Videos claiming to show graphene or graphene oxide – materials that some people believe are in Covid-19 vaccines, making them toxic – have been circulating on social media over the past few days. The videos all show a dark material moving in strange ways, sometimes in response to a magnet. But it turns out that these videos don’t show graphene at all.
There has been growing enthusiasm around potential uses for graphene – a material that is incredibly light, conductive and supple while also being stronger than steel – since it was developed in 2004. People in fields ranging from biomedicine to electronics have been exploring its potential uses.
For the past few months, the material has also been popping up in conspiracy theories around the Covid-19 vaccine. Some have said that graphene is the reason behind the supposed “magnetism” of the Pfizer vaccine, which the FRANCE 24 Observers already debunked last May.
In late May, when this rumour was circulating in the Spanish-speaking world, our colleagues at fact-checking services AFP Factuel and Maldita.es in Spain wrote articles proving that there was no graphene in the vaccine. They published more articles on the same topic in early July after a Spanish study made false claims that the Pfizer vaccine was made up of 99.9% graphene.
The material, which is still relatively unknown among the general public, has become a fixation for some. Videos purporting to show “graphene in action” have been multiplying on Telegram channels populated by conspiracy theorists, as well as on Twitter, Facebook and TikTok. These videos often show a dark material of varying consistencies that reacts to other objects as if it were magnetic.
Most of these videos claim to show “graphene oxide”, which doesn’t have the same properties as graphene at all: it isn’t conductive or waterproof, for example. Lots of people confuse them, however, and speak about the two materials as if they were the same thing.
Unrelated science experiment videos used to show ‘graphene in action’
This first video shows small balls in a Petri dish moving in a strange way and connecting in a chain. It was widely circulated on social media early last week. The caption claims that it shows “graphene oxide” in the vaccine.
Our team carried out a reverse image search and found the original version of the video on the YouTube channel of the “Stanford Complexity Group”, linked to the American university of the same name.
The video, called “Self Assembling Wires”, shows steel ball bearings floating in castor oil in a Petri dish with a metal rim. An electrical current moves the balls when voltage is applied to them, and they connect to one another. There is absolutely no graphene or graphene oxide in the dish.
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