There is a clear, straightforward path to making such an impact, and having your mediocre, contrarian research (whether legitimate research or pseudoscience) going completely viral. All you have to do is follow this simple formula.

• First, you publish a paper — or, even better, a series of papers — that challenges or attempts to undermine the scientific consensus about any topic at all.
• Next, you submit your work to someone who works in public/media relations for your home University, research institute, or parent organization, and ask them to craft and disseminate a press release. (Or, if you're a self-promoter, to just do it yourself.)
• After that, the press release goes out, making even more sensationalistic claims than the original paper did, frequently overselling the results and rarely sourcing mainstream, appropriately skeptical voices, painting this as a Galileo-type revolutionary against the oppressive scientific establishment.
• And finally, you just wait for the unmerited attention to arrive as various journalists — journalists who are either untrained in how science works or who mainly care about maximizing engagement despite knowing full well how science works — report uncritically (or insufficiently critically) on the work.

The incentive structure of Web 2.0 and social media incentivize low quality reporting and reporting on science is no exception.

External Quote:

Source - https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/devious-trick-sensational-science-headlines/

You've probably seen many just over the past month, including:
• claims that classical gravity produces quantum entanglement,
• claims that interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is likely evidence for aliens,
• and claims that the supernova data has been misinterpreted and the Universe is slowing down, not accelerating.

But unless you're a scientist yourself — and, in particular, a scientist well-versed in these aspects of physics and astronomy — it's not readily apparent where these claims have gone wrong.