{"id":41,"date":"2001-09-20T12:18:03","date_gmt":"2001-09-20T19:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2001\/09\/20\/41.html"},"modified":"2001-09-20T12:18:03","modified_gmt":"2001-09-20T19:18:03","slug":"scientific-accuracy-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2001\/09\/20\/scientific-accuracy-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientific accuracy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Interesting article at HMS Beagle on scientific accuracy in movies and TV<\/a>—covers some of the same ground all such articles cover, but talks with (among others) a comparative anatomist who offers consulting services for people doing computer animation.<\/p>\n

(You may have to register (for free) with BioMedNet to get to that page. I registered a while back, and the only mail I've received as a result is their regular \"issue now live\" mailing, which you can opt out of if you're less lazy than I am.)<\/p>\n

HMS Beagle, btw, also carries original science fiction.<\/p>\n

It's interesting: I don't tend to care about the precise accuracy of things I'm not familiar with, but I care a lot about it in areas I am familiar with. For Strange Horizons<\/cite> stories, I try hard to make them as scientifically plausible as possible. That article quotes a Michael Crichton piece<\/a> in which Crichton says: \"In a story like Jurassic Park, to complain of inaccuracy is downright weird. Nobody can make a dinosaur. Therefore, the story is a fantasy. How can accuracy have any meaning in a fantasy?\" I think he's way off-base. All fiction is fictional by definition; what I want is not reality, but verisimilitude. There's a big difference for me between a story that doesn't contradict anything we know about science, a story clearly set in another universe that follows its own internally consistent scientific rules, and a story that appears to be set in our universe but relies heavily on violating known science.<\/p>\n

I have no problem in some cases with vague hand-waving; I almost always prefer that to precise but nonsensical technobabble. \"I fixed up the engines\" is fine with me; \"I reversed the polarity of the neutron flux\" is ridiculous.<\/p>\n

...I just found out that the use of that phrase on Star Trek<\/cite> is actually an in-joke reference to its use on Dr. Who<\/cite>. That makes it much more forgiveable. If you're ever in need of an explanation for a Star Trek<\/cite> phenomenon, btw, you might try some technobabble explanations<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interesting article at HMS Beagle on scientific accuracy in movies and TV\u0097covers some of the same ground all such articles…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}