(UPDATE*) Wash. Post, Nature, Discovery News etc: Krikey and Holy Captain Jack Sparrow, It’s a KRAKEN!
The kraken that demolished a sailing ship in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was bigger, but the one in the news today is a pretty tall tale too. Krakens don’t all you forever-adolescent monster fans know, is a mythological beast, more squid than octopus but it’s a myth so it’s your pick. It was huge. Old woodcuts show ships foundering in their arms. Then along came a paleontologist from Mount Holyoke College to tell a meeting of the Geological Society of America that by a long tentacle of inference he thinks a 100-foot long beast of krakenish appearance once broke ichthyosaurs’ necks and ate them, back in the Triassic. The evidence lies in Davey Jones’s locker – lined up vertebral disks, in regular patterns and rearranged from their natural sequence in a living creature. Today’s are in Nevada, stranded by geological uplift of a vanished sea. They are strange – who’s to say they cannot be a deliberate mimicking of the suckers on its arms by a colossal cephalopod at the entry to its abyssal lair? A self-portrait, if you will. Octopi are darned smart for a spineless creature, squid maybe too, and a big one might have done this.
Hmppphhhhtt. Sure. It’s possible. But possible means maybe and maybe usually means probably not in my book just because the cosmos has more maybes than realities. One does not pass up a story like this easily. But, one ought to call around just to be sure there aren’t other experts giggling at the notion. A few did. The story, if one has to write it, ought to be the persistently deep mystery of this one fossil bed, as illustrated by the lengths to which some (one) expert went to make sense of them. This is a stab in the dark.
Still, hard not to get on board with the imagery this fabulation inspires.
STORIES:
- LiveScience – Jeanna Bryner: Lair of Ancient ‘Kraken’ Sea Monster Possibly Discovered ; The story does say that the hypothesis needs more evidence to be persuasive. But has nobody but the prime source to provide detail.
- Daily Mail (UK) Leon Watson: Could this be the lair of the Karken? Scientist claims existence of mythical 100ft sea monster that ate the ocean’s biggest predators for breakfast ; Self-contradictory hed, since if kraken’s were real they made their breakfast snacks, at most, second biggest predators in the sea. He does have a skeptic, but made no phone or email call – picked it up from the next item down.
- Wired /Laelaps Blog – Brian Switek: The Giant, Prehistoric Squid That Ate Common Sense ; Switek is a paleontology expert, and critic. For this post he links to some of the first press, and the official abstract to the talk. Direct evidence for the thesis is, he writes, in one word: nothing.
- Houston Chronicle – Eric Berger : Scientist says he’s found evidence for an ancient kraken ; Short piece. But he does link to a fairly well-known video of a large octopus in an aquarium taking out a fairly big shark.
- Discovery News – Sarah Simpson: Smokin’ Kraken?: A blog post, nicely done. Key investigative paragraph quoted in its entirety to reflect its every nuance: “Really? C’mon.”
- Washington Post (blog) Elizabeth Flock: ‘Kraken’ sea monster’s lair possibly disovered ;
- Pharyngula (blog) PZ Meyers: Traces of a Triassic Kraken? ; Meyers confesses to initial eagerness at this news, then “reality sinks in” and “the evidence is pathetic.” And, he finds another instance of the same paleontologist making assertions that, uh, push the envelope of science.
*UPDATES:
- NatureNews – Sid Perkins: Kraken versus ichthyosaur: let battle commence ; The mood is set right off the top. Perkins writes that the report “has blurred the lines between science and science fiction.” Which is exactly right – at one time (before magic became a core feature of a lot of sci-fi) the idea was to embed a fictional plot in a matrix of known science. Still fiction, and maybe the warp drives were fantasy, but the old time “hard” science fiction stories were not dependent on ESP, unicorns, or wizards. This is a (and another) good job by Sid – the stress being on the mystery of those aligned spinal disks and the lengths, perhaps desperate lengths, some go to stitch up a narrative that fits. After infusing skepticism in the piece, Perkins wraps it up with a few quotes from outsiders. Skeptics too, they are. How about aliens? That’s consistent with the evidence, too.
Grist for the Mill: GSA Press Release ;
- Charlie Petit
October 11th, 2011 at 4:46 pm
Switek tars our profession with a mighty big brush when he writes “We have a serious problem with science journalism,” and, later, refers to a “ridiculous media frenzy.” Yes, the small number of credulous early stories and posts were unforgivably lazy, and they got picked up by aggregators. Now they’re getting knocked down, fast and furious. Is Switek just as guilty by sensationalizing those first stories into a journalism-wide putdown? I think so. How many reporters saw through the nonsense and took a pass? Lots.
I’m more interested in how a cultural touchstone, like the kraken, gives a story legs (or arms, as the case may be). We saw the science fiction crossover in action a few weeks ago with the circumbinary planet discovered by the Kepler mission and the near-universal media reference to Tatooine from Star Wars. Both the Kepler scientists and Mark McMenamin from Mount Holyoke were clever to tap into iconic imagery — but only the Kepler folks had evidence to back them up.
October 11th, 2011 at 5:17 pm
Hi Charlie, just a note that the LiveScience story is updated with outside comment.
October 11th, 2011 at 7:04 pm
I fail to see how a science journalist calling out other journalists is somehow “sensationalizing.” What I see is someone doing a job and a service – just as scientists who rightly call out others strengthen rather than weaken the edifice.
To his critique of science journalism in general, is there not a problem in the process when popular news sites publish copy straight from a press release, with little or no comment from those who would know? I do not think that this is an novel critique. Of course sci-fi comparisons are fun – as long as the audience is shown where the sci ends and the fi begins.
I continue to champion science as a place where evidence rules over fallible fancy. If the articles that the general populace read show no evidence that this happens, if journalists print “science” claims lacking in facts next to those that can stand on their own, how is anyone to believe me? And for this to work, the journalists have to be on board too. For most, science stops with the sci journos.
October 12th, 2011 at 8:54 am
I agree with Robert. The evidence suggests that most professional science journalists gave this story a pass. We certainly have a serious problem with science journalism, but it’s not kraken. It’s unemployment.
October 12th, 2011 at 3:09 pm
I’m with Robert (and Robert) on this. “Kraken” got lots of churnalism, but there was solid journalism, too. The latter was ignored, while the former was used to justify a sweeping condemnation of mainstream science journalism.
It was an oversimplistic critique, and not just because it ignored responsible stories, which tended to come from the big, mainstream outlets being sweepingly condemned. It didn’t account for the dynamics of churnalism, which aren’t just a problem for science, but for all many topics — namely, that journalism is often secondary to the imperatives of media content production.
I’m willing to bet that a large-scale correlation of story depth with authorial job description would find that good, responsible journalism most often comes from people given time to produce it. Too many content producers are banging out posts in an hour or two, maybe less; there isn’t time to call secondary sources or read original literature. (I’ve been in those shoes myself; four years ago I was expected to write 8-10 posts per day, at $11 pre-tax dollars per. I cringe at some of what I did.) Of course you try to avoid situations where your churnalism could create real problems, rather than just being forgettable eyeball fodder — but it’s not always possible.
This isn’t to excuse irresponsibility, but just to make the point that churnalism is somewhat inevitable, and the culprit isn’t some big, nebulous entity like “science journalism” or “major news sources.” Moreover, in this environment, a large scientific institution like the Geological Society of America has to understand that loudly promoting a breathless, scientifically irresponsible press release is a virtual guarantee of breathless, irresponsible coverage. They should’ve been more careful.
October 12th, 2011 at 6:10 pm
I’m likely running into a big party that just let out — and everyone is going home — but I have a few thoughts here. Disclosures: I’m a contributor at Wired.com and a community manager of the blogging network for which Brian Switek blogs.
Biases accounted for: I think Switek did overreach by writing, “But what really kills me about this story is the fact that no reporter went to get a second opinion.” I won’t dig through an exceptionally busy news timeline to verify my next statement, but I don’t think that’s true. Someone other than an iO9 writer/blogger/??? must have raised a skeptical tone before Switek’s post went up.
In Switek’s defense, though, I never thought he was tarring and feathering the profession of science journalism. That’s probably because I’ve met him and know he’d never mean something like that. From my hilltop, his angst was clearly directed at lazy writing — which we all know is partly fueled by the problem of economics Robert Lee Hotz mentioned here.
Anyway, I’d encourage everyone to read Switek’s response to this kerfuffle: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/the-revenge-of-the-imaginary-kraken/ Brings a bit more clarity to what he mean.