Without commenting on the various claims about memes in this article, I can offer a hypothesis on the closing paragraphs: the most obvious reason why misinterpreted science is much more commonly seen is that sharing an unsupported meme takes far less time and effort (~few clicks) than finding the research paper and reading it, so we would anticipate seeing a lot more of the former.

The pithy version is "a lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on", with thanks to Pratchett.