mermaids: the new evidence | Southern Fried Science

The great #Mermaids Storify

Posted on May 30, 2013 by David Shiffman

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This week, Animal Planet aired “Mermaids: The New Evidence” the second fake documentary in their series about mermaids. After complaining about the ridiculous show and the associated devastating effects on science literacy*, we decided to watch the re-air together and live-tweet it. The goal was to get real scientific information into the twitter conversation associated with the show. The Storify of our contributions to the discussion is below.

* Lots of people think that the admittedly fake documentary is real. Search the twitter hashtag #Mermaids and you’ll see literally hundreds of examples of this. These are not included in the Storify in the interest of not being cruel to strangers.

Mock the Doc: Watch both fake Mermaids documentaries tonight and mock them on twitter with us!

Posted on May 29, 2013 by David Shiffman

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Pictured: Not real. Drawn by Vilhelm Pedersen, via WikiMedia Commons

Tonight from 8-11 P.M. EST, Animal Planet is re-airing both fake mermaid documentaries, “Mermaids: The Body Found” and “Mermaids: the New Evidence”. We’re going to watch them. We’re going to live-tweet our thoughts using the show’s existing hashtag, #Mermaids. We’re going to systematically point out everything factually incorrect about mermaids (or anything having to do with the ocean) that they say, and generally mock the fake documentaries mercilessly. It’s going to be a good time, and you should participate. I’ll Storify my favorite contributions.