Here's the problem: http://i.imgur.com/KW0d1qh.jpg http://i.imgur.com/KW0d1qh.jpg That's a google image search for "pacific garbage patch", and about half of t

Here's the problem: http://i.imgur.com/KW0d1qh.jpg http://i.imgur.com/KW0d1qh.jpg That's a google image search for "pacific garbage patch", and about half of the results are pure fiction. Photos of heavily polluted inhabited areas that are not actually part of the pacific gyre. Many articles reproduce these pictures from other sources and just assume they are photos of the garbage patch (a typical "citogenesis" problem: https://xkcd.com/978/ https://xkcd.com/978/). This is very important because it bears directly on the credibility of scientists and of environmental activists. Once you lose credibility you rarely get it back. Many, many people (even some scientists, sadly) believe that action is more important than truth. That "doing the right thing" is paramount, even if you have to twist the facts a teensy bit to make them more palatable to the masses. But the masses are fickle, and they pick up on these things readily, with the result being a loss of credibility. It's very difficult to always avoid the temptation of the easy, quick short-term gain, but the importance of maintaining scientific discipline should always override that impulse.