I’ll keep this brief. A person related to me in a manner I’m too paranoid to disclose, even though he or she is not the messageboard reading type, sent me a document to review- the manuscript for a rather chatty book. The very first page contained the startling revelation that “A duck’s quack doesn’t echo.”
I owe this person a familial duty to read and pass comment on this work, but obviously I’m doubting the veracity of other claims in it, after the opening duck salvo. I suppose I have the option of leading the person who sent it to the font of all Cecillian wisdom, but that would definitely generate some drama. How does one say graciously “I think you may be full of it”?
Or else I could throw up my hands and say that the book is obviously intended as light-hearted and not open that can of worms. I’m sure that a lot of it is interesting and accurate, but I died a little death when I read that sentence. Do I have a duty to the world not to allow my kinfolk to propagate urban (or avian in this case) legends? Why me? Why has this befallen me? Have I not snopesed and straightdoped every fallacious story that crossed my path lo these many years? This is a cruel fate!
Ask the person if she or he would want to know if you found a common mistake. If the response is positive, be prepared to back it up immediately with a print out from a couple of sources.
I think it depends on context. I can forgive that sort of thing in something like Magnolia or 21 Grams, where it’s pretty clear that the audience isn’t expected to take it as gospel.
If, on the other hand, it’s forwarded in a matter-of-fact, non-tongue-in-cheek or representative of a fictional character’s belief kind of way, it would be unkind not to point out that publishing such an assertion would lead to increased general ignorance and (perhaps more persuasively,) increased perception of the author’s ignorance.
If they want proof, the University of Salford actually did an experiment involving a duck in a reverberation chamber. Research funding well-spent, say I. Plus the pictures made me smile.
I’m bracing myself to be the acerbic relative - this isn’t fiction, it’s a collection of “facts”, and at the very least I can suggest that it get fact-checked. I’m probably going to be leaned on to do the fact-checking but there’s no way in hell. Not even for the sake of the baby ducklings. (Won’t somebody please think of the ducklings!?) Either that or the author/compiler will blow me off with an “lol”, and that will be that.
They did this on Mythbusters, too. IIRC, they found that a duck’s quack already looks kind of like an echo, so it was hard to disentangle the echo from the original quack.
Also, I agree that those photos are cute beyond words. Either ducks are just naturally photogenic, or that’s a good photographer.
Was the sentence something like: This idiot claimed that a duck’s quack does not echo so I bitched slapped and took his lunch money for being too stupid to live.
