I was one happy puppy, last month, when Partner informed me that he:
1. was able to get us a cheaper telecommunications package through Dish Network and as a result
2. we'd be getting the Science Channel, and Planet Green, and so on.
Saving money? I'm a cheap bastard so I was all about the saving of the monies. And more science on my television machine? w00t! (even though he doesn't watch. Meh. More for me.)
I knew that both of these channels are part of the NatGeo/Discovery Channel Conglomerate of Pseudo Scientific Bullshit but I figured that even they'd have a network where serious, not-bullshit would get aired, unlike their other networks.
This, of course, was a perfect set up for me to get disappointed, a condition I forever stive to grow out of. Make the jump:
Shortly after the March 11, 2011 M9 quake off of Northeast Japan, PBS quickly put together a special on the subject for NOVA. Even though PBS is co-opted by Koch Industries and also now airs a great deal of pseudo-scientific crap because of them, the program was excellent. It mixed a bit of human interest with some of the bigguns' of the geoscience world (namely, Dr. Roger Bilham from the University of Colorado, among others). I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it, as it's an example of good science journalism.
Also shortly after that quake, a well-known "science" writer wrote a fear-mongering piece for Newsweek, which speculated out loud, that the "scariest quake was to come", that it'd strike the Pacific seaboard of North America, and this was soley based on the observation that since February of 2010, faults had broken in large quakes once in Chile, once (well, twice, based on where the most recent one broke) in New Zealand, and now in Japan. For the sake of argument we'll disclude the two New Zealand quakes as neither were even on the plate boundary and compared to Chile's 8.8 and Japan's 9 they weren't that big. Indeed, both quake have had dozens of aftershocks far exceeding the quakes that did devastating damage to Christchurch last September and this February.
But no, Mr. Winchester asserted, without any data to back up his somewhat weak hypothesis. This means there's a pattern. Cascadia is next. Nevermind there are large unbroken seismic gaps (and seismic gap theory in itself is also one in some doubt) all around the Pacific Rim, and in the Atlantic, and along the Himalayan Front, and in the Eastern (and perhaps Western) Mediterranian, and so on, and any one of them could snap tomorrow or 10,000 years from now, and quite a few are near (or in!) heavily populated regions that are not prepared for very large events that occur once or twice every millenia or so. This is as bad as that Supermoon/Solar Flare bullshit that went down last month too.
(I should point out at this point that I enjoyed Krakatoa, and I'm listening to A Crack At the Edge of the World right now, and Simon Winchester is not a bad writer when he wants to tell a good yarn. Just a really weak science writer when facts are not only actually required, they're responsible.)
He was pretty comprensively criticized (he also doubled-down, but we'll save that for another day) and you can read a sample here, and here, and elsewhere.
I would have figured that'd be the end of it. But nope.
Last night The Science Channel aired "Megaquake: The Hour that Shook Japan." I figured I'd watch it as I had the TV to myself for a change. It wasn't science. It basically was a bunch of human interest stories with some tiny science sprinkles on top. That in itself wasn't too bad, but what was bad was in the last segment, they spent the remaining time on what Simon Winchester had asserted in Newsweek and the Daily Mail. Complete with map and lurid, scary graphics. And that word "overdue", which gives me fits.
I facepalmed.
This program had to have been produced very recently. Couldn't they google? Research? Do anything? And this is the problem with far too many science outlets. They're weak on the facts, and don't have an interest in getting it right. Basically, if I as a layperson can watch your show and debunk it right off the top of my head (and this is in several subjects, not just the geosciences) you're doing it wrong, and you're doing your viewers a huge disservice. You're contributing to our slide into idiotcracy. And the Discovery Network is responsible for that, along with the History Channels and so on.
Scientists who research stuff don't always have the ability (or means) to explain their work. That is why they need journalists who know what the fuck they're talking about, and have the curiousity to actually look up shit when they don't understand, and not sensationalize bullshit (like a certain recent article about climate change effecting plate tectonics, which was NOT what that paper actually said. I'm looking at you, Alertnet!).
Am I alone in this? Or am I just being pedantic?