’ve never seen, but we are perfectly capable of making up faces in our dreams. People we make up are certainly people we’ve never seen.

2. When dolphins sleep, only half their brain shuts down. The other half stays awake to help with breathing cycles.

True. Dolphins and whales sleep one hemisphere at a time.

3. Men have dreams about other men 70% of the time. But women dream about women and men equally.

I haven’t seen this in any of my textbooks, nor have I read any studies that confirm this. I’m skeptical, but it’s one of those factoids that, if true, I’d think “so what?”

4. While you are sleeping your body recharges, your cells repair themselves, and your body releases important hormones.

True.

5. Parasomnia is a type of sleep disorder that makes you do unnatural movements despite being asleep. Crimes committed on parasomnia include: sleep driving, writing bad cheques, murder, child molesting and sexual assault.

True (although they’re talking about a specific type of parasomnia) and FASCINATING. When I taught introductory psychology, we spent the most class time on parasomnias because it’s so fascinating. Share your sleepwalking stories in the comments because I never tire of them.

6. 12% of people dream only in black and white. This number used to be higher but since the advent of color television, more people dream in color than before.

Another bit I’ve never heard. I wouldn’t be surprised, but I also don’t know why it matters.

7. Dreaming is normal. People who do not dream generally have personality disorders.

This is bullshit. First, dreaming isn’t just normal, but it’s something that everyone does. People who say that they don’t dream simply don’t remember their dreams.

And no, failing to remember your dreams absolutely does not mean that you have a personality disorder.

No. Nuh uh. Not remotely.

8. Sleep positions may determine your personality.

Um, no. No “may” about it. This is about as true as saying your favorite color determines your personality.

9. 1 in 4 married couples sleep in separate beds.

Again, I don’t recall ever hearing about or reading a statistic on this, but 1 in 4 seems awfully high to me. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised. There are lots of reasons for it. But 1 in 4? I’m skeptical.

10. British soldiers were the first to develop a method in staying up 36 hours without sleep. When fatigued, they put on special visors that emulated the brightness of a sunrise and it woke them up.

I can’t confirm this, but it’s plausible.

11. Longest sleeping mammals are koalas (22 hours) and the shortest sleeping are giraffes (1.9 hours taken in 5-10 minute sessions).

May be true. But seriously, who cares?

12. You need different amounts of sleep depending on your age. Babies need the most (16 hours) and people over 65 need the least (6 hours).

Although it is true that age matters when it comes to sleep requirements, there is a lot of variability among individuals and the recommendations have changed in recent years. In general, the older you are, the less sleep you probably need, but most Americans are at least a little sleep deprived.

13. You’ll die from sleep deprivation before food deprivation. It takes 2 weeks to starve, but 10 days without sleep can kill you.

I have to wonder where this one came from.

First, the term “sleep deprivation” includes too little sleep, not just no sleep.

Sleep deprivation can have very serious health effects. However, one does not usually die from lack of sleep. It’s sort of like dying from holding your breath. You can’t. You’ll eventually pass out and your body will resume breathing without your will to do so.

One can certainly die from the health problems that sleep deprivation contributes to or may even cause, but in 10 days? Not likely. There aren’t a whole lot of documented cases of total deprivation, so I can’t even guess where this number came from.

At most I think that we can say that sleep is necessary for good health. Might even say that you don’t want to go without it, but if you do, you just mind find yourself in a situation in which you have no longer have a choice.

14. Blind people can still see images in dreams. Those born blind experience dreams involving emotion, sound, smell, and touch instead of sight.

Well, of course. Our brain activity when dreaming is very similar to waking states. The biggest difference is that the information isn’t coming in through our senses. It makes sense that the experience would mimic the life our brain has developed to experience.

15. Within 5 minutes of waking up, 50% of your dream is forgotten. Within 10 minutes, 90% is gone.

This is just made up.

16. 1 out of 50 teenagers still wet their beds.

I looked at about a dozen sources and all put the number at 1-2 in 100, so I think 1 in 50 is the highest in the range of estimates. But the statement is a bit misleading in that it suggests that it’s a chronic problem for that many teens. The estimate includes those who experience a bed wetting incident once in their teen years, which is probably the majority of cases.

So that’s it. A few fun facts, some boring and unverified factoids, and some outright bits of bullshit. That’s what happens when you regurgitate something that was regurgitated by someone else using something that was copied from something else that was created by someone who basically made stuff up.

Now let’s take a look at the ‘citations’.

The source list for the infographic is printed on the bottom of the graphic itself, so I dug in. There are 16 citations and 16 list items, but they don’t appear to be related to one another in a one-on-one fashion at least.

The first source is a site called “MEDPAGE TODAY”. It’s not a bad piece, but I can’t find an item on the infographic that corresponds to what’s discussed on the page.

The next three sources resulted in error pages. The second of these defunct links is to–another surprise–a LISTICLE. Someone was kind enough to post this one in a forum, so we can see the original content. Unfortunately, no citations were included.

The next item, sleepapnea.org, documented only the main page of the website. I cannot tell which “facts” were gleaned from this source.

Item number 6 is a Slate piece about sleeping with your dog. There is nothing in the infographic or the listicle about sleeping with your dog.

The next three are news articles about parasomnia. Two are dead-ends. So three links to support one item on the list and two are outdated (giving the author the benefit of the doubt).

The next link is incomplete, so there’s no way to access it, and the one that follows that one is the same as link number 2.

The next link might be the jackpot. It’s a site cataloging “interesting facts about dreams”. It lists 99 items from seven sources. One of those sources is specific and the rest are for-the-masses books like “The Big Book of Dreams”.

Then there are a few more dead ends and a final page that doesn’t appear to correspond to anything on the list.

Okay, so now we have some idea of where this stuff came from (don’t say it), but not much.

From Visually.

Those of us who are old enough to remember the “Parts is Parts” and “Where’s the Beef?” campaigns are well aware that there are many, many myths about McDonald’s. I think that we can all agree that busting them is a good idea. But it is questionable whether McDonald’s should be the ones doing the busting and even more questionable if they are going about it in a way that’s beneficial for them.

First, let’s talk about the myths, most of which seem to hinge on the fact that the meat is ground. In all cases, I’m talking about the products sold at McDonald’s in the U.S.

1. Chicken McNuggets and other chicken items are made from leftover “parts” of the chicken. The truth: not anymore. Since 2003 the McNuggets at McDonald’s have been made with white breast meat. Even before 2003, the suggestion that McNuggets were made from “parts” is misleading. They were always made from meat.

2. McDonald’s hamburgers are made from “pink slime”. The truth: there is no “pink slime” in McDonald’s products today. However, pink slime gets a bad wrap.

3. McRibs and/or McDonald’s hamburgers are made from lips, eyeballs, and other non-meat parts. The truth: McDonald’s hamburgers are 100% beef, meaning meat, and the McRib is 100% pork. There are some other ingredients, such as preservatives, but no other cow or pig parts.

4. McDonald’s hamburgers are full of harmful chemicals, which you can tell because they don’t rot. The truth: McDonald’s hamburgers don’t rot the way that most homemade burgers will, but this is because the patties are thin and flat. These patties become dehydrated quickly, which keeps bacteria and mold from growing. The Burger Lab has a great piece describing some solid experiments testing this.

I’m sure there are more, but you get the idea.

McDonald’s has had to deal with these kinds of rumors, myths, and half-truths for decades. The company and its products have been attacked in films, on television, and online. So I guess it should be no surprise that they have begun to combat these claims with a myth-busting campaign.

You may have noticed their commercials recently. They feature people approaching an interactive poster on the street to ask it a question. The poster displays the text “Our food. Your questions.” or “What are your questions about our food?” along with the McDonald’s logo. The people in the ads ask questions such as:

“Does McDonald’s even sell real food?”
“What is really in your beef?”
“I’ve read that there is horse meat in your food.”
“Would you feed McDonald’s to your own family?”
“Pink slime. What’s up with that?”

People are encouraged to go online to get the answers. They have even hired former Mythbusters cast member Grant Imahara to create videos in which some of the questions are answered.

I have my doubts that this campaign will do good things for McDonald’s, for three main reasons.

1. The commercials are off-putting. They show people asking questions, but the answers are not given. This is problematic for several reasons, including that it makes people think that other people think McDonald’s is crappy, scary, or dishonest. Not only is public opinion is extremely influential on the views of individuals, but many people watching the commercials may never have considered those questions before. Now they have the questions, but no answers.
    
   Not in the commercials, but at the beginning of one of Imahara’s videos, several people are shown talking to the interactive poster, saying things like, “I think it’s disgusting” and “Can’t eat at McDonald’s based on what’s in the food.”
2. I’m not sure where the videos with Imahara are being promoted. They are posted on McDonald’s YouTube channel, but are not featured prominently on their website. It appears that the company is relying on media, both mainstream and social, to carry the message to everyone, including those who have seen the commercials. That’s a huge risk.
3. There are some specific challenges to the honest, straightforward, skeptical approach that I doubt McDonald’s has considered. Skeptical activists (and scientists) have to deal with these, but our goals are quite different from McDonald’s. If what you want to do is sell hamburgers, this approach is probably not the best idea.
    
   One of the main problems is something called the “Familiarity Effect”. People tend to favor what’s familiar over what is unfamiliar. The old adage is true: familiarity breeds comfort. For example, when we see a list of judges on a ballot and we know nothing about any of them, we are most likely to vote for the person whose name graced the bulk of lawn signs we’ve seen recently. This effect is often used by advertisers to increase sales. Ads which repeat the product or company name often and those which maintain a “catch phrase” or reuse the same jingle year after year promote familiarity. But the same effect can work against the advertiser.

   A more specific version of Familiarity is the “Propaganda Effect”. This is the well-established tendency for people to rate familiar statements as true, even if they have been told at some point that those statements are false. We remember much less of what we take in than most people think, and when something sounds familiar, but we don’t recall where we heard it, familiarity often wins.

   An even more specific version of this is called the “Backfire Effect”. This is the name given to the phenomenon that skeptics often must face: when we are debunking a myth, we quite often expose individuals to the myth for the first time. This exposure makes the myth familiar, so that the next time they encounter it, if they fail to recall the context in which they heard about it (which is very, very common), they are more likely to believe it than they would have if we had never tried to debunk it in the first place. It’s a bit of a paradox. You can’t debunk something without first revealing it.

   This campaign tells people “Here’s what some people thought was true”. Even after debunking or explaining the full truth, the myths are now familiar to everyone who sees the commercials and/or videos.

4. The last problem is, in my opinion, the biggest: the videos themselves can be off-putting to many. I admit to being put off by them myself. I generally try to curb my own curiosity about things such as where hot dogs come from because I know that if I knew, I’d be less likely to want to eat one. And I like hot dogs.
    
   Just to give you an idea, if I have to cook with fresh meat of any kind, I tend to do a lot of surgery. I do this when I’m eating, too. Ever seen someone just stick a chicken leg in their mouth and pull out a clean bone? I can’t eat after watching that. If it’s got a piece of fat on it, I’m not eating it. And if I spent any significant time thinking about the fact that what I’m eating was once a living, breathing, creature with eyes that ate and pooped and oinked or mooed, I’m quite sure that I would join my vegetarian friends and stop eating meat altogether. I can’t visit a meat packing plant. I had a friend whose family owned one and I had a hard time just sitting outside.

   And I know I’m not alone.

   These videos show large hunks of meat, fat and all, being ground up and pressed. The meat is not the bright pink color you see at the supermarket, where they take great pains to make the meat look appetizing. It’s pale, it’s ugly, and it all looks like sausage. When you get a burger at McDonald’s, you can barely see the patty in it. I’m okay with that. But these videos may even turn a skeptic like me away from the chain forever.

Screenshot from “What are McRib patties made from?” http://youtu.be/PJoMzhStPNk

McDonald’s is probably well aware that this campaign was a big gamble. But there have been some benefits. People are talking about McDonald’s more. And the videos are educational. But how many people are actually going to watch the videos? What’s the profile of people willing to watch? Is is mostly people who are worried about the claims, or skeptics like me? How many watching the videos will be turned off by seeing the meat processed, instead of feeling better about it? These are questions I can’t answer, but it will be interesting to see how it all shakes out in the end.