Clickbait Science: A Response to "Scientific Breakthrough: Octopus DNA is Not From This World" Article

       This essay is in response to an August 2015 article on TheSpiritScience.net called Scientific Breakthrough: Octopus DNA is Not From This World which circled the Internet and was shared millions of times on Facebook and other social media sites. It is a great example of fake news which people swallowed hook-line-and-sinker because it appeared to be science. This article is what I coin “fake science” or “clickbait science.” Most people should know by now not to trust clickbait articles on-line but people do not often factcheck or check the sources of what they read. In 2018, I still notice the misleading information (that octopuses have alien DNA) regurgitated by the public and shared on social media platforms. The meme was spread so widely with so little skepticism from the public that is has become a popular science myth.

       The original published article in Nature magazine- which the SpiritScience article references- has no mention of octopuses being aliens or having alien DNA. It’s the news brief from Nature which quotes neurobiologist Ringsdale as joking about how...

It’s the first sequenced genome from something like an alien.

I read the sources of this article and I do not think that the co-author Ringsdale was saying that the octopus is literally an alien species. He did use a simile and it quickly became an easy headline in the late summer of 2015. I think it’s true that octopuses certainly seem “alien" to humans. The watery ocean is “otherworldly” to us land mammals. The implication that the DNA of these creatures is from outerspace is quite a leap in reasoning from what the data shows. It’s amusing how quickly the hyperbolic musings of a scientist can be mischaracterized into something totally different from what the study of the octopus genome found. It seems clear to me that the adaptive traits of octopuses (like intelligence due to their large brain) can be explained by 500 million years of biological evolution, not an alien biological makeup. 

       I don’t know how people reach the conclusion that the DNA comes from “somewhere else." The DNA in octopuses is the same DNA shared by all known carbon-based life on Earth. Carl Sagan hypothesized the existence of alternative biochemistries on other planets or moons in the universe, such as silicon-based life, which we must consider as a possibility when searching for extraterrestrial life. It would be extraordinary if the octopus had a different biochemistry, but that is not the case. Sequencing the genome helps scientists to better understand how the octopus evolved in Earth’s oceans. “It’s important for us to know the genome, because it gives us insights into how the sophisticated cognitive skills of octopuses evolved,” says neurobiologist Benny Hochner. Finding gene complexity in animal species other than humans should not be surprising. But maybe because of human chauvinism, we like to think that humans are the greatest because we are mammals with a large encephalization quotient, up there with dolphins. 

       So, the real news is that the octopus has a slightly smaller genome than humans. But the outstanding finding is that it has 33,000 protein-coding genes (compared to that of  the human which has 20,000-25,000 genes). To put this in perspective though, the fruit fly has ~17,000 genes and the Norway spruce has 28,354 (so technically humans have less genes than a tree). In other words, octopuses have genes that humans do not have (like the ability to camouflage and control eight arms independently). But humans also have genes that are not found in invertebrate animals. In the original publication in Nature, it says their findings suggest “that vertebrate and fly gene number differences are not necessarily diagnostic of exceptional vertebrate synaptic complexity,” meaning that the number of genes in a species is not characteristic of connectivity in the brain. 

       The octopus brain has 500 million large neurons while the human brain is made of roughly 100 billion smaller neurons so there’s little comparison when it comes to brainpower- but they are still fascinating sea creatures. It is said that octopuses have the intelligence of a six year old human (and of course comparable to the intelligence of other apes). It’s just a different type of intelligence, adapted to a different environment which appears “alien” to us. So, the conclusion is that the findings are extremely complex. I do not pretend to understand half of it. What I do know is that it cannot be condensed into an idea like “octopuses=aliens.” The moral of the story: one cannot believe everything on a website called TheSpiritScience. It is important in this new media age to have the tools to discern the real science from the clickbait science.

(For more on anti-science and science misconceptions, read Steven Repka's blog reviewing "Is Science Kind of a Scam?")