First Coast News: JU’s White says TV shows like ‘Megaladon’ promote fake science, get on his nerves

Unlike more than 70 percent of Discovery Channel viewers who participated in a recent survey, Dr. Quinton White says he’s certain that the Megaladon giant prehistoric shark species doesn’t exist today.

Therein lies White’s beef with pseudo-documentaries such as Discovery Channel’s “Megaladon: The Monster Shark Lives” and “Mermaids,” White – Jacksonville University’s Marine Science Research Institute executive director — said in a Wednesday, Aug. 8 report on Jacksonville’s First Coast News (WTLV NBC-12 and WJXX ABC-25).

First Coast News reported that White says fake documentaries “get on his nerves” because people accept what they watch on television as fact — even though the information is not corroborated by science.

“I got all these calls about mermaids. They still don’t exist …” White said.

White says in the First Coast News report that the Discovery Channel and other networks are deliberately promoting the possibility that something that doesn’t exist could be real, after all.

“They promote fake science,” he said.

Discovery Channel used fake scientists and doctored footage in “Megaladon,” and afterwards said in a disclaimer that “certain events and characters in this film have been dramatized.”

Here is the First Coast News report: