I Spent 12 Months Trying to Debunk a 30 Second TikTok

Scientific experiments are not considered completely valid unless they can be replicated. Replicating an experiment is pretty much impossible unless you've been steeped in the various factors of scientific theory. And even if you are thoroughly trained in those factors, it's easy to lose track when you're doing a casual experiment at home. That goes double when your aim is to debunk something that you find obviously wrong.

Sage the Bad Naturalist jumped into such a debunking experiment with both feet, and then got entangled in them. She spent an entire year trying to replicate a dubious TikTok, which turned into an embarrassing adventure in how not to do science. But negative results are still results, and the goal of science is always to learn something. She bravely admits all the things she did wrong, because scientists have to have humility to be accepted. What's funniest is how many things went wrong, and how they all piled up through the end. What she ended up with is an amusing and rather charming video on the dangers of throwing your heart (and time) into debunking something you saw on the internet. (via Metafilter)