Part of the problem is that people, including students and science journalists, sometimes throw away their common sense when faced with something conceptually difficult. Yes, scientific results are very counterintuitive sometimes, but it's still helpful to step back and think about what we expect to be true. For example, the story gave the following example of a mistake: "One passage describing the melting of the polar ice caps said, 'Whales support the rising oceans, because it gives them deeper water to swim in. Sharks on the other hand would be confused by the increased volume of water.' " The reporter clearly failed to ask the obvious question: In an ocean that's thousands of feet deep, why would a sea level rise of a foot or two confuse sharks? Maybe the researchers did in fact come up with some new brilliant theory and supporting data about how sharks would be confused, but the default assumption by the reporter should have been "I missed something here." A check against common sense would go a long way towards preventing such errors.