Scientific and popular media amplified myth despite direct contrary observation

Evidence

When Commodore John Byron landed in Patagonia in 1764, he encountered a formidable group of natives—broad-shouldered, stocky, and inches taller than the average European. They proved quite docile and friendly. However, the newspaper reports of his encounter wildly exaggerated the story, and Patagonians took on an even greater stature and more ferocious aspect. One engraving showed a sailor reaching only as high as the waist of a Patagonian giant, and the Royal Society elevated the topic to serious scientific status. “The engravings took the explorers’ raw material and shaped them into images familiar to Europeans” (Withey 1987, 1175–1176). Legend had taken a late revenge on science. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 606

Categorization

• XREF: A textbook case of the stereotype-as-discourse mechanism Hall theorizes — the representation is decoupled from actual encounter and takes on institutional (‘Royal Society’) legitimacy. — connects to: Media false balance gave a discredited vaccine claim lasting public credibility — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 261
• SEED: Angle: how early scientific institutions credentialed the very stereotypes their methods should have refuted — a genealogy of ‘science washing’ prejudicial representations, relevant to modern Islamophobia.