NATIONAL AFFAIRS
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: RUMOR-BUSTING
WHY YOU SHOULDN'T BOTHER IRONING YOUR MAIL OR AVOIDING MALLS ON HALLOWEEN
BY ANDREW B. COHEN
If you receive any e-mail you probably got a message about how the French astronomer Nostradamus correctly predicted in 1654 the collapse of the
Despite the fact that few consider New York "the City of God" and that no "great leader" has as yet succumbed, it may surprise you to learn that the above prediction was made not by Nostradamus in 1654 (he'd been dead 88 years by then) but by a Canadian college student in 1997 who was trying to show that any "prophesy" worded vaguely enough will eventually "come true." That prediction was correct.
Since Sept. 11, any number of rumors, scares, urban myths and bits of misinformation have been circulating via e-mail, from the story that a second wave of terror would occur on Sept. 22 (it didn't) and that ironing your mail will kill any anthrax spores (it won't) to the tale of the hip-hop album cover that prophetically depicted burning twin towers (true, but was changed before release).
Barbara Mikkelson is a self-described Los Angeles-area housewife who with her husband, David, a Web programmer, runs a popular Web site called Urban Legends Reference Pages, better known by its Web address: Snopes.com. The site currently reports the status of more than 60 rumors that have popped up since Sept. 11 under the heading Rumors of War. NEWSWEEK's Andrew B. Cohen spoke with Mikkelson. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: What's the most prevalent rumor you've come across since Sept. 11?
Barbara Mikkelson: A few are way up there. The first is Nostradamus. You couldn't go anywhere without tripping over this rumor. The second was "the accidental tourist" [a photo purported to have been taken on the WTC's observation deck moments before the plane hit]. You had a few weeks to deal with this raw wound, and then this photo brought it all back. The photo was fake but the feelings are real. The latest is the "don't go to the mall on Halloween" e-mail. This one has made it into the off-line world.
How do you go about collecting rumors?
Hearing them is the easy part. People e-mail us stuff all the time. And people tell us about stuff they hear on the street. We get hundreds of e-mails a day. I read all of them.
What are the latest?
Well, there's the story of an apparent Arab-looking man who bought a large amount of candy at Costco, then went back and bought even more candy, the implication being that he was planning some sort of mass poisoning for Halloween. I'm currently checking out that one. Then there's the story of the
What's the most surprising true rumor you've come across?
The United Airlines pilot speech [in which a pilot on a Sept. 15 flight told passengers to counterattack any attempted hijackers with blankets and pillows]. I would have bet money that that one was false. It's a re-empowerment story. I would have bet money that no professional pilot would have made that speech. These guys are trained to make passengers feel safe, not talk about knives and bombs. A pilot telling passengers to tackle hijackers with pillows is just unprecedented.
I thought I read that United was unable to verify the existence of that flight's pilot.
Yes, but I have the feeling that United is trying to protect itself, distance itself, by being "unable" to identify the pilot. I think they know full well who the pilot was on that flight.
What is your methodology for assessing the validity of a rumor?
Basically I'm first going to go to online databases to see what other people have found out. If there's a company involved, I'll go to their Web site. Companies often hear the rumors first and will respond to them on their Web site, especially wise companies. Nothing will stop a rumor in its tracks, but that will help. If there's nothing on the Web site, then I'll call the company directly. Then sometimes I'll go to the library to try to find something in writing. When I find the time, I like to go through old copies of Reader's Digest; many of today's rumors began years ago as "Life in These United States" or [other] items in the Reader's Digest.
When people hear the latest scare, what should they do before they act on it?
Use your common sense, but most important is to sit on your hands before you hit the forward button [in an e-mail]. Nothing terrible will happen if you take five minutes to think it through before acting.
This article originally appeared on Newsweek.com on Oct. 19, 2001.
