this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2026
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He created fake science experiments to sell products and slipped them into normal videos, like the video where he claimed wet wipes are flushable, then created a fake experiment “proving” they were flushable. He’s incredibly untrustworthy and also, not a scientist! He’s an art major or business, can’t remember which.
According to Wikipedia
He himself claimed he’s not a scientist so /shrug
you yourself said he is an art or business major, so, you know, fuck off and stop trying to spin your lies.
I’m not trying to spin anything. He literally made a video where he states he is a liberal arts or business major. I’m not going to go find it cause I’m not going to support him. You can either support the liar or not, I don’t give a fuck. You can also either believe Wikipedia or his own mouth.
He is correct: Having a Bachelor in science does not make one a scientist unless actively pursuing research. He has a solid science background but like many others with science diplomas, he's not a scientist. He is an entertainer, like all YouTube science channel figureheads unless their daily job is at a lab ( and even then: they are not necessarily talking about subjects they know well, science is a wide area of knowledge).
I'll preface this by saying I don't particularly like the direction the channel has gone. He's sold out big time, as described by many comments above (both literally, by selling the channel to VC, and metaphorically, by selling out whole videos and the integrity of their content to advertisers as the Tom Nicholas video explains). And his ties to grifters like Colin Grey and Philipp Dettmer (of CGP Grey and Kurzgesagt fame) definitely don't work in his favour.
But that said, I think this comment you made is a bit reductive. He has a PhD in effective science communication. He can legitimately claim expertise in communicating science to the public via YouTube in a way most popsci content cannot. Obviously not the same as doing scientific research himself, but he also doesn't claim to be doing that.
Kurzgesagt are grifters?
Yup. I've got two main stories in evidence of it, but I'll just share one here because the other is much longer.
Both Kurzgesagt and CGP Grey were early members of the creator-owned streaming platform Nebula. Creators literally have an ownership stake in the business, and are paid out a slice of revenue based on their viewership.
But early on, when it was still taking the shape we know it in today, Grey and Kurzgesagt were members with an ownership stake. They left it a long time ago citing "creative differences" (or some vague nonsense like that). From little pieces that have come out on the rare occasions that existing Nebula creators have said something about it, apparently those two were less interested in the vision of Nebula as a place where multiple creators support each other in growing their collective revenue; instead they wanted to take more of a parasitic approach where they could profit off of the backs of other, smaller creators. Because the then-co-owners weren't interested in that, Grey and Kurzgesagt ended up leaving.
I can share the other if you're interested, but chiefly, it demonstrates that Kurzgesagt is deeply mistrusting, a quality known to map to mistrustful people, and it shows Dettmer behaving in a very dishonest way towards a fellow creator who went by Coffee Break (now Coffeezilla).
To be fair some wet wipes are flushable (as in they disintegrate when flushed), the problem is that not all of them are and there's no standard they have to adhere to, so even the ones that shouldn't be flushed are allowed to advertise themselves as flushable.
No that’s literally the experiment that Derek did. He “showed” that the wet wipes “disintegrated”. What they actually did was break apart under a large weight he put on top of them. That’s not what happens in a sewage system. Along with that, unless they completely dissolve they will still cause issues as the broken up strands.
Unless you are a civil engineer you should not be deciding what goes in a sewer. And no one making wet wipes are civil engineers.
I haven't seen his experiment and don't really care what he did. Other independent experiments have shown that some wet wipes do disintegrate. The reason authorities recommend against their use is what I said: there is no standard for what constitutes "flushable" and the industry is rife with false advertising.
Here's some plumbing YouTube guy testing a bunch of them and finding some that do disintegrate while others do not: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVijZZ2yAtc
Of course the best option is a bidet, but this is as of yet unknown technology to most Americans.
So I just watched that video and I’m sorry, but that dude is just as bad as Veritasium.
Let’s cover some of the bad science:
And here’s where we find out what he’s looking for: 12:20. He’s seeing whether these will make it through a house plumbing system. NOT a city sewer system.
Guess what. That same guy has this video from 4 months ago: https://youtu.be/6CQ5rMRvn8I. The title: “The Lie of Flushable Wipes”. He proceeds to say no flushable wipe is safe…wait for it…except the brand he’s selling. And he directly refutes all the bits of the exact tests he ran two years ago. He even says “your sewer system doesn’t agitate the wipes, it’s like a lazy river, slowly turning”.
Think of it this way. The wipes are wet in the package they’re sold to you in. If they haven’t disintegrated in the packaging, they’re not disintegrating in the sewage system. Else they would just sell you wet toilet paper.
Based fact-checker
There's no standard they have to adhere to, but there are certifications you can look for that guarantee they break up properly.