Showing posts with label Sharks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sharks. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Megalodon Deception: Why Fictionalizing Science is More Deadly that a Monster Shark

by Nomad

A Shark Week hoax about long extinct monsters of the deep says a lot about our diminishing ability to discern fact from opinion and science from fantasy. 


So there I am watching the Discovery Channel, and there's a program about a prehistoric shark, much much larger than even the Great White Shark. We are talking eighteen wheeler size big. 
This species used to roam the seas millions of years ago and then went extinct long before man came along. Thank Goodness for that, because it is quite possible that humanity would never have been able to cross the oceans with a monster like that, ready to gulp us down like a slices of pizza at a frat party.

Shark Week has always been a big draw for the Discovery Channel. The problem is after spending years talking about a particular animal, inevitably there comes a time when you run out of new things to say. It's big. It swims. It's fast. And it will eat you. That's really all you need to know. People can only remained scared for so long before they get bored. Then it's "Shark, shmark." 
But after racking their brains, the executives came up with a new angle.  

Megalodon Fraud 
According to experts on the show (aptly named “Megalodon: The Monster That Lives”), there is strong evidence that Megalodon is not extinct at all. The show spent quite some time reviewing photos, videos and eyewitness accounts showing that this monster was actually still out there. Waiting on me to pluck up the courage to dip my big toe into the high seas. 

Gradually, however, it dawned on me that there was something wrong here. There was something unnatural about the interviews. The lighting too perfect. the words too precisely chosen and descriptive for an average person. The rhythm of the speech was more like the delivery of a stage actor. The shark expert was a little too photogenic and well-spoken. In addition, the camera work for the video evidence was a little too polished.
That's when it hit me.
The whole show and all of the evidence were a well-orchestrated hoax. Ten minutes of being made a fool was my limit before I continued my search for something to watch.