Puppies Never Existed!
So this little item made me mad all day yesterday, and continues to do so, so I’m just going to get this out here.
Let’s get this straight. Triceratops existed. It totally did. That’s why we have all those fucking bones. I’ve seen them. They are real. The news is that there is evidence that Triceratops was not a distinct species, but a juvenile form of Torosaurus. As illustrated so convincingly above, bitty, sweet puppies can turn into massive, drooly, jowly dogs. But that doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as puppies.
This is not hard to understand. Nor is it hard to explain. Which brings me to my point.
The way popular media report on science, even simple and relatively trivial stories like this, is entirely fucked.
The headlines to these stories are not borne out in the actual content in any way. In this particularly egregious example from the consistently egregious Daily Mail the ‘Triceratops never existed’ bit is included in the headline to look as if it’s a quote from a source in the story. Of course that quote doesn’t appear in the story, and isn’t attributed to anyone. As far as I can tell, no one connected to the story has made any categorical pronouncements about the non-existence of Triceratops. But that’s the part anyone reading it will retain. “Oh, now these “scientists” say my favorite dinosaur wasn’t even real. What the fuck, science?” It might as well have been written by a Juggalo.
And what’s sad is that a really interesting opportunity to explain how science actually works has gotten trampled by a stupidity stampede. What really happened is that scientists have taken a look at existing evidence and have come up with a hypothesis that may better explain what they are looking at. So now ideas are being adjusted, and other scientists will look at the evidence and see if what’s been hypothesized can be disproved or explained in a more compelling way. And there will be some disagreements, and new facts will come to light, and there will be further hypothesizing and we will eventually end up closer to the truth than we were before.
BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT SCIENCE DOES, BITCHES.
But instead the idiotic report on this has only led to confuse and irritate and, worst, give stupidly false ammunition to science-deniers. Creationist whackaloons are going to be shouting “what about the Triceratops that never existed?” going forward for years now. And they’ll just confuse the issue for the general public who doesn’t have time or inclination to think this shit through and then we have endless “teach the controversy” school board bullshit and the whole world gets stupider again. (And if you don’t believe me, I dare you read even a small sample of the comments on that Daily Mail story.)
In other news, Pluto also still exists.
I have nothing further to add.
