{"id":402,"date":"2006-07-18T13:27:46","date_gmt":"2006-07-18T13:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/07\/18\/fictional-science\/"},"modified":"2006-07-18T13:27:46","modified_gmt":"2006-07-18T13:27:46","slug":"fictional-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/07\/18\/fictional-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Fictional Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

The article about physicists in movies<\/a> cited previously had one other thing worth commenting on: the fictional portrayal of the practice of science:<\/p>\n

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All these films illustrate a fundamental pattern for movie science. Rarely is the central scientific concept utterly incorrect, but filmmakers are obviously more interested in creating entertaining stories that sell tickets than in presenting a lesson in elementary physics. They also know that scenes of scientists at a lab bench do not generally make for gripping movie moments. Indeed, the need for drama often pushes the basic scientific idea to the limits of possibility and beyond. To fit within the constraints of a two-hour film and maintain narrative drive, events may also be speeded up and supporting details may be omitted or just plain wrong.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Physicists come off a little better than some– we used to have an archeologist who came to our weekly faculty happy hours, and he could rant at great length about the Indiana Jones effect– but when movies attempt to show scientists at work, the end result is often comically bad. It’s not limited to movies, either– books are also pretty bad about showing the real business of science.<\/p>\n

My favorite praxis mistake has to be the lone genius, the guy who both comes up with the Theory of Everything and<\/strong> uses it to build a time machine in his garage. It makes it easier to keep track of the cast, sure, but these days, the gap between theory and experiment is pretty wide. It’s a rare experimentalist who can significantly advance the state of theory, and there are a great many theorists out there who are a little fuzzy about which end of a soldering iron to hold.<\/p>\n

There’s also the myth of the Eureka Moment– or, rather, the idea that that’s all there is to science. While there are those moments when everything just falls into place, that’s generally the beginning<\/strong> of the work, not the end. You have the Eureka Moment where everything suddenly works, and it all makes sense, and then you have several weeks of meticulous data collection before you have enough evidence to write a paper and get it past peer review. Don’t get me wrong– we live for the Eureka Moments, but there’s a lot of drudge work between those moments and the Nobel Prize.<\/p>\n

So, here’s a question for the audience: What are your favorite (or least favorite) failure modes for fictional portrayals of scientists at work? Alternately, what works of fiction do the best job showing science as it is actually practiced?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The article about physicists in movies cited previously had one other thing worth commenting on: the fictional portrayal of the practice of science: All these films illustrate a fundamental pattern for movie science. Rarely is the central scientific concept utterly incorrect, but filmmakers are obviously more interested in creating entertaining stories that sell tickets than… Continue reading Fictional Science<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,35,7,37,11,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-movies","category-physics","category-pop_culture","category-science","category-television","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}