Scuttlebutt is easy to fabricate and can be very misleading

Scuttlebutt is easy to fabricate and can be very misleading and is appropriately ignored. For example scuttlebutt has Michel Foucault visiting gay bathhouses in California. Michel Foucault clearly did not visit gay bathhouses in California.

Michel Foucault researched how individuals were embedded in systems of power. See this video. Going to gay bathhouses would have embedded Michel Foucault in systems of power.