Shark Week Isnt Just Misguided, Its Downright Dangerous. Look, we get it. Sharks are pretty effing cool; the Discovery Channel has been reminding us every year since 1988, just in case we ever forgot. Shark Week has achieved cultural holiness and has led to a public mania about the deeps fearsome predators. Sharks have so permeated our collective consciousness that it seems everybody wants to be a shark. Plus, if we said we never thought about what it would be like if Rob Lowe actually rode sharks, we would be lying. But if you turn on Shark Week this summer, be careful. Theres a lot of pseudoscience and straight-up nonsense floating around in the airwaves. Except heres the problem: its not highly controversial, Submarine just doesnt exist. As zoologist Michelle Wcisel points out, Submarine is a fabrication from the 1970s created to mess with newspaper readers, and now it has become a device to fool 3.8 million television viewers. So is Discovery making things up about any other sharks? The answer is an unfortunate and resounding yes. Last year, Discovery aired Megalodon: The Monster That Lives, which investigated the possibility of the prehistoric 60-foot predator patrolling the oceans today, except that the megalodon has been extinct for millions of years with no evidence to the contrary. huffingtonpost/2014/08/12/shark-week-pseudoscience_n_5671772.html?page_version=legacy&view=print&comm_ref=false
Posted on: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 05:17:12 +0000
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