It might be coincidence. Or it might be that an algorithm somewhere now believes that I’m especially interested in orchids. At any rate, the internet presented me with this:
‘Imagine using liquid water’: why people water their house plants with ice cubes – Often touted as an easy solution to overwatering, the practice of placing ice cubes in orchids has become a ‘comedy horticultural moment’
Katie Cunningham, 31 August 2020, The Guardian’s Australian Lifestyle Section
It offers an interesting exercise in where plant knowledge comes from today: the creation of polarising ‘debates’ (Orchid Killers v. Common Sense Solutions) in open, domain-specific forums, validated by anecdotal success stories involving grandmothers and friends of friends. The ‘open’ part is important. It answers to the way most of us meet our extensive but casual knowledge needs at present. “Hey Google! How do I avoid killing the orchid Aunt Betty gave me without actually doing any work?”
Sometimes, these memes make the papers. It depends on whether they can answer to another need: “Hey Google! How shall I fill my column this week?” (Anecdotal knowledge meme: this, I was told by a person who works in the information-brokering business, is a simplified version of how it really does work). Still Katie Cunningham is a journalist, so she’s done the basics. She’s checked to see if anyone actually tried giving a whole bunch of orchids ice cubes alongside another bunch with liquid water to see if there was any difference in their ability to thrive (apparently not). She sought expert opinions. At this point, some problems with both the science and the experts do manifest themselves. Shouldn’t both orchid groups in the experiment have been tended by incompetent, lazy orchid-waterers? And why are experts going around warning people that ice cubes might give orchids temperature shock, when the experiment says not?
So there we are. It’s a fog of disparate knowledge-validators claiming different kinds of contact with the object of knowledge, in an age of proactively knowledge-seeking mass audiences.