#CRISPRfacts, Gene Editing, and Joking in the Twittersphere

Digital folklore offers unique insight into how the wider public is grappling with complex scientific developments in the world today. This paper explores the relationship between scientific hyperbole and public skepticism of scientific claims in an age of fake news, in an examination of a joke cycle, #CRISPRfacts, that emerged on Twitter in response to hype about the new gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9.