Bogus poll on bogus shark documentary
Every year, the Discovery Channel has “Shark Week”, which is apparently their top-rated week of the year. This year they led off with a programme about the extinct shark C. megalodon, which made the great white shark look like a guppy.
Unfortunately, they did a “Does Megalodon still exist?” programme. The answer is, definitively, “No”, and to get any other answer you’d have to make up some evidence. That didn’t put them off. Read Christie Wilcox (scientist) and Wil Wheaton (celebrity nerd) for more.
The excuse for putting this on StatsChat is below
I suppose it’s appropriate that they use a bogus poll to try to prove they fooled most of the people who trust them for science communication.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »