Friday 17 September 2010

The latest scare story

London overdue for 'killer' quake! Scream the headlines in the Tellytubbygraph, the Greeniad and all the other tabloid junk that passes for mainstream 'science' journalism in the UK nowadays. The real experts are sceptical, even derisive, and it even turns out that the word 'overdue' is a media invention.

As for a 5.5 being 'deadly'? Oh good grief! Out here on the Pacific rim, a 5.5 tremor is considered workaday and nothing exceptional. If there's a 5 or 6 out in the subduction zone out beyond Juan De Fuca, we often don't feel a thing hereabouts.

This is so much claptrap it's morphed into a kind of 'Truth-lite', or perhaps it's even the 'new truth' (H/T to Al Jahom there).

Call that 'science reporting'? Because I bloody well don't. And I haven't even had my morning coffee yet. Sheesh.

1 comment:

Angry Exile said...

You expect the likes of the Mainly Fail to make complete arses of themselves but following that link it seems that the biggest red faces should be at the BBC. Trotting out a measured and impartial report on what was said is not like them at all and they really should be ashamed about it. At the very least they could have pointed out that nobody in Britain lived in fear of earthquakes since 1997, and that cuts (as in spending more at a slower rate) in earthquake monitoring would risk disaster.

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