Welcome to Debunker, a weekly breakdown of misleading (and sometimes flat-out wrong!) news from the worlds of science, health, and more—for Beast Inside members only.

Almost immediately after Malcolm Gladwell’s latest piece, “Is Marijuana As Safe As We Think?,” went up on The New Yorker earlier this week, the backlash was, shall we say, lit.

It wasn’t entirely surprising. Gladwell had chosen the ultimate bellwether to deconstruct, analyze, and thinkpiece: marijuana and its supposed threat to American culture.