"Fish gone by 2048"

This was the Pew produced headline that got extensive media play starting in November of 2006. "Unless humans act now, seafood may disappear by 2048, concludes the lead author of a new study that paints a grim picture for ocean and human health. According to the study, the loss of ocean biodiversity is accelerating, and 29 percent of the seafood species humans consume have already crashed. If the long-term trend continues, in 30 years there will be little or no seafood available for sustainable harvest." The lead author of the study, which was published in Science, was Boris Worm from Dalhousie University (slightly more than $1 million in "Big Four" funding). Needless to say, Jane Lubchenco (link) "praised the study for presenting compelling evidence that ecosystems can recover if appropriate action is taken. That said, their first conclusion about the downward spiral [of biodiversity] suggests that the rate of implementation of those recovery tools needs to be sped up quite significantly but just making recommendations doesn't make things happen, unfortunately."  (from Seafood May Be Gone by 2048, Study Says, National Geographic News, 11/02/06).

Since the media storm subsequent to the release of this startling, frightening and obviously totally bogus to the non-alarmist, non-foundation funded scientists worldwide, Boris Worm took about ten giant steps backwards, his retraction reaching it's zenith when he co-authored another paper, Rebuilding Global Fisheries, with University of Washington fisheries scientist Ray Hilborn (who had referred to Worm's projections as "just mind-boggling stupid - link) that was also published in Science in 2009.  

Unfortunately, this fallacy and others still persists in the print and broadcast media, and no one who is responsible for them has done much of anything to correct what are now obvious distortions of what's actually going on in the world's oceans.