Name: 我們上了互聯網上最古老的當 (We Fell For The Oldest Lie On The Internet)
Uploaded: 2024-11-04T04:05:07.000Z
Duration: 13 min 8 s

程度副詞

Did you know that your blood vessels taken together add up to 100,000 kilometers, enough to wrap them around the planet twice?

您知道嗎，您的血管加起來長達 10 萬公里，足以繞地球兩圈。

One of our favorite fun facts used in our book and app and a video and... wait, 100,000 kilometers is like... like a lot.

我們最喜歡的趣事之一，在我們的圖書、應用程序和視頻中都有使用......等等，10 萬公里好像......好像很多。

We've used it so often, but where did we get this number from?

我們經常使用它，但這個號碼是從哪裡來的呢？

Welcome to an epic research riddle that took us well over a year to figure out and led us on a strange and baffling journey.

歡迎來到一個史詩般的研究謎題，我們花了一年多的時間才弄明白這個謎題，它帶領我們踏上了一段奇特而又令人費解的旅程。

We always collect interesting and fun facts to make our stories more colorful.

我們總是收集有趣好玩的事實，讓我們的故事更加豐富多彩。

All of your blood vessels twice around the world.

你所有的血管都要繞地球兩圈。

But one day, someone asked where this number was actually from.

但有一天，有人問這個號碼究竟來自哪裡。

If you Google variations of how long are your blood vessels put together, you'll find the same numbers over and over 100,000 kilometers or 60,000 miles.

如果你在谷歌上搜索 "你的血管有多長"，你會發現同樣的數字在十萬公里或六萬英里以上。

You find it in books, blogs, webpages of educational institutions, or lecture notes, reviews, scientific papers and articles.

你可以在書籍、博客、教育機構的網頁或講義、評論、科學論文和文章中找到這些資訊。

We ourselves have used it multiple times.

So it couldn't be that hard to find the source, right?

The first perplexing thing we noticed was that not a single one of the many, many websites, books or articles quoted the original source.

我們注意到的第一件令人困惑的事情是，在許許多多的網站、書籍或文章中，沒有一篇引用了原始出處。

大多數人根本沒有提供消息來源。

It seemed like the number was just accepted as a truism.

這個數字似乎已成為不爭的事實。

Even worse and more suspicious was that the number was used inconsistently.

更糟糕、更可疑的是，這個號碼的使用前後不一致。

Some said it's the total length of capillaries.

Some said it's just veins plus arteries and others cited it as the length of everything put together.

有人說這只是靜脈加上動脈的長度，還有人說這是所有東西加在一起的長度。

Getting our facts straight is critical for what we do here.

弄清事實對我們的工作至關重要。

And since we've used this fact ourselves a few times, this now felt personal.

由於我們自己也曾多次使用過這一事實，所以現在覺得這很私人。

We needed to find the original source and solve this research riddle.

我們需要找到原始出處，解開這個研究之謎。

Random Googling just turned up thousands of sites that quoted the number, no lead to the original.

在谷歌上隨便搜索一下，就能找到成千上萬個引用這個數字的網站，但卻找不到原文。

So we moved on to PubMed, a search engine for biomedical science papers.

於是，我們轉向 PubMed，這是一個生物醫學科學論文搜索引擎。

Maybe if we tried a few different keyword combinations.

也許我們可以嘗試一些不同的關鍵詞組合。

Okay, finally, we found a bunch of scientific papers, but still, not a single one referenced the original source.

好吧，我們終於找到了一堆科學論文，但仍然沒有一篇引用原始出處。

The number also showed up in two different biology textbooks.

這個數字還出現在兩本不同的生物教科書中。

We contacted the authors, but they told us the number has been circulating for decades and that they'd also be curious to know where it comes from.

我們聯繫了作者，但他們告訴我們，這個數字已經流傳了幾十年，他們也很想知道這個數字的來源。

Maybe we needed to go back to the olden days.

So we narrowed our search to the last few decades, starting with the 1990s.

是以，我們將搜索範圍縮小到最近幾十年，從 20 世紀 90 年代開始。

We found two books, Vital Circuits by Steven Vogel and Looking at the Body by David Suzuki.

我們找到了兩本書：史蒂文-沃格爾（Steven Vogel）的《生命電路》（Vital Circuits）和大衛-鈴木（David Suzuki）的《觀察身體》（Looking at the Body）。

And it turned out Dr. Suzuki is an OG science communicator with a PhD in zoology, who started doing popular programming in the 1970s on Canadian television.

原來，鈴木博士是一位擁有動物學博士學位的老牌科學傳播者，上世紀70年代開始在加拿大電視臺做科普節目。

He has 29 honorary degrees and has written 52 books.

他擁有 29 個榮譽學位，撰寫了 52 本著作。

He may either be the original source, or at least know what it is.

他可能是原始資訊來源，或者至少知道是什麼。

So we ordered Looking at the Body to look for it.

於是，我們訂購了《屍體觀察》來尋找它。

If all the body's blood vessels were laid end to end, they would stretch 96,000 kilometers, 60,000 miles.

如果將人體的所有血管從頭鋪到尾，它們將綿延 9.6 萬公里，即 6 萬英里。

That's about two and a half times around the world.

It turned out he's still around doing things in his late eighties.

原來，他年近八旬還在做著一些事情。

So we thought maybe if we asked Dr. Suzuki personally, he might know where the numbers from.

所以我們想，如果我們親自去問鈴木博士，他也許會知道這些數字是怎麼來的。

He had no public email, but a personal inquiry is possible by writing a letter to Dr. Suzuki.

他沒有公開的電子郵件，但可以寫信給鈴木博士進行個人查詢。

Dear Dr. Suzuki, we're writing to you on a matter of grave importance.

親愛的鈴木博士，我們給您寫信是為了一件非常重要的事情。

What is the original source for the 100,000 kilometers?

Our internet video and our sanity depend on it.

我們的網絡視頻和理智都取決於此。

Respectfully yours, Kurzgesagt fact checkers.

Kurzgesagt 事實核查人員謹此致敬。

Three weeks later, we actually got a reply.

三週後，我們真的收到了回覆。

Unfortunately, Dr. Suzuki does not recall the source of this available to look it up.

遺憾的是，鈴木博士不記得這一資訊的來源，無法查找。

Kind regards, public information coordinator.

They didn't quite use these words and were actually really nice, but still bummer.

他們並沒有說這些話，實際上態度很好，但還是很掃興。

Maybe the 1992 popular science book by Steven Vogel, a Duke University biomechanics professor would be more helpful.

杜克大學生物力學教授史蒂文-沃格爾（Steven Vogel）1992 年出版的科普讀物或許更有幫助。

It has this sentence, combined length of pipes, 100,000 kilometers, 60,000 miles, more than twice around the earth at the equator.

它有這樣一句話：管道的總長度為 10 萬公里，即 6 萬英里，在赤道上繞地球兩圈多。

So the book talks about this on one of its 300 pages, but where is the source?

那麼，這本書在其 300 頁中的一頁談到了這一點，但來源在哪裡呢？

Unfortunately, there's only a list of 93 references and sources with no indication where in the book they're pointing to.

遺憾的是，書中只有一份 93 條參考文獻和資料來源的清單，卻沒有說明這些參考文獻和資料來源在書中的什麼位置。

Our original source may be in one of the papers, books, and articles in this list.

我們的原始資料可能來自本列表中的論文、書籍和文章。

Was this really or had we got lost in the forest of human knowledge, looking for answers to questions nobody's asking and nobody cares about, but we'd wasted so much time already.

這究竟是真的，還是我們在人類知識的森林中迷失了方向，在尋找無人問津、無人關心的問題的答案，但我們已經浪費了太多的時間。

So we decided to just do that one by one.

And now for a change, we just got stupidly lucky for no particular reason.

現在，我們換了一種方式，我們只是愚蠢地走運了，沒有什麼特別的原因。

We decided to check the sources from last to first.

我們決定檢查從最後到最先的資訊來源。

And it turned out the very source we checked first was what we were looking for.

結果發現，我們首先查看的資訊來源正是我們要找的。

A scientific American article from 1959, the micro circulation of the blood.

1959 年的一篇美國科普文章《血液的微循環》。

So we got a scan of this 65 year old science magazine, and there it was.

於是，我們拿到了這本 65 年前的科學雜誌的掃描件，它就在那裡。

But this was still not the original source.

But it did reference where it got the number from.

The anatomy and physiology of capillaries, a 1922 book by August Kroll, winner of a Nobel Prize for medicine.

毛細血管的解剖學和生理學》，1922 年諾貝爾醫學獎得主奧古斯特-克羅爾的著作。

He probably knew what he was talking about.

So we ordered his book and bingo, we got the original source.

於是，我們訂購了他的書，結果我們得到了原始資料。

The book is a collection of Kroll's lectures and was highly praised by experts at the time.

該書是克羅爾的演講集，受到當時專家的高度讚揚。

It summarizes his research and adds new experiments, ideas, and hypotheses.

它總結了他的研究，並增加了新的實驗、想法和假設。

So here it was, the original source, used thousands of times for over a century.

這就是它，一個多世紀以來被使用了數千次的原始資料。

Supposing a man's muscles to weigh 50 kilograms, and his capillaries to number 2000 per square millimeter, the total length of all these tubes put together must be something like 100,000 kilometers, or two and a half times around the globe and their total surface 6300 square meters.

假設一個人的肌肉重 50 千克，毛細血管每平方毫米有 2000 根，那麼所有這些管道的總長度加起來肯定有 10 萬千米，或者說繞地球兩圈半，總面積為 6300 平方米。

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我們上了互聯網上最古老的當 (We Fell For The Oldest Lie On The Internet)

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