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  • 2015-05-05 (xsd:date)
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  • Did a Study Find Men's Beards Are Full of Fecal Matter? (en)
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  • On 1 May 2015, a rumor began to circulate online claiming a study assessed the beards of average men and made a shocking discovery: they’re basically dripping with fecal matter (known colloquially as poop). The headlines followed, ones such as Study: Men’s Beards are Filled with Poop and Nasty Bacteria, Your beard is dirty as a toilet, and How Filthy Is Your Beard? The intrigue of the claim at a time when beards were certainly somewhat in fashion led to little scrutiny of its base facts... most notably, what study? For example, here is one of the earliest iterations of this claim, which came from a site devoted to casting calls (not a medical journal or other scientifically credible site) and was loaded with scary phrases about fecal contamination: But that underlying study was actually merely a brief local news report by Albuquerque station KOAT that consisted of a newsperson and a Quest Diagnostics lab in Albuquerque taking swabs from the beards of a small handful of volunteers, analyzing them for microbes, finding a few seemingly yucky results, and discussing the outcome with a single microbiologist — from whom a few very short, sensational-sounding, out-of-context sound bites were excerpted. This tenuous study was soon the subject of a multiplicity of sensationalized headlines comparing men’s beards to everything fecal: o Cosmopolitan: New study finds beards are toilet-level dirty o New York Post: Bearded men have poop on their faces o Canada Journal: Your filthy beard contains more s— than a toilet, study shows o Daily Mirror: Some beards contain more poo than a toilet shocking study reveals o News.com.au: Shock new research reveals some beards contain more poo than a toilet o WSB-TV: Beards are filled with bacteria and ‘as dirty as toilets’ However, as the Guardian observed, KOAT’s process fell far short of what constitutes a rigorous study and didn’t actually detect the presence of fecal material in men’s beards: Similarly, the Washington Post noted that gut bacteria isn’t necessarily the same thing as poop, not is its presence either alarming or harmful: The Guardian concurred in that assessment: It may be true that some beards may be less than rigorously hygienic, but proclaiming them to be filthy and dirty as a toilet based on a scant TV news survey is an alarmist exaggeration. (en)
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