re: when dinos ruled

["Sherry Michael" <_smichael@excite.com>]

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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