FW: when dinos ruled

["Thom Holmes" <tholmes@dolphinsoft.com>]

"When Dinosaurs Ruled" suffers from the same sloppy quality control that is
endemic of much television documentary production in general. Television
producers do not often think like book editors. They do not make
proofreading and fact-checking a routine part of their production process.
[They CAN, but most don't.] One reason for this is that it would be
expensive to get Jeff Goldblum back into the studio to correct the flubs in
the original script. This suggests, of course, that they failed to 1) have
the script reviewed by an expert beforehand; and 2) failed to have a
knowledgeable expert present during the recording session to correct
mistakes that took place during the session. Things as simple as the
mispronunciation of Bob Bakker's name is pure sloppiness. However, it
reflects on the overall credibility of the series. Once they allow a mistake
as simple as that to get through, what can you trust? As evidenced by the
large number of posts to the lists about the program, viewers WANT to get
accurate information but are befuddled by a series in which accuracy does
not seem to be a priority, even at the most basic level of pronunciation of
terms and names.

Which brings me to another question that might help others on the list. What
television documentaries covering dinosaurs HAVE done a respectable job, in
your opinion? Looking back at the many dinosaur documentaries that have been
done, I still think one of the best was the one called "Dinosaur" (I think)
produced by WHYY in Philadelphia. It wasn't loaded with animations and
graphics so much as it featured longer, on-location (as opposed to "in
studio") segments with a wide variety of paleontologists. This pops up on
public television every once in a while. I think it was done around 1990 and
consisted of three or four hours.

--Thom Holmes
dinosaur author at large
and sometimes television documentary consultant

-----Original Message-----
From: Sherry Michael [mailto:_smichael@excite.com]
Sent: Friday, August 27, 1999 11:02 AM
To: dinosaur@usc.edu
Subject: re: when dinos ruled



Larry Dunn with twenty horns wrote:
>Which is the point, of course.  How many "usual
>gaffes" would be tolerated in a program about, say,
>human evolution?  Or about baseball?

Popular topics are much easier to grasp than detailed scientific ones. I
don't think baseball fans are uneducated boobs that can't grasp basic ideas
about dinosaurs. I think the problem lies in that it's quite easy to look up
someone's batting stats, and very hard to find good sources of scientific
data that are readable to even someone with a decent education. A batting
stat has one simple answer and it cannot be debated. Dinosaurs never have
one answer and can always be debated. So the show is skewed with the ideas
of the paleontologists that were interviewed, or what sounds easy to explain
in a sound byte.

This goes back to a big problem inthis country. While we want people to be
scientifically minded, little resources are provided to do so. I am not even
discussing school education here. Real science has a tendency to go on
behind closed doors and in little exclusive meetings, and conclusions are
written up in horridly expensive journals that are hard to get. All the
public has to go on is what is watered down by journalists that have little
depth of all the subjects they are required to cover.

While paleontology is a very generous science compared to many, we can do
more. Instead of bitching about how innacurate these shows are, spread
*good* information however you can. Donate a good dinosaur book to school
library. Speak to the public as much as possible. Open up the doors a little
bit.

-Sherry
(off soapbox)




"People are like tea bags - you have to put them in hot water before you
know how strong they are."




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