Always remember what really happened with the McDonald's lady who sued because her "coffee was too hot".
McDonald's themselves started the campaign that the issue was laughable, and seeded the notion that it's ridiculous, how could she not know coffee hot?
What really happened was that the coffee was:
Served well above safe ranges to maximize profits, so the coffee could be served longer
Was served near boiling temperature
Was so hot that it FUSED HER LABIA requiring extensive surgery to repair.
She sued only for her hospital bills.
They started a smear campaign against her to convince the public that she was a moron and she just wanted a payday.
Not to mention they were warned many times before about serving coffee that's too hot. The woman got such a huge settlement because the judge was tired of McDonald's crap
Also they calculated the cost of lawsuits like that and decided they would make more money selling it that hot than they would lose in lawsuits over how hot the coffee was.
What's that old quote? "A lie can make it around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes", or something like that? I believe that was pre-internet too.
It also happens with politics. I constantly see provocative headlines get lots of attention in one circle, and then the later corrections only get passed around in the opposite circle, if at all.
Look at just yesterday. One clickbait site said Beyonce was going to perform at the dnc, and by the time the truth and correction made it around it was already past time
I think more likely is that the news outlets need the revenue from clicks, and are willing to trade their reputation to get them. Accurate science journalism doesn't pay, capitalism is a race to the bottom.
Also, she got second degree burns, and she was not the first person to be injured by the coffee, and McDonald's was told multiple times that they served their coffee too hot.
During the trial, McDonald's showed zero care for the the people they injured, to the point that most of the fine that McDonald's ended up paying was punitive damages
I dont understand this, coffee is generally made with near boiling hot water. Many coffee machines make the coffee in front of your eyes. Of course its served boiling hot, no?
I mean her accident is extremely unfortunate, but her needing money for medical bills is a problem with society, not mcdonalds.
Coffee is brewed near boiling, but the hottest it should be served is 60 degrees C, or around 140 degrees F. Basically her temperature was the same as it was literally coming out of the machine, no one takes a big gulp of coffee the second it comes out of the machine.
McDonalds kept their coffee as hot as possible to give the illusion it was fresher than it was. By keeping the coffee at 190-200F then they believed that customers would feel that the coffee was fresher, even though they knew it was unsafe to serve coffee that hot.
Larger places follow the same rules here, while coffee is brewed extremely hot it usually rests for a bit before serving unless a customer explicitly asks for it. In restaurants it's served for you. Even Starbucks most of their drinks are milk based which cools the coffee, except for Americanos which are just espresso and hot water, and you'll usually see those with an insulator cup to highlight that
McDonald’s admitted it had known about the risk of serious burns from its scalding hot coffee for more than 10 years. The risk had repeatedly been brought to its attention through numerous other claims and suits.