{"id":3579,"date":"2010-01-08T05:50:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-08T05:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/2010\/01\/fox-news-volcanic-coal-kills-off-dinosaurs-before-they-even-evolved\/"},"modified":"2010-01-08T05:50:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-08T05:50:00","slug":"fox-news-volcanic-coal-kills-off-dinosaurs-before-they-even-evolved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/2010\/01\/fox-news-volcanic-coal-kills-off-dinosaurs-before-they-even-evolved\/","title":{"rendered":"Fox News: volcanic coal kills off dinosaurs before they even evolved"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"float: left; padding: 5px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/chrisicon2.jpg\" width=\"49\" height=\"50\" alt=\"A post by Chris Rowan\"\/><\/span>Twitter can be cruel sometimes. Without it, I never would have come across (via user <a href=http:\/\/twitter.com\/DoubleBeam>@DoubleBeam<\/a>) <a href=http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/scitech\/2010\/01\/07\/cataclysm-killed-dinos-taking-lives-today\/>this aneurysm-inducing travesty<\/a> on the Fox News website. I&#8217;ve italicised sentences of particular &#8216;interest&#8217; in the first three paragraphs.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h3>Cataclysm That Killed Dinos Still Taking Lives Today<\/h3>\n<p>Coal from China&#8217;s Xuan Wei County, widely used for cooking and heating, may contribute to unusually high rates of lung cancer among women in the region.<\/p>\n<p>The tremendous volcanic eruption thought to be responsible for Earth&#8217;s largest mass extinction which killed more than 70 percent of plants and <em>dinosaurs walking the planet 250 million years ago<\/em> is still taking lives today.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists investigating the high incidence of lung cancer in China&#8217;s Xuan Wei County in Yunnan Province conclude that the problem lies with the coal residents use to heat their homes. <em>That coal was formed by the same 250-million-year-old giant volcanic eruption termed a supervolcano that was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs.<\/em> The high silica content of that coal is interacting with volatile organic matter in the soil to cause the unusually high rates of lung cancer.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s right. In just that second highlighted sentence, Fox News tells its readers that:<br \/>\n<UL><LI>The dinosaurs were made extinct before they actually evolved (in reality they radiated <em>after<\/em> the Permian extinction killed off the <a href=http:\/\/www.nhm.ac.uk\/nature-online\/life\/dinosaurs-other-extinct-creatures\/non-dino-reptiles\/mammal-like-reptiles\/index.html>mammal-like reptiles<\/a> that were the dominant large land animals at the time0.<\/LI><br \/>\n<LI>Volcanos erupt coal (if you read later in the article, this might just be clumsy wording &#8211; but I&#8217;m not sure that makes it any better).<\/LI><\/UL><br \/>\nMy browsing of the various science news feeds indicates that the Fox News story was probably adapted from <a href=http:\/\/portal.acs.org\/portal\/acs\/corg\/content?_nfpb=true&#038;_pageLabel=PP_ARTICLEMAIN&#038;node_id=223&#038;content_id=CNBP_023800&#038;use_sec=true&#038;sec_url_var=region1&#038;__uuid=>this press release<\/a>. Compare the first sentence (my emphasis again) to the second paragraph of the Fox piece:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The volcanic eruptions thought responsible for Earth&#8217;s largest mass extinction &#8212; which killed more than 70 percent of plants <em>and animals<\/em> 250 million years ago &#8212; is still taking lives today.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, the Fox reporter replaced &#8216;animals&#8217; with &#8216;dinosaurs&#8217;. Because all extinct animals are dinosaurs, right?<br \/>\nSeriously, if you&#8217;re planning to actually expand on a press release for your story &#8211; a laudable aim, in principle &#8211; perhaps it might be best to fact-check your additions. I&#8217;d prefer churnalism to gratuitous insertion of wrong. On a more positive note, Alexis Madrigal wrote up what is actually quite an interesting story <a href=http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wiredscience\/2010\/01\/nasty-coal\/>properly for <i>Wired<\/i><\/a>. It can be done, allowing us to ponder the actual point of the story &#8211; the potential impact of long-ago geological events on human health today &#8211; without having to grind our teeth to do so.<br \/>\n<b>Update:<\/b> <a href=http:\/\/volcanism.wordpress.com\/2010\/01\/08\/volcanoes-erupt-coal-fox-news\/>The Volcanism Blog<\/a> is also understandably perturbed about this story, and has a bit more on the actual research behind it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;d prefer churnalism to gratuitous insertion of wrong.<br \/>\n <a href=\"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/2010\/01\/fox-news-volcanic-coal-kills-off-dinosaurs-before-they-even-evolved\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,20,17,155],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-science","category-public-science","category-ranting","category-science-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}