An Unreliable Source.

I saw a YouTube video recently which told a tragic story. A woman in Japan with evident mental health issues became trapped in a malfunctioning lift. Engineers were called and took the lift out of commission because the woman made no sound and so they thought it was empty. The woman died of dehydration.

Being curious, I Googled ‘How long can a human survive without water?’ The returns varied widely. One purportedly authoritative website said that the longest anyone was known to have survived was eighteen days. Another offered the dogmatic statement: ‘No one can survive without water longer than three days.’ Others explained the various factors and complications involved and gave estimates between the two. One even suggested that three weeks was possible in some situations.

We see the internet as one of the foremost advances of modern times. All that knowledge available free to everyone, and I gather it’s routinely used by students worldwide as a reliable learning resource. So how do they know which facts to accept as accurate and which not? It’s a serious question.