Gigi Smarts is a science communicator and fact-checker who has spent over a decade tracing popular myths back to their source — or, more often, exposing the fact that they never had one. Her work focuses on the gap between what people confidently believe and what the evidence actually shows.
At SmartAss Facts, Gigi writes and edits the myth-debunking and explainer content, verifying every claim against peer-reviewed research and primary-source data before publication. She applies a strict three-level sourcing standard: peer-reviewed research or government data for primary claims, credible journalism for context, and no tertiary-only sources for anything presented as fact.
Her particular interest is in how myths spread — the psychological mechanisms that make a compelling false belief more sticky than an accurate but less satisfying truth. The neuroscience of misconception persistence, she argues, is more interesting than the myths themselves.
Before joining SmartAss Facts, Gigi spent several years writing science explanations for general audiences, working across print and digital formats. That experience reinforced a single conviction: the most common barrier to scientific literacy is not complexity, it is the persistence of plausible-sounding claims that no one has bothered to check. The 10% brain myth, the goldfish memory myth, the blue-blood myth — none of them originated in science, and none of them have survived scientific scrutiny. Gigi's approach starts with the source.
Every claim published under Gigi's byline links to a primary source: a peer-reviewed paper, government dataset, or official institutional publication. Wikipedia is used for context but never as a primary citation. Any claim that cannot be traced to a verifiable primary source is either rewritten or removed. Corrections are made promptly and noted inline.