Headlines grossly misrepresented a groundbreaking paper through misinterpretation, miscalculation, reproduction and automation. The original researcher explains why this is so damaging.
In the grand scheme of environmental fears, few create more of an existential sense of sealed fate than talk of the planet running dry. Oxygen may be fundamental to the survival of many species, but no known terrestrial form of life can exist without a source of moisture.
So, in March, when the Northern Hemisphere was staring down the calendar at another summer typified by heatwaves, wildfires and associated deaths, news that there could be many more humans in need of dwindling water supplies hit hard. Very hard.
‘There could be billions more people on Earth’ warned The Independent. ‘Have we vastly underestimated the total number of people?’ asked New Scientist. While The Guardian led with a similarly alarming intro: ‘the world’s population stands at just over 8.2 billion. However, a recent study suggests the figure could be hundreds of millions or even billions higher.’ Environment Journal followed suit, albeit with the slightly less dramatic statement: ‘scientists may have miscalculated how many people are on Earth.’
Nevertheless, the story across thousands of publications and web pages was on a similar tip. Thanks to a PhD researcher specialising in “the impacts of society on water, and vice versa” at Aalto University, Finland, we now know that figures for rural populations could be significantly higher than we thought. Within the context of already stretched resources, this obviously triggers a Doomsday thought spiral which is going to attract even more attention, produce re-written stories based on the hype, and – in 2025 – then be slurped up by hungry (or thirsty?) AI models, which in turn further penetrate the inaccuracies by delivering results based on misinformation.
‘The study assessed the accuracy of global population maps in rural areas specifically. These maps have been widely used in policy making, for instance in the allocation of resources around the world, but their accuracy in rural areas was largely unknown,’ explains Josias Láng-Ritter, the researcher who led on the study, and soon found himself quoted in a flood of online articles, which missed the context.
‘We used as a reference ground-based counts of populations in 35 countries that were displaced due to the construction of dams. When comparing these ground-based population counts to the numbers of people the global population maps showed in these areas, we noticed that the maps systematically underestimated the ground-based counts… [meaning] people living in rural areas,’ he continues. ‘While our results provide a first indication of systematic underrepresentation of rural communities in global population maps, they also contain large uncertainties.’
If one thing is certain, it’s that systemic underrepresentation of this kind results in population invisibility at a policymaking level. In turn, that means swathes of humanity in danger of being left out when it comes to analysis of available and remaining resources. Or how much infrastructure is needed in a specific area. What the research definitely doesn’t say is that there could be up to 2 billion more people on the planet than we thought in January.
‘Some of the big headlines simplified our findings to one main message: There are many more people living on planet Earth than the assumed 8.2 billion,’ says Láng-Ritter, before explaining how the seeds of the misinformation deluge began – rushed maths conducted by people who misunderstood how to crunch these kind of numbers. ‘Some media even made their own flawed calculations to quantify the missing number of people to 2-3 billion.
‘Such a large number of missing people is absolutely out of the question,’ he continues. ‘For example, one possible reason for the underestimation of rural population in global maps could be that they are counted as belonging to different locations, e.g. in urban areas,’ he continues. So people might have been counted, but the maps show them in the wrong place, so to speak.’
This is one story, and fallout was limited to a highly frustrated International Editor of Aalto’s comms department contacting major publications – including ourselves – to inform them of their inaccuracies. But the context is much more than troubling at a moment in time when we have gone beyond declining trust as the biggest risk to publications for making mistakes.
A headline with weight can now quickly produce many more stories, written by humans and machines, which in turn spawn many more. Inaccuracies can quickly become more visible than the truth, with grave complications for everyone involved.
‘[This] is very damaging. I think media misrepresentations can compromise the trust that society puts into research, which in the long-term can lead to decision making that is less based on evidence and more on emotions. It can be very damaging to the credibility of research and researchers if science news is simplified into catchy headlines and the complexities and limitations not given a mention,’ warns Láng-Ritter.
‘I don’t think I would be more cautious about publishing potentially sensitive research as long as it raises important questions for our society,’ he continues, before moving t what he would do differently next time, and why change could be an issue in itself. ‘I would try to point out more clearly and early on the limitations of the research, to further reduce the risk of the media jumping to their own conclusions without contacting us for comments. But this strategy may bring the side effect that important research does not end up reaching the audience it deserves. It’s a fine line.’
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