A rumor circulated online the day when the Wenchuan earthquake occurred – parts of Beijing would suffer a 2 to 6 magnitude earthquake from 10 p.m. to 12 p.m. on May 12.

"Anyone with basic seismic knowledge can know it's a rumor," says Ren, "It's impossible to provide so precise a place and time before any earthquake with current techniques ... It's also ridiculous to predict a 2 to 6 magnitude earthquake. A magnitude means 32 times of energy shift. A 6-magnitude earthquake can wreak great havoc, while a 2-magnitude earthquake happens almost everyday."

Sciencenet.com, a website for science workers, received more visitors after the quake. "The daily hits rose to 240,000 from 100,000 before the quake. The most popular search items are quake-related information," says Zhao Yan, chief editor of Sciencenet.cn under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "Some peasants and middle-school students leave messages asking bloggers about quake information. They are not supposed to be our target users, but the disaster expanded our user group as people in emergency have a nature to turn to safety, including reliable information."

"But there is still a gap between the demand and need for scientific information," says Zhao, "More efforts should be done to promote scientific information among the public on how to react in disasters."

Thousands of kilometers away from Sichuan, Cao found herself bothered by talks of toad migration in her hometown. "They say there you might step on two or three of them (toads) ... Some panicked and bought almost all beamed cakes in the town (to store them as emergency food). We need more access to authoritative information."

(Xinhua News Agency June 7, 2008)