
Blogger discredits claim Amelia Earhart was taken prisoner by Japan - danso
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/11/blogger-discredits-claim-amelia-earhart-was-taken-prisoner-by-japan
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pluma
I thought the History Channel was already widely considered non-factual.
Aren't half the documentaries about space aliens?

"Source": [http://www.cracked.com/funny-5720-the-history-
channel/](http://www.cracked.com/funny-5720-the-history-channel/)

~~~
lawless123
And the rest are mostly about Hitler, Hitlers dog, Hitlers secretary, Hitlers
lunch.

~~~
VLM
They also went full on Jesus some years back. They're firmly in the blue
collar reality TV camp now, its mostly truck drivers, pawn shops, and
surprisingly, blacksmiths.

Sorta like how the Sci Fi channel was all about pro wrestling, fantasy, action
movies, pretty much anything but science fiction.

When I was a little kid (a long time ago) the snarky wisdom was if a country
had "democratic" in its name, it wasn't. The snarky wisdom today is a cable TV
channel broadcasts everything except what its name would imply. So the History
channel never broadcasts anything factually historical, the sci fi channel
never broadcasts science fiction, or The Learning Channel only broadcasts
fashion and style never anything educational. "Home and Garden" TV is endless
real estate "FIRE sector" complimentary copy, containing no garden shows. Even
the weather channel pretty much stopped weather forecasts and replaced it with
agitprop documentaries that the faithful don't watch because they're already
faithful and the unfaithful don't watch because they're nonbelievers.

~~~
nickpeterson
Similarly, if you have science in the name, no science is generally involved:
Political Science, Computer Science, Exercise Science...

~~~
michaelmior
Computer science at least in my experience of it, definitely involves lots of
science. I can't speak for the others.

~~~
throwitlong
In which way - interested - does it involve science or what is your definition
of science?

~~~
ethelward
Not OP, but maths, maths again, and still more maths.

Type systems, algorithm proof, complexity, boolean logic...

And if we go into CS applications: games are maths, bioinformatics is maths,
accounting is maths, ...

Or in the implementation: electronics, semi-conductors physic, eletrical
engineering, ...

~~~
bryondowd
I wouldn't think math is science. Otherwise, the acronym STEM (Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Math) would be awfully redundant. And yeah, I'd
say CS is closer to math than science, except maybe when you look at things
like manufacturing processes and such, which is more of an engineering or
materials science track.

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gwern
Another nifty example of how search engines and digitization are improving
research. How would anyone have ever discovered that one super-obscure
Japanese travel book happened to include one old black-white photo? This
reminds me of another Japanese-related example of search-engine-driven
historical research, the castaway Australian sailors:
[https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2017/may/28/austr...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2017/may/28/australian-convict-pirates-in-japan-evidence-of-1830-voyage-
unearthed) Or more literarily, the recently-discovered Walt Whitman novel
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/arts/in-a-walt-whitman-
no...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/arts/in-a-walt-whitman-novel-lost-
for-165-years-clues-to-leaves-of-grass.html)

~~~
badosu
Indeed. Moving to the opposite direction though I wonder when will we discover
the first pseudo-historical artifacts generated by AI (speeches, art, photos,
and even videos).

This is the greatest weapon ever, the ministry of truth would never dream of
something like this!

~~~
badosu
Not on mobile anymore, some examples:

\- [https://github.com/junyanz/CycleGAN](https://github.com/junyanz/CycleGAN)
(drawings to photorealistic images and perhaps videos)

\- [https://lyrebird.ai/demo](https://lyrebird.ai/demo) (inflamatory or
incriminatory speeches)

\- [https://deepart.io/](https://deepart.io/) (forgotten works of art)

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autokad
i remember watching ww II battle documentaries, and they would be talking
about a battle, say battle of the budge. and I would be like 'wait a second,
that stock video footage was a corsair shooting a drone.

then it hit me that almost all of the video shown on these things is just for
aesthetics / effect and not actual footage from the topic in question.

then it hit me, the news was actually doing the same thing! like they would be
talking about an event concerning the nimitz and would show stock video
footage of the JFK

~~~
arkitaip
It's the equivalent of tech's hacker baddie wearing sunglasses and a hoodie in
a dark room with menacing green letters on the monitor.

~~~
ryandrake
Think about how much inaccuracy and nonsense you can point out (because you
are an expert) any time you see/read mainstream reporting on technology. Now
extrapolate that to other areas of reporting. It's hard to know what to
believe or who's credible.

~~~
ojilles
Gell-Mann Amnesia effect?

[http://www.omsj.org/blogs/gell-mann-effect](http://www.omsj.org/blogs/gell-
mann-effect)

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flippyhead
Besides a couple national newspapers I pretty much don't read or watch
anything online or on TV anymore that purports to be factual. This kind of
thing is just too common, I've completely lost trust in a lot of the media
available to me.

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JBReefer
Isn't that s very serious issue? I absolutely agree that journalistic/non-
fiction integrity has collapsed in the post-print world, but what can we do
about it?

When your choice is Vox or Breitbart, that's kind of a turd sandwich.

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phkahler
The best part is the photo credit:

>> The woman said to resemble pilot Amelia Earhart is seen sitting on the dock
in the centre of the picture. Photograph: Reuters

So Reuters is falsely taking credit for a photo when they didn't know its
origin. Journalistic integrity is long dead.

~~~
phkahler
Oh shit there's this:

>> The documentary, hosted by former FBI executive assistant director Shawn
Henry, also alleges a cover-up, claiming that the US government knew of her
whereabouts but did nothing to rescue her.

So (former) government officials are promoting false notions of government
conspiracies. It's all theater folks. We are being manipulated by everyone.

~~~
Steko
Interestingly enough, Shawn Henry was the head of the FBI Cyber division and,
after leaving, became President of Services at CrowdStrike which was involved
in investigating the DNC hack by the Russians.

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criddell
I wonder if History Channel will update their website with this information?
It seems like if they actually give a damn about history, they should.

~~~
toxican
spoiler alert: They have not given a damn about history in a looong time.

~~~
qbrass
It was never about giving a damn about history. It was about turning a cheap
source of content into a channel when cable service providers were looking for
new channels to air.

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versteegen
Thank goodness. It's really unpleasant to see such history-rewriting claims
made in the global press based on such flimsy evidence.

~~~
dpark
Not just flimsy. Complete trash. There is more resolution in the typical forum
emoji than in the face of the man claimed to be Noonan. And the person claimed
to be Earhart has their back turned. It's not even clear that it's a woman.
All the people involved in this should be ashamed.

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jorgec
The proof was stupid. It shows the back of some person and the photo concludes
that its Amelia.

About this topic, its amazing how many people claim that its pro-science but
never ask for proof, or scientific method.

~~~
Bartweiss
Most depressing: "Kota Yamano, a military history blogger who unearthed the
Japanese photograph, said it took him just 30 minutes to effectively debunk
the documentary’s central claim."

It was shoddy evidence, but it was also trivially disproven. Just... no one
cared.

~~~
jaclaz
Worse than that, the host wasn't a "common" investigator (and later executive
assistant director) at the FBI, he was a specialist in computer crime, his
bio:

[https://www.crowdstrike.com/shawn-henry/](https://www.crowdstrike.com/shawn-
henry/)

>... is credited with boosting the FBI’s computer crime and cybersecurity
investigative capabilities. He oversaw computer crime investigations spanning
the globe, including denial-of-service attacks, bank and corporate breaches,
and state-sponsored intrusions. He posted FBI cyberexperts in police agencies
around the world, including the Netherlands, Romania, Ukraine and Estonia.

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WalterBright
There's no particular mystery. Navigation in those days was rudimentary - not
good enough to fly long distances across the Pacific and try to hit a tiny
island at the limit of your fuel.

She missed the island, ran out of fuel, and crashed into the Pacific.

I saw a documentary on her long ago, and she was known to be sloppy in
navigation, careless in handling the airplane, arrogant in dealing with her
navigator, and would take unnecessary risks with the weather. It's all a
recipe for disaster when taking a high risk flight.

It's all too easy to die in an airplane if you don't have a mania for doing it
perfectly every time. People also had a hard time believing JFK Jr died
because of a perfectly mundane mistake on a routine flight.

~~~
shawnbaden
This reminded me of a passage on pilot checklists from The Checklist Manifesto
by Atul Gawande:

> Commercial pilots have been using checklists for decades. Gawande traces
> this back to a fly-off at Wright Field, Ohio, in 1935, when the Army Air
> Force was choosing its new bomber. Boeing's entry, the B-17, would later be
> built by the thousands, but on that first flight it took off, stalled,
> crashed and burned. The new airplane was complicated, and the pilot, who was
> highly experienced, had forgotten a routine step. > > From
> [http://old.seattletimes.com/html/books/2010737113_br08checkl...](http://old.seattletimes.com/html/books/2010737113_br08checklist.html)

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lawless123
There are always so many jokers making money speculating on things like this,
it's nice to see some taken down a peg.

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notadoc
Is this suggesting that the same TV network which airs a show called "ANCIENT
ALIENS" would have some completely inaccurate and poorly researched easily
debunked claim on one of their TV shows?

What's next? Is some blogger going to reveal to the world that Seinfeld and
Star Trek aren't real too??

~~~
snickerbockers
>What's next? Is some blogger going to reveal to the world that Seinfeld and
Star Trek aren't real too??

On the contrary, this means that the episode of Voyager where Amelia Earhart
was revealed to be transported to the Delta Quadrant can still happen.

~~~
roryisok
Give us the 37s!

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nikdaheratik
It's kind of funny how the "History" channel is turning into the "Unsolved
Mysteries" channel. Maybe they'll buy up the rights to re-air that old show
and go full retro with UFO conspiracies and the like.

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thrillgore
Now there's a clickbaity title.

