We live in the information age, we have all the knowledge of the world in our pocket, you can answer any question you want in seconds, we are all potential experts. These are just some of the examples that are said today about the wonders of the Internet, and in part, they are very true. Since its invention, the Internet has been one of the world's most rapidly changing environments, constantly evolving and reaching new milestones, once considered fantasy or science fiction. And today, with artificial intelligence growing and improving almost daily, it is true that anyone with an internet connection has incredible learning potential. And yet, not so, we are in an age of constant division, contradiction and misinformation like never before. Because there has always been disinformation, there can't be one without the other, there has always been propaganda and people with the main dedication to deceive and manipulate the rest of the world, establishing themselves on platforms of "Fake news" or "other data". But thanks to this tool with so much potential for good, evil goes hand in hand and even further ahead. Knowledge is power, so said Sir Francis Bacon in 1597 [1], more than 400 years ago and that phrase has not lost its relevance, because knowledge empowers you, to make informed decisions, to know the context in which you live, to have a small window into the future and the past and to know how this can shape your present, knowledge is probably the most undervalued tool by the general populus and should be the most used, and despite this, knowledge is almost a privilege and a tool to manipulate and keep people in a constant state of uncertainty and control.
And where am I going with all this, well, in my opinion, the era of disinformation is extremely harmful to the world and does not seem to improve but completely the opposite. And this is present in multiple areas, politics, economics, religion, and the truth is that it is not so easy to fight it in many of these areas, but it is also present in science, the study of truth, the discipline unequivocally dedicated to ask questions and answer them in the most accurate way possible, how is it possible that disinformation is also so present here? Well, what I said about being a discipline in search of truth is true, but it is not as simple as it seems. Science as such is too big, that's why we divide it into things as general as physics, biology, chemistry or mathematics and as specific as bacterial biochemistry. This enormity I think represents the first major obstacle, which is coupled with the same enormity of the information available, because how is it that we should know what is true and what is not, so much information so available, filtering and deciphering what is reliable and what is not seems an impossible task. And that's exactly why it seems so easy to lie about it. Some of the clearest, and most troubling, examples are occurring in the United States almost daily these days. Every day news comes out about how DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) found huge expenditures in science, such as $6.9M USD being spent studying smart toilets, which recognize the "anal print" of its user, or $2.3M USD for the NIH (National Institute of Health) to inject cocaine into dogs, among others. X's post formerly known as Tweeter is in image 1.
Image 1. X's post on the Department of Government Efficiency declaring science spending. [2]
But it's very easy to say that scientists are simply drugging dogs for fun, and spending tax dollars to do meaningless experiments. But what if we take a closer look at these statements. Because although it may not seem like it, none of this is actually a lie, yet it is still disinformation. In an era of narrative vs. knowledge, the narrative is much easier to spread, because no one wants their tax dollars going to study "anal prints", or anything like that. But none of this is being presented honestly, starting with these smart toilets, the original article where this idea came from, is titled "A mountable toilet system for personalized health monitoring via the analysis of excreta", and it is talking about something genuinely interesting and important. The following is the abstract of the article, "Technologies for longitudinal tracking of a person's health are poorly integrated with clinical workflows and have rarely produced actionable biometric data for healthcare providers. Here, we describe easy-to-implement hardware and software for long-term analysis of a user's excrement through data collection and human health modeling. The "smart" toilet, which is autonomous and operates by leveraging pressure and motion sensors, analyzes the user's urine using a standard colorimetric assay that plots red-green-blue values from urinalysis strip images, calculates urine flow rate and volume using machine vision such as a uroflowmeter, and classifies stool according to the Bristol Stool Shape Scale using deep learning, with performance comparable to that of trained medical personnel. Each user of the toilet is identified through his or her fingerprint and distinctive anoderm characteristics, and the data is securely stored and analyzed on an encrypted cloud server. The toilet may find uses in screening, diagnosis, and longitudinal monitoring of specific patient populations." [3] The article, which was also published in the journal Nature, one of the most prestigious science journals, goes on to explain that this could help not only in the early diagnosis of infections and other diseases, but could be an important tool for more useful and extremely early detection of colorectal cancer, substantially improving the chances of effective treatment. So of course if I say that the government is spending millions of dollars to analyze anal prints, everybody is going to get angry, and distrust the scientists, but if you better present it as, the most advanced cancer diagnostic system so far, who is going to be against that?
But let's move on to the next example, the use of cocaine on dogs, a clear animal abuse and where mad scientists are having fun and spending constituent's money for mere morbid curiosity, or perhaps, they are evaluating treatments for one of the most addictive drugs in the world. This was a scandal that has been around for some time, it came out in 2022 for "cruel experiments on poor puppies", but the ultimate goal of the study was to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of using a drug to counteract cocaine overdose. I have already spoken on this website about the importance of using animal models in science, they are a valuable tool and no one who works with animals enjoys the stress they must be subjected to in certain experiments. In this particular case, it would be impossible to observe the effects of the drug without a model under the effects of cocaine. The selection of animal models is not random, you don't throw a dart at a cork with pictures and they land on puppy dogs, they are selected for very specific reasons, but it has little to do with evil scientists doing senseless things, but with people looking to save lives, taking into account that in 2022 about 57,497 people died in the United States from overdoses of stimulants, including cocaine. [4] But once again, the narrative of bad people hurting puppies gains support, while the use of animal models to study drugs to combat the drug epidemic doesn't seem so interesting.
Now we see that things like this are what are cementing the great era of misinformation, it doesn't even seem worth looking at the last example presented in image 1, looking at the trend it will surely be something revolutionary to spend $118,000 USD to make a robotic replica of Marvel's villain, especially because this time not only a narrative but a direct lie was being made, since in the study entitled "The ultrafast snap of a finger is mediated by skin friction", there was never any kind of replica of Thanos, but only the biomechanics of the snapping was being observed, where tests were made with different materials, including a metal thimble (the Thanos replica apparently), to observe the friction and other properties of the same. The purpose was never to see if the purple villain could have snapped, but to better understand how this motion works in the hand which would then do wonders to improve future biomechanical prosthetic development. [5] Once again, an interesting study focused on improving the quality of life of people in need, reshaped to look like nonsense and a waste of money.
Like this example there are several, and today they come from places of as much power and influence as the government itself, but they are also on social media spreading conspiracy theories about how everything is false, nothing they tell us is true and they want to manipulate us. I'm not even going to take the time to talk about terraplanists, just to point out that you can check the shape of the Earth with a stick and the sun, but oh well. The point here has to do with us being vigilant, and today more than ever inciting critical thinking and research, not because a billionaire or internet personality says it means that behind it comes the truth or that he has people's best intentions in mind. Everyone has an agenda to fulfill, and the more power they have, the more their agenda is going to be uncluttered from the reality of normal people. I recommend the lecture by Milo Rossi or "Miniminuteman" an archaeologist who is dedicated to scientific dissemination and was just invited to the University of Maine to give a lecture on the subject, I find it an excellent commentary on the current state of academia and the scientific environment in general. [6] If knowledge is power, it is time for all people to be super-powerful, and use what is probably the most powerful tool in the history of mankind, the Internet, to arm ourselves and return to a time of prosperity and harmony where we did not have to doubt absolutely everything that appeared in the news, let's use our power and fight against this threat that promises not to stop growing in the near future, and when we least expect it, the truth will be a privilege that few can enjoy.
References
1. Azamfirei L. Knowledge is power. J Crit Care Med (Targu Mures) [Internet]. 2016;2(2):65-6. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/jccm-2016-0014
2. DOGE, [@DOGE], (December 19, 2024), What does the U.S. Government use taxpayer dollars for?, X, https://x.com/DOGE/status/1869884646378385594
3. Park S-M, Won DD, Lee BJ, Escobedo D, Esteva A, Aalipour A, et al. A mountable toilet system for personalized health monitoring via the analysis of excreta. Nat Biomed Eng [Internet]. 2020;4(6):624-35. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41551-020-0534-9
4. National Institute on Drug Abuse. Drug overdose deaths: Facts and figures [Internet]. National Institute on Drug Abuse. 2024 [retrieved March 5, 2025]. Available from: https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates
5. Acharya R, Challita EJ, Ilton M, Saad Bhamla M. The ultrafast snap of a finger is mediated by skin friction. J R Soc Interface [Internet]. 2021;18(184):20210672. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2021.0672
6. Rossi M. Fighting Pseudoscience with Science Communication [Internet]. 2025. Available at: https://youtu.be/mZzqQvx_2Aw?si=U3EzSuhPPm9tu9_z
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