Debunking false claims only makes a difference if people actually pay attention to the correction. Misinformation spreads wide and fast, whether it’s coming from a fake documentary or a news report. That’s one of the most frustrating aspects of science communication. I don’t know how many people watched Mermaids, but I’m certain that many more people saw it than will ever read this post. When a science fiction show, dressed up as a documentary, presents the “Dramatic Re-Enactment” caveat at the bottom of some scenes, it’s not surprising that some viewers were confused about what they were actually seeing. I’m sure Animal Planet would defend itself by saying that it issued a disclaimer, but clearly viewers either tuned out or just didn’t pay attention. The show was meant to titillate and deceive - yet another bit of noxious rot in what I have often called television’s bottomless chum bucket. But rather than being a hook for communicating actual science, Mermaids was a sensationalistic end in itself. And, with the right context and presentation, Mermaids could have been a unique way to highlight evolutionary and biological ideas. Speculative biology can be a lot of fun - to wonder how different forms of life might have evolved. Substitute Mermaids for Bigfoot, Chupacabra, the Loch Ness monster, ghosts and aliens and it's hard to make a distinction between what's real but faked, and what's really fake.īrian Switek was more caustic in his criticism of the Mermaids program, writing of it in Wired that: It's remarkable how well this fake documentary mimics actual programs claiming to reveal actual creatures. With fake news broadcasts fake amateur video and fake expert interviews, the story lays out a fake conspiracy worthy of the "X-Files." Here, the Navy is so determined to develop their sonar technology that they're prepared to drive to extinction an intelligent species related to humans. They don't exactly make a distinction between what is real and what is faked, and they really don't seem to care. You may have to look hard to see the disclaimer, but the producers and Animal Planet make it clear that this program is totally and completely made up.Īt least they almost make it clear. The Los Angeles Times' TV skeptic noted of Mermaids: The Body Found that: It's not that there's anything wrong with a bit of speculative evolution, as long as you make it clear from the outset that you're making stuff up. The documentary makes much of the fact that whales evolved from terrestrial ancestors, but that took millions of years, not the kind of evolutionary eyeblink that Mermaids seems to be talking about. Over what period of time is all this supposed to have happened? A few tens of thousands of years? A few hundred thousand years? From the waist up they're slender modern humans (no insulating blubber? Brrr!), while from the waist down they're dolphins - and to top it all off they've got a dolphin-like sonar system inside their skulls. It starts off talking up the rather fringe "aquatic ape" notion of human evolution and ends up with some classic-looking CGI mermaids that make zero evolutionary sense. The version that I saw doesn't even do viewers the courtesy of admitting that it's fake until the credits are about to roll. There's grainy fake video of mermen being hauled up in fishing nets, the whole box and dice. It has actors playing scientists talking about how they did an autopsy on some mermaid remains, and how the US government swooped and covered the whole thing up. The thing that's got my goat at the moment is a fake documentary on Animal Planet called Mermaids: The Body Found. Department of Justice and Homeland Security.Īfter this program aired in Australia in April 2011, Brad Newsome of the Sydney Morning Herald wrote of it that: Paul Robertson, former NOAA scientist." To enhance the pseudo-reality aspect of the program, a web site was established at offering no content other than a opening page hoax proclaiming that the site's domain had been seized by the U.S. The program was not fact but rather speculative science fiction, which included obvious CGI-produced video sequences like the one displayed above and actors fictional characters such as "Dr. On, Discovery's Animal Planet channel aired a pseudo-documentary entitled Mermaids: The Body Found in the U.S., a purely fictional work dealing with a purported federal coverup of a discovery involving scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that proved the existence of a remnant population of mermaids (described as being an evolutionary offshoot of the " aquatic ape" hypothesis, a generally discounted idea that early Hominid species went through an aquatic phase in their evolution).
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