Snapple “Real Facts” Debunked

From Joe King:


We Fact-Checked Snapple’s ‘Real Facts’
by Adrienne Lafrance
The Atlantic
October 11, 2013

With 30 seconds and a web connection, you can, too.

snapplecaps-425

Of course a duck”™s quack echoes.

But claims to the contrary are so often repeated that the BBC has aired audio proof of the echo, Mythbusters has investigated the acoustics of a quack”™s reverberations, and others still have uploaded Internet videos of waterfowl in sound studios selected to amplify the effect.

No matter. The myth persists. It”™s the kind of claim that’s repeated as fact but shared like superstition””forwarded in chain emails, published and republished among ZOMG-mindblowing facts, even printed on the cool undersides of bottle caps.

SnappleCap-200“Real Facts,” they”™re called. And though the quotation marks are Snapple”™s, not mine, they”™re fitting.

Since 2002, the tea maker has been slinging bottle-cap factoids. Some are true, some are outright false, and plenty others are incomplete or ambiguous to the point of absurdity. But it”™s easy to pluck out the spurious ones with a search engine and the right kind of bullshit detector. Continue reading “Snapple “Real Facts” Debunked”