Comments on: Reality Check: Behind The Lost World Hype

By: Mnynames

Mnynames — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 16:30:52 +0000

I’m assuming that it does more harm when the public finds out that there aren’t that many new species…except few media outlets will bother to report that, I expect. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for telling the truth and damning the consequences, but it seems to me that these exaggerations work in Cryptozoology’s favour. Your average man-in-the-street hears hundreds of new species found, doesn’t hear the follow-up, and then maybe thinks to himself, “Well, if they just found these things that nobody’s been reporting, maybe some of the things people ARE reporting might be real too.”

By: Benjamin Radford

Benjamin Radford — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 15:31:21 +0000

Excellent analysis, Loren! Good job. I think it’s great when we find new species, but the media hype machine does more harm than good when it exaggerates finds like this.

By: Cryptoworld

Cryptoworld — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 09:29:03 +0000

I’m getting more and more frustrated with the media – it’s either exaggerated or bad, there is never any really good news these days… saying that, there has been a lot of interest in this, and even if it turns out that they have only found one new species – that’s one more than before…

By: Josh Harris

Josh Harris — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 14:54:53 +0000

It just sounds like the media tried to catch a few eyes with exaggerated headlines.

By: squaylor

squaylor — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 13:14:01 +0000

I’d wait until the expedition report is released before making too many judgements – newspapers are hardly likely to run an in-depth list of everything they found in full taxonomic detail. They just want to put in a ‘few frogs, a colourful bird’ type description to go with the photographs (which are amazing).

The Guardian (Feb 8th) contained this quote – ‘The survey…had identified 40 new species and expected to record many more once they had completed their research’. Once their results are in and CI publish their findings, we’ll see what they came across. Until then, we don’t have the complete picture.

Oh, and the first thing I think of when I read ‘Lost World’ is dinosaurs…