A specific example of the untrustworthiness of journalism on these topics came up last week at the regional geology meeting. A Kentucky geologist reported his find of Paleozoic early tetrapod tracks to the media. Someone at Associated Press changed it to dinosaur tracks before distributing the story.
On the other hand, sometimes an error is clearly just a case of incompetence. About seven years ago, a couple of students found a Triassic reptile skeleton not far from UNC. We went out to excavate it, and it made it into regional newspapers. My parents' newspaper picked it up as a photo, captioned Fossil Discovery. However, they lost the photo, and someone stuck the caption with the picture of a T. rex head without reading beyond "Fossil Discovery". As a result, the tyrannosaur head is identified as "From left, Joe Carter, Brian Coffey, and Todd Pusey...".
Experiecne like this makes me dubious of both scientific claims in popular publications and merits of publications that cite them as authoritative. Some young-earth claims are based on such sources, e.g. the moon dust argument.
Dr. David Campbell
Old Seashells
University of Alabama
Biodiversity & Systematics
Dept. Biological Sciences
Box 870345
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487 USA
bivalve@mail.davidson.alumlink.com
That is Uncle Joe, taken in the masonic regalia of a Grand Exalted Periwinkle of the Mystic Order of Whelks-P.G. Wodehouse, Romance at Droigate Spa
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Apr 08 2002 - 19:55:42 EDT