Claim Analysis Assignment:
Social media platforms spread misinformation quickly. “Rapid publication and peer-to-peer sharing allow ordinary users to distribute information quickly to large audiences, so misinformation can be policed only after the fact (if at all). (APA, 2024). If people were to come across misinformation that aligns with their personal identity or values, they are more than likely to share their findings with the people around them. This creates a cycle of sharing misinformation that adds onto the ongoing literary crisis. It is imperative that we take the proper steps to evaluate the information we see on social media. We are no longer trusting everything that we see on our social media feeds.
The claim above talks about Bill Gates and his cancerous lab-grown meat being pushed out into our grocery stores. This is an instagram post made by @cakemenu whose page is dedicated to talking about the “biggest headlines in food” and “stories that everyone is talking about.” This claim is worthy of evaluation due to the information being presented: lab-grown meat being sold in our grocery stores which are linked to aggressive cancer. This raises some concerns due to the nature of the topic: cancer and lab-grown meat. In order to start our investigative process of finding out whether this is true or false, we will look up “bill gates’ lab-grown meat linked to aggressive cancer.”
The first thing that you see on the page is an AI overview of the situation. It states, “claims that lab-grown meat (cultivated meat) backed by Bill Gates is linked to “turbo cancer” or aggressive cancer in humans are false and unsubstantiated, according to fact-checkers and food safety experts.” Although we “have” our answer through AI overview, we want to practice lateral reading and SIFT in order to get accredited answers.
Looking back at the instagram carousel, the second slide had a news article that is titled, “Cloned ‘Meat’ secretly flooding American food supply without labels.” This article is allegedly by Frank Bergman from slaynews.com. Our next step is to look up this article and read through what it says.
I had my doubts on the validity of the website existing but it does exist and the “Cloned ‘Meat’ secretly flooding American food supply without labels” article is real. When it comes to lateral reading, we are looking through what credible sources are saying about the author, organization and claims. My next steps are investigating the author and organization itself. My investigation is simply reading up the author’s ‘about me’ page and seeing the organization’s ‘about us’ page. Based on both pages, I can hypothesize that Frank Bergman and Slay news have conservative/republican views.
In order to confirm my suspicions, I start looking to see what others say about the author and the organization. I google searched ‘Frank Bergman’ and click on the second link listed. Based on the mini descriptions of the website, this seemed like the right link to click and learn about the author. Upon clicking the Science Feedback link, it directed me to a page about content from Frank Bergman. There are four articles that are either misleading, inaccurate, or flawed reasoning from Frank Bergman. I read through the article about the Covid vaccine and saw that a preprint of misinformation, regarding the vaccine, was being spread on outlets known to publish misinformation. Slay News and Frank Bergman were name dropped as one of those outlets.
I googled “Is slay news credible”. The AI overview noted that it was not a credible site but I chose to look at what Media Bias/ Fact check had to say about Slay News. Media Bias/Fact Check categorized Slay News to be a conservative news and opinion website that promotes misinformation and false claims.
I clicked on Miami University’s link ‘Avoiding Bad, Misleading, or Fake News: Evaluating News Sources: Resources’. As I scrolled down the page, I came across the section regarding Fact Checking websites and saw Media Bias/Fact Check was a part of the trusted websites that fact check.
My final verdict, based on our findings, is that the claim about Bill Gates and his cancerous lab-grown meat is false. By researching the author of the article and the organization’s reputation, we were able to conclude that what they were saying were false. To ease my mind, I looked up evidence on lab-grown meat and its connection with aggressive cancer. An article by Full Fact concluded that these claims were false. If we had not gone through the few extra steps to verify these claims, we would have played into the goals of websites like Slay News: spreading misinformation and creating public hysteria.
The current administration tends to throw random claims about our health, economy, climate issues, etc. around. It’s no secret that he has a following that blindly follows his every move. In order to combat people like them, we must do our part in searching for the truth in a world full of lies and deceit. It’s concerning to think that this instagram post has over thousands of comments agreeing with this false claim, knowing they did not take the time to validate the claims being presented.
References:
American Psychological Association. (2024, March 1). How and why does misinformation spread? https://www.apa.org/topics/journalism-facts/how-why-misinformation-spreads
Bergman, F. (2025, November 24). Cloned “meat” secretly flooding American food supply without labels. Cloned ‘Meat’ secretly flooding American food supply without labels. https://slaynews.com/news/cloned-meat-secretly-flooding-american-food-supply-without-labels/
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