LUCY THE MISSING LINK TV

One primate paleontology expert bluntly stated, “It’s not a missing link, it’s not even a terribly close relative to monkeys, apes and humans, which is the point they’re trying to make.” The expert further charged that the scientists promoting Ida “ignored 15 years of literature.” It’s a very beautiful fossil, but I didn’t see anything in this paper that told me anything decisive that was new.” It’s not how I like to do science.” Another scientist told, “The PR campaign on this fossil is I think more of a story than the fossil itself.

LUCY THE MISSING LINK TV

One of the scientists who studied Ida admitted to the Wall Street Journal that “there was a TV company involved and time pressure. We have to start thinking the same way in science.” In a statement to the New York Times, a lead scientist in Ida’s team justified the hype: “Any pop band is doing the same. With Google’s eager assistance, Ida went viral: One of the leading search terms that day was “missing link found.” Even the Drudge Report was reeled in by the media frenzy, briefly featuring Ida as the headline story. Skynews told the public that “proof of this transitional species finally confirms Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.”.ScienceDaily and a Discover magazine commentator praised Ida as our “47-million-year-old human ancestor.”.National Geographic called her the “critical ‘missing link’ species.”.Good Morning America and Nightline covered the fossil.The fossil, dubbed “Ida” by her discoverers, was introduced to the media as the “eighth wonder of the world” whose “impact on the world of palaeontology” would be like “an asteroid falling down to Earth.”įamed BBC broadcaster Sir David Attenborough got involved, making a documentary titled Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor: The Link, to explain why Ida is “the link that connects us directly with the rest of the animal kingdom.” Co-sponsored by both the BBC and the History Channel, the program attracted a massive audience.įor those who don’t get their information from cable TV, Ida’s promoters also held a press conference generating a flood of news stories: It was a lure that had successfully led you into a carefully orchestrated PR campaign involving leading paleontologists, top TV networks, the internet’s most popular website (Google), and numerous other media outlets in a coordinated effort to promote evolution to the public. Little did you know that this innocent fossil graphic was not just any link. Nonetheless, you wondered what this cute brown mammal was doing on Google’s home page, so you clicked on the link. This past May 20, there was a good possibility that your day started something like this: You crawled out of bed, logged on to the internet, and soon discovered that Google had changed its banner graphic to display the image of a small, long-tailed fossil primate.īeing the internet-savvy user that you are, you immediately recalled that it’s not uncommon for to change its design to observe holidays or honor famous historical figures.

Lucy the missing link