News Outlets Are Falsely Reporting That a NASA Astronaut Is Still in the Hospital

Regardless of ample reporting to the contrary, a number of information shops are nonetheless operating deceptive new articles claiming {that a} NASA astronaut remains to be in the hospital after returning from the Worldwide House Station on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.

In case you take it from headlines seen in the Daily Mail, Salt Lake City’s KSL-TV, or the random Argentinian news site El Diario 24, the unnamed ISS crew member who was rushed together with their three crewmates to a Pensacola hospital on October 25 remains to be there.

The issue? NASA itself announced just a day after those initial reports that the astronaut returned dwelling to Houston after simply at some point, with a clear invoice of well being and the power to “resume regular post-flight reconditioning with different crew members.”

Quickly after, shops like The Guardian, Space.com, and Ars Technica all picked up the tales in a well timed method — however for no matter cause, these headlines got here up a lot decrease on Google Information than this wave of far sketchier ones.

This challenge not solely occurred on Google Search, but in addition — albeit to a considerably lesser extent — after we searched “NASA astronaut hospitalized” on Apple Information as nicely.

Notably, not one of the offending articles made any reference to the current updates concerning the well being of the astronaut, whose identify NASA selected to not launch to guard their id and medical standing.

Regardless of not together with these necessary particulars, the Daily Mail did add a little bit of element a few NASA safety panel seeming to chide SpaceX for vaguely described “anomalies” that occurred on its crafts within the wake of the hospitalizations. Mockingly sufficient, nevertheless, that panel remark got here after the astronaut was launched.

As for SLC’s KSL-TV, the problem at hand is clear: the outlet seems to have just run a syndicated Associated Press story concerning the astronaut hospitalizations on November 4 — regardless that the piece itself was published October 25, making it woefully outdated.

The Argentinian El Diario web site, in the meantime, stays extra of a conundrum. Although the positioning relies within the South American nation, it was printed in English and was posted below the peculiar byline “Extra M,” which has on its creator web page a number of NASA-related posts, although solely courting again to November 2.

Furthermore, the textual content from the El Diario article reads surprisingly, as if it might need been generated or translated utilizing AI.

We have reached out to each Google and Apple to ask why these sketchy sources are being promoted over newer, extra professional information.

If we needed to hazard a guess about what is going on on right here, nevertheless, we would say it is little greater than junky content farms or ailing local news sites exploiting search engine optimization (search engine optimization) to get their crap seen earlier than the true factor.

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