@whodey said
Here is an article from the Smithsonian on it.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/media-blows-hot-air-about-dinosaur-flatulence-84170975/
It is an odd read, to say the least. On the one hand, they say that dinosaurs are conjectured to put out as much carbon emissions as man does today, but on the other hand, the notion that they farted themselves into extinction is overreach?
I don't get it.
Then get this, from the Smithsonian article you cited:
"Fox News led off with “Dinosaurs may have farted themselves to extinction, according to a new study from British scientists.” Wrong right out of the gate. Wilkinson and co-authors didn’t say a thing about dinosaur extinction in their paper. Not to mention that the idea doesn’t make any sense. Titanic sauropods were around for about 130 million years. If their gases were so deadly, why did it take so long for the world to be overwhelmed? The Fox News gloss isn’t even a misrepresentation of what the researcher said. The story’s headline and lead are outright fabrications. And the same fiction was repeated on the network’s late-night roundtable of chattering commentators, Red Eye.
"Gawker simply recycled Fox’s bad air. “A new study from British scientists published in Current Biology suggests the dinosaur infraorder known as sauropods may have actively contributed to its own extinction through excessive flatulence,” wrote site contributor Neetzan Zimmerman, who linked backed to the Fox News item. News aggregation and snarky commentary are popular right now, and in cases like this, lazy and sensationalist reporting can rapidly be echoed across the web. Although I’m not going to give the typically awful Daily Mail credit for independently misconstruing the paper’s results.
"The Daily Beast’s Daniel Stone and PZ Myers of Pharyngula tore into the media coverage earlier this week. There’s sadly no shortage of facepalm-inducing reporting, but it’s even worse when news sources are so enamored with a punchline that they simply make up conclusions. Not that I expect Fox News, the Daily Mail, or Gawker to stop blowing hot air whenever the opportunity arises."
They're saying the media outlets outright
lied.
And you lied for repeating it.
Do you get it now?