The Challenge of Zombie Facts

You may have heard that black plastic is bad. But did you hear the correction that it is actually well within safety limits?

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“You have a black spatula?!” I (Susan) was accosting my friend and dinner host as she tossed some stir fry. (I hereby apologize!) My rudeness about what I perceived as a perilously carcinogenic kitchen implement was based on what seemed like good information at the time – information that I failed to question. Turns out, I was wrong. As an ambassador for scientific truth, indeed one who has written an entire, serious book on critical thinking, I’m embarrassed.

Before I outline why I was wrong, may I allow myself a paragraph to defend myself? No? That’s fair. No one wants to hear corrections anymore. But I’ll defend myself nonetheless. The Wirecutter, The New York Times’ product recommendation platform, garnered way too much attention when they blared the scary news: “Black Plastic Kitchen Tools Might Expose You to Toxic Chemicals. Here’s What to Use Instead.” The Atlantic’s headline was even more direct: “Throw Out Your Black Plastic Spatula.” And, sure enough, I did.

Mistakes Happen. Corrections Should, Too.

To the OXO company (which makes all kinds of high-quality, black plastic kitchen things), I’m sorry. Here’s what happened: Scientists made a mistake. Let’s just sit with that before we move on. Scientists made a mistake, a good-faith mistake. We all make good-faith mistakes. But too often, we don’t expect scientists to do that. We’re going to take a beat now, and let scientists be wrong about this – especially given that they corrected the record when they realized their error. Right now, sit for a minute and think about times you were wrong, including on the job. It happens. As the poet Alexander Pope wrote hundreds of years ago, “to err is human.”

So what actually happened in the case of the black spatula? A study published in the scientific journal Chemosphere claimed that black plastic kitchen utensils were leaching chemicals at dangerously high levels. However, this research contained a significant mathematical error that led to an overestimation of people's chemical exposure. The study was eventually corrected, but the correction (Liu et al., 2025) wasn't publicized nearly as widely as the initial alarming reports. (In acknowledging the error, the scientists also said they stuck by their overall conclusion regarding safety; yet, others have pointed out that exposure levels to the chemical were well below established safe daily limits or have questioned why that conclusion is unchanged.)

Several media outlets later reported on the error. Bloomberg, for example, reported that “a math mistake had produced a significant overestimation of people’s exposure, but many consumers won’t know it.” They observed that coverage of the correction was far more subdued than that of the initial finding, with rare exceptions like an article headlined “Pull Those Black Plastic Spatulas Out of the Trash.” We previously wrote about the importance of journalists issuing corrections. Unfortunately, corrections are too often underpublicized or discounted by readers.

Zombie Facts

Bloomberg journalist Leslie Patton referred to "zombie facts" – incorrect information that persists in our consciousness despite being debunked. That may be because we didn’t see the corrections or because the fear instilled by the initial reporting ingrained itself, making it harder to overturn. This is where confirmation bias kicks in: We tend to look for evidence that confirms what we believe and tend to ignore evidence that debunks it – pretty much exactly what happens with zombie facts. Indeed, in 2012, economist Paul Krugman defined “zombie ideas” as “policy ideas that keep being killed by evidence, but nonetheless shamble relentlessly forward.”

Paul Krugman defined zombie ideas as “policy ideas that keep being killed by evidence, but nonetheless shamble relentlessly forward.”

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A zombie fact can be even more dangerous than the one that led so many people to discard their black plastic spatulas, which was economically damaging for OXO and other companies but not to anyone’s health. For example, in the United States, there is a growing measles crisis with predictions that the outbreak will last for a year. Innumerable scientists have argued that zombie facts – such as the false claim that there is evidence that vaccines can cause autism – underlie that crisis by dissuading people from vaccinating themselves and their children. Indeed, one journal article (Rizzi et al., 2021) used this term explicitly in their title: “Legitimising a ‘zombie idea’: childhood vaccines and autism,” citing Krugman’s definition.

Fighting Zombie Facts

To effectively battle zombie facts, we need to focus on both prevention and targeted correction strategies, both of which we’ve covered previously. A few tips:

• Once you know the truth, don’t repeat the zombie fact. If you must, though, embed it in a truth sandwich that starts and ends with the “real” facts.
• Corrections should provide a clear, simple explanation so that the reader understands what’s true and why the misinformation occurred in the first place
• Be persistent. Just as repetition of falsehoods makes them more believable, so does repetition of truth.
• Promote media literacy and critical thinking skills so that we are all empowered to evaluate information sources, including red flags that might alert us to zombie facts.