Aussie WWTBAM gets it wrong AGAIN!

[CherryPizza]

Last night, Australia saw the episode on which the contestant who was badly served by the \"high court\" question. Also last night, a current affairs program on a rival network aired its story about another contestant who, last November, had to suffer from a mistake made by that show.

In a nutshell, the story goes like this...

The contestant gets to the $125,000 question with his 50:50 and Ask The Audience still available to him. The question was:

The Rosetta Stone is a slab of what?
a) Alabaster   b)Basalt
c) Granite       d)Obsidian

The contestant was not too sure about the answer, so he asked the audience (it may seem odd using an Ask The Audience for the $125K question, but that's a different discussion), and a majority of them went for \"c\" (granite), which was the answer he was leaning towards anyway.

Since he still wasn't sure, he used his 50:50, and the remaining answers were \"b) Basalt\" and \"d) Obsidian\". Taking a punt, he locked in \"b\", but was told that the answer was \"d\", and he left with $32,000.

Then it started to get interesting...

It was believed for many years that the Rosetta Stone was made of Obsidian, but recent research (~1998, IIRC) indicated it was in fact Granite. Therefore, the correct answer was actually eliminated in the 50:50, and the show got it wrong again. The contestant, and a number of viewers tried to follow it up, but producers claimed that they stood by their research.

However, with this other network heavily promoting the story over the weekend, WWTBAM had to swallow its pride and invite the contestant to return, and he will be returning in about a fortnight.

I'm now watching to see what the side-effects are from a TV show overdosing on humble pie

[Matt Ottinger]

It was believed for many years that the Rosetta Stone was made of Obsidian, but recent research (~1998, IIRC) indicated it was in fact Granite.

In the first place, I think you got your basalt and obsidian mixed up.  (Man, I HATE it when that happens.)  Everything I've read says that they've always believed it was made of basalt.

More importantly, as someone who's written a few trivia questions over the years, I can tell you that the worst thing that can happen to you is to have a question this where the answer can be proven correct in any of a hundred books on the subject -- that were written before 1999.  

For some things, you need to be current and you make sure you have the latest information.  But how could anyone writing about something that's been \"true\" for two hundred years be expected to check to see if the composition of the stone might have CHANGED in the last four?

So I feel sorry for the Aussie writers to a point -- but that point is where they think they can possibly get away with defending their research as correct.  Far better to say sure, we did all the research we should have done, and we've got all these sources telling us we're right, but we now see that they're out of date, so hop back up here in the chair and let's try again.  It sounds like that's ultimately the result in this case, but they had to be dragged to that point.

[parliboy]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Jul 15 2003, 12:00 AM\']
For some things, you need to be current and you make sure you have the latest information.  But how could anyone writing about something that's been \"true\" for two hundred years be expected to check to see if the composition of the stone might have CHANGED in the last four?[/quote]
Encarta.com -> Rosetta Stone.

I dunno, seems like it wouldn't have been that difficult.

While I sympathize with their embarrassment, when it's something that produces the right answer by something as simple as that, the writers are gonna have to eat it.

[CherryPizza]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Jul 15 2003, 12:00 AM\']
In the first place, I think you got your basalt and obsidian mixed up.  (Man, I HATE it when that happens.)  Everything I've read says that they've always believed it was made of basalt.

[/quote]
Indeed I did... the contestant locked in Obsidian and was told that the correct answer was Basalt. I have sympathy for the writers to that degree, since the question was probably correct at the time it was written - or to the best of their knowledge... but the fact that they refused to redeem themselves until 8 months later when a rival newtork was exposing the issue is what really ought to be sneered at

[Matt Ottinger]

Encarta.com -> Rosetta Stone.
I dunno, seems like it wouldn't have been that difficult.

You're seeing this in retrospect, and I'm telling you from experience it's not as simple as that.  

Yes, proving them wrong is easy AFTER the fact, when you've heard all the details and you know what you're looking for.  But when you're researching the question and you're seeing all these sources telling you it's basalt, it's simply not going to occur to you to check and see if that's something they've all been wrong about for two centuries.  

As a writer, at some point you trust the sources that are in front of you and you move on to the next question.  Sure, they might have come across a reference to the 1999 discovery in an updated reference -- and I'm sure they wish they had.  But stuff like that just doesn't tend to change, and I can easily see how this got by them.

As Cherry said, the real crime is that they didn't immediately fess up to their mistake once the obvious evidence was presented to them.