A while back I wrote this piece on what I suggested my have been the worst media coverage of all time. However, Darwinopterus has ensured that everyone has jumped on the pterosaurs-are-cool bandwagon and most of them have, inevitably screwed up. However, there is one outstanding candidate for ‘getting as much wrong as it is possible to in the lest words while massively misrepresenting the science and introducing a ton of irrelevant nonsense that the researchers never commented on or mentioned at any point in order to try and ramp up the interest levels’.
If you can stomach the stupid, go here.
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Dave Hone's Archosaur Musings 
What the hell?
This almost seems like a cry for help.
I don’t know if it was a cry for help, but they certainly need it. Preferably from someone who knows very, very basic facts about the history of life on Earth.
The problem is then all these comments from the public saying how the scientists are just making stuff up, when actually it’s mainly the journalists just making stuff up. For a parallel in economics see:
http://www.env-econ.net/2009/10/i-was-afraid-this-was-going-to-happen.html
Yes, that is something that drives me nuts. The assumption always seems to be that the highly trained experts who have spent years if not decades in their field make major errors on basic science when writing peer-reviewed papers and that often inexperienced, or non-specialist journalists take down everything perfectly first time and fact check every detail and never make mistakes.
I’m ashamed to say that I actually laughed out loud reading this. But it isn’t a surprise and this continual form of unresearched, careless reporting by reporters and editors who clearly don’t give a toss will continue to plague us. This and the continual stream of television programs that portray possibility as fact are a pet hate of mine. But such is life….
Too cool.
(re: Volaticotherium)
They ate flying mammals? (What flying mammals? Bats didn’t exist in the Mesozoic!) Dinosaurs died out in the Ice Age?
And the article says it’s a 2-foot-long animal with 15cm fangs; even ignoring the pointless use of two measurement systems, that’s totally disproportionate…
Much as I hate to do so, to be fair there were gliding mammals around then, if not flying ones, which is an easy and forgivable distinction to get wrong. Pretty much everything else though is either mad, wrong or clearly made up.
In any case, I suspect that the fact that their reference to volant Jurassic mammals was in any way accurate must have been a total fluke.
Just out of curiosity, what were they? Highly interested.
Volaticotherium – this critter: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7121/abs/nature05234.html
Impressive! I didn’t think it was possible to screw that many things up at once. They should get some kind of award.
@Diego – maybe the IgNobel Prize?
That’s a grotesque bit of reporting even by the notoriously abysmal standards of the Daily Mail! It might make an entertaining ‘spot the mistakes’ quiz, though.
The first line of that crazy article makes me wonder if the author managed to confuse Darwinopterus and Darwinius.
If so, would this be an example of meta-overhyping?
That’s actually a possibility I had not considered and would explain the ice age stuff. That might just do it! Wow…