The portrayal of Scientists and scientific breakthroughs in sci-fi

[Spaceception]

How should it be portrayed?

 

I think scientific accuracy is something that more science fiction needs. But another important aspect is the portrayal of people who make those discoveries. And how it happens. So what are some glaring problems with it, and how should it be remedied? Are there examples of acceptable simplification, to avoid boredom?

And a question directly related: If nothing else, what do you wish would absolutely just die in common portrayals?

 

I hope that this thread is okay here.

[kerbiloid]

The Unseen University of Ankh-Morpork is the most perfect portrait forevah.

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, Spaceception said:

How should it be portrayed?

 

I think scientific accuracy is something that more science fiction needs. But another important aspect is the portrayal of people who make those discoveries. And how it happens. So what are some glaring problems with it, and how should it be remedied? Are there examples of acceptable simplification, to avoid boredom?

And a question directly related: If nothing else, what do you wish would absolutely just die in common portrayals?

 

I hope that this thread is okay here.

 

Are you a scifi creator? Otherwise this is just talking heads... fun, but nothing produced.

 

As for your question, the answer is... hard?

I mean in life science is the product of generations of development. It's something that can better be displayed in moments of discovery to development and last to production. Even then the science does not end. We have cars and rockets and still have ways of making them more efficient via science. It's only corporate interests to make maximum profits and safety concerns that prevents major redesigns.

 

Science is related to technology, so technology implies a certain mastery of various sciences.

Basically, unless you're willing to do enough research over several hours, you won't know or understand the associated technology and sciences that a fictional civilization should have available to them if they have the capability to do specific thing.

[Codraroll]

1 hour ago, Spaceception said:

And a question directly related: If nothing else, what do you wish would absolutely just die in common portrayals?

Funnily enough, I can't think of any straightforward examples that follow the entire recipe, but tell me you haven't heard this story before:

Our hero, a retired military officer, is visited at his farm by his former superior ten years after he quit the military. The superior tells him that the Research Facility has found something they want him to have a look at. During an operation in (insert current war), a sudden incident happened out of nowhere and a whole platoon went missing. The last transmission heard from the platoon was a strange blip on the radar/noise/signal cut-out/sensor reading similar to what was observed in the classified incident back in (insert war that happened a decade or two earlier) where our pilot hero lost many of his men and which caused him to retire. Cue our hero saying "they're back" for the trailer.

Our hero is taken to the Air Force/Space Force/Army Force/Underground Force/Navy Force base, stopping for a moment to admire a museum piece of an aircraft/spacecraft/car/boat/drill tank from his days in service on display outside the building. He's then taken straight into a briefing with a live link to soldiers in the field, going to see what happened to the platoon that went missing in the previous incident. He observes the scene for three seconds and asks one question, whereupon he scolds the general and scientists for making rookie mistakes, asking them at once to pull out the soldiers. Just as he does so, The Incident happens again and the link to the soldiers is lost.

Our hero is given command of a team of special ops soldiers, and asked to investigate The Incident further. There's a scene in a big hangar-like laboratory where all sorts of generic science/manufacturing/equipment testing is performed at scattered tables out in the open. Here, the team is kitted out with the best and most advanced equipment government money can buy. As our hero gears up, he manages to break the fragile equipment by poking it with a finger, but easily wins a training exercise by relying on his instincts instead of the equipment. The scientists are all upset that he didn't use the equipment the way he was supposed to. Cue a quip about the equipment not being designed the way it was supposed to.

The little platoon is sent out to encounter The Incident, in the best and newest aircraft/spacecraft/car/boat/drill tank available. Something mysterious happens that disables all the equipment and renders it useless, and after a thrilling action scene, our hero and a few of the soldiers barely escape with their lives. When they manage it back to base, they hear that The Incident is spreading, and the scientists have no idea what is happening. Fortunately, our hero has made an observation nobody else has, and he knows how to counter The Incident.

The scientists are eager to equip him with the newest and best tech. Our hero refuses. The scientists insist, saying that "this is the best and most advanced piece of technology ever assembled." Cue something breaking spectacularly in the background, proving our hero right. Instead, the museum piece from the display outside the building is brought up on the runway, filled with fuel and obsolete ammunition, and our hero takes it to The Incident. The old equipment is immune to whatever disables the modern equipment. Our hero wins the day and saves the world.

 

Anyway, while the story might be too clichéd to ever have been written in full, the sentiments linger in Hollywood screenwriting: Don't rely on anything modern, because it will always be useless. Trust your own experience instead of that of professionals - they are always wrong. The equipment used Back In Your Day is superior to anything that has been made since. Old technology will save us. The very newest generation of tech is likely to be outright evil. People in lab coats know nothing. Expertise is useless unless it comes from a guy without a formal education. One lone scientist may be right, but the entire scientific community is generally wrong. And of course, love conquers all.

If the story is sci-fi, always expect the heroes to represent the old ways, the famers, the everyman, while the technologically advanced society is evil. The Empire furnishes their extravagant headquarters in polished metal and sleek iPod lines where not a speck of dust is visible. The resistance base is dirty, untidy, and full of outdated tech hobbled together with tape and wire. Small woodland creatures with sticks and stones will eventually defeat the tanks and lasers of the Empire. Sleek and modern = evil and decadent, old and used = salt of the Earth (at least up to a certain point - if the grime and wear extends to poor lightning as well as poor cleaning, it crosses over into being the lair of a serial killer).

Star Wars is the prime example here, but you can see it in The Hunger Games or Pacific Rim too. The Jurassic Park series is basically all about how teeth and claws are better than guns and how science brings nothing but hubris. Same goes for the recent Planet of the Apes trilogy. I believe Battleship made a similar point about old vs. new technology, although I didn't watch it. In Armageddon, a bunch of oil drillers outsmart all of NASA for an operation in space. In Independence Day, a TV repair man creates a computer virus that destroys the alien mothership while the scientists at Area 51 are killed by the very thing they are supposed to have been studying for years.

I'm a little annoyed with this "science is useless and technology is evil" narrative, to say the least.

[G'th]

^ Thats the nice thing about Interstellar. It turns the whole "science evil" trope on its head. Often in a very blunt an direct way. 

I think part of that comes from the degradation of the "space cowboy" trope that started in the pre-Space Race era and really became solidified during Mercury and up into Apollo. 

 

As to the topic though, scientific breakthroughs are always rushed for the sake of the movie. Hell, even when its something relatively simplistic like figuring out a space problem its often rushed. Take for instance Apollo 13. The eventual start up procedures for the Command Module in real life were pulled together by like 6 key people with help from IIRC a dozen others. But in the movie its cut down to Mattingly and one other guy. 

But where Apollo 13 does it right is by not trivializing the entire thing. The entire sequence of events in the movie for getting the Command Module turned back on keeps the actual importance of it where it really was without undercutting how much of an unknown it was. 

Edited October 17, 2019 by G'th

[radonek]

5 minutes ago, G'th said:

Thats the nice thing about Interstellar. It turns the whole "science evil" trope on its head. Often in a very blunt an direct way. 

Nah, it still had a mad scientist to fill the quota. 

[G'th]

7 minutes ago, radonek said:

Nah, it still had a mad scientist to fill the quota. 

Well I wouldn't say mad scientist, if you're referring to Damon's character. But it does fill the same sort of niche though you're right on that. 

[DDE]

5 hours ago, Spaceception said:

Are there examples of acceptable simplification, to avoid boredom?

I'm not sure there are.

We're in the era of Big Science. Big Science is boring and inaccessible to laymen. In fact, I blame this for much of the drop in confidence in science overall.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, G'th said:

Well I wouldn't say mad scientist, if you're referring to Damon's character. But it does fill the same sort of niche though you're right on that. 

From the point of view of an average person, all scientists are a bit nuts.  The era when you could make discoveries just by a bit of logical thinking and a bit of clever experimentation is long gone. Today, you have to look at what we already know from a truly non-obvious angle, and that, by definition, requires you to think differently than most other people (there is a lot of good work done by "small steps" and just running known experiments on new subjects, but they tend not to be Nobel-winning discoveries, even if they enable them). Also, considering what many of them earn, one could make a good case for them being mad just for becoming scientists, as opposed to, say, doctors or engineers.  It's not the sort of thing you do for money.

In proper SF, anti-intellectualism simply has no place, seeing as the whole "science" part is important. The "science is bad" trope comes mostly from fantasy that has nothing to do with actual science, and is classified as SF solely for the techy setting. I think that this is a reflection of huge part of modern society, specifically that the dumb, having been increasingly marginalized by the intelligent, are desperately trying to cling to something they can understand, trying to believe that they have something, anything that's worth as much as intelligence and education. It's easy for them to cheer for a farm boy fighting evil scientists, because the former is one of them, and the latter are their betters, whom they envy. 

2 minutes ago, DDE said:

We're in the era of Big Science. Big Science is boring and inaccessible to laymen. In fact, I blame this for much of the drop in confidence in science overall.

Partially, yes, but I think the other factor has been the sheer accessibility of contrary opinions. Media used to be the "fourth branch of power". If you read something in a newspaper, you basically had to believe that, or accept that you know nothing. Now it isn't so, and everyone can find support for everything. This means that scientific consensus doesn't have the monopoly on credibility anymore. Science was always seen as "out of reach" of the common man, the "ivory tower" of science is a rather old notion. This is also where "believing in science" thing comes from. For a scientist, science is based on evidence, but for someone without the mental capability to understand the evidence, it's based on belief in those that do have that capability. Indeed, quite often myths pop up based on either outdated science (which is why I'm worried about metallic hydrogen in KSP) or "common sense" ideas, based on "everyday evidence" of how things should work, instead of how they actually work, as proven by actual experiments. For someone without the intelligence to understand the matter, these myths look more credible than Big Science.

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, G'th said:

^ Thats the nice thing about Interstellar. It turns the whole "science evil" trope on its head. Often in a very blunt an direct way. 

I think part of that comes from the degradation of the "space cowboy" trope that started in the pre-Space Race era and really became solidified during Mercury and up into Apollo. 

As to the topic though, scientific breakthroughs are always rushed for the sake of the movie. Hell, even when its something relatively simplistic like figuring out a space problem its often rushed. Take for instance Apollo 13. The eventual start up procedures for the Command Module in real life were pulled together by like 6 key people with help from IIRC a dozen others. But in the movie its cut down to Mattingly and one other guy. 

But where Apollo 13 does it right is by not trivializing the entire thing. The entire sequence of events in the movie for getting the Command Module turned back on keeps the actual importance of it where it really was without undercutting how much of an unknown it was. 

Its an movie thing, movies need action or drama and have an 2 hour window. 

[sh1pman]

6 hours ago, Spaceception said:

I think scientific accuracy is something that more science fiction needs. But another important aspect is the portrayal of people who make those discoveries. And how it happens. So what are some glaring problems with it, and how should it be remedied? Are there examples of acceptable simplification, to avoid boredom?.

Well, from my experience in chemistry research, 75% of time it’s just sitting in front of a monitor or a laptop. Another 15% is sitting around the table, discussing things with colleagues and students with tea and snacks. Only 10% of time is actually spent working in white lab coats with glassware and plasticware. So a realistic depiction of scientists at work would probably be quite boring. 

[Spacescifi]

11 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

Well, from my experience in chemistry research, 75% of time it’s just sitting in front of a monitor or a laptop. Another 15% is sitting around the table, discussing things with colleagues and students with tea and snacks. Only 10% of time is actually spent working in white lab coats with glassware and plasticware. So a realistic depiction of scientists at work would probably be quite boring. 

 

Fictionally the persobalities could still make it interesting. One scientist may be charismatic while another may be more of a bookworm, and still another one who might be very critical. And when you get a group of guys together, one of them will always be a joker.

[sh1pman]

Just now, Spacescifi said:

One scientist may be charismatic while another may be more of a bookworm, and still another one who might be very critical

Oh yes, this is 100% true IRL. One has huge temper and self-control issues, another always tells bad jokes and stupid pranks, another possesses a Buddhist virtue of infinite patience and lack of concern for material world, and then there’s the Boss...

[Codraroll]

3 hours ago, G'th said:

Thats the nice thing about Interstellar. It turns the whole "science evil" trope on its head. Often in a very blunt an direct way. 

On the contrary, I don't think Interstellar does such a good job of portraying science either.

At the beginning of the movie, the main character's son is told that he shouldn't study science, because society needs more farmers due to the ecosystem collapse. You know, a problem to be figured out through agriculture (not through agriculture research, just through growing more crops) and not by scientists. Society seems to tackle the problem of blights and crop failure with "well, this planet is screwed, time to find another one". Because I guess research into blight-resistant crops wouldn't help at all. I also seem to recall that the government had begun to promote conspiracy theories to discredit science and engineering, so that more people would go into farming jobs. The scene portrays science as both unable to solve problems, and an unnecessary pastime when a situation comes along to call for farmers.

Later on, the infuriating scene on the planet deep in the black hole's gravity well. Before they descend to the surface, they tell each other "As we all know because we all have degrees in this sort of thing, the high gravity on the planet means one hour on the surface is like 25 years outside here." "Yes, when one hour passes down there, 25 years will have passed up here where I'm staying." "One hour there means 25 years here, got it." (and so on a few times - they repeat that "one hour = 25 years" thing for a while to make sure the audience really understands it). Then they arrive on that very surface to find out to their great surprise that the beacon that had kept sending emergency signals for 25 years was still active because... only one hour had passed on the surface! Who could have foreseen that! And then they go back up to rendezvous with the mothership, and are shocked to find the guy onboard to be 25 years older. It's also a plot point that massive tidal forces from the black hole would regularly send enormous tidal waves around the planet, but everybody fails to notice this before they land. In short, the entire scene portrays scientists as incompetent.

And then at the very end, they throw science out the window and decide to show how feelings and intuitions are better tools for making decisions rather than assessing the facts, and it produces better results too! To put it in the words of this Cracked.com article:

Quote

When Matthew McConaughey and his crew are low on fuel and have to figure out which planet they should pick to colonize, Anne Hathaway's character thinks it should be the one currently inhabited by the guy she has a crush on -- simply for that reason. To defend her decision, she goes on a monologue about how the love transcends science and they should trust it above reason, because she really feels that it's the right move to go to Planet Boyfriend.

(...)

Of course, it's fine for a character in a story to ignore reason and blindly pursue their own goals for selfish personal reasons, but it turns out Hathaway was right all along. Love truly does turn out to be more powerful than our silly notions of science. They double down on this theme when McConaughey plunges into a black hole and is somehow able to use his daughter's love to travel through time.

Cracked actually has another pair of articles about the stupid portrayal of science in movies that would be relevant to this thread. Read them, they're a delight.

[DDE]

2 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

Society seems to tackle the problem of blights and crop failure with "well, this planet is screwed, time to find another one". Because I guess research into blight-resistant crops wouldn't help at all.

The Blight is over-the-top stuff, an alien terraforming parasite that is methodically decreasing the amount of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere.

That, and NASA went underground because USG was trying to have them disperse bioweapons for worldwide population control.

Great worldbuilding, guys.

1 hour ago, Dragon01 said:

Partially, yes, but I think the other factor has been the sheer accessibility of contrary opinions. Media used to be the "fourth branch of power". If you read something in a newspaper, you basically had to believe that, or accept that you know nothing. Now it isn't so, and everyone can find support for everything.

I think you're at least partially overestimating the effect. Social media made the cauldron boil, but bad ideas were just as able to proliferate.

[Guest]

30 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

Well, from my experience in chemistry research, 75% of time it’s just sitting in front of a monitor or a laptop. Another 15% is sitting around the table, discussing things with colleagues and students with tea and snacks. Only 10% of time is actually spent working in white lab coats with glassware and plasticware. So a realistic depiction of scientists at work would probably be quite boring. 

To be fair, most jobs are like that. An average Marine's life consists on standing around and waiting, cleaning (lots of this), sitting around keeping eye on things, and exercising (as in, running around and lifting weights). For most, there's a small handful of moments when they get to shoot guns and rockets, maybe do some disaster relief or, if deployed to a war zone, actual combat. Being an officer sucks less, but it's also boring to watch, and this goes even for aviators, even though just flying a military jet around is rather cool. They still spend much less time in the air than one may think. A realistic depiction of almost anything, if shown "warts and all", would be boring, unless people themselves are interesting enough to watch. 

A good way to handle that, in a book, at least, is to give lip service to the boring part, while focusing on the cool parts. Which, to think of it, is kind of how we remember those things, anyway. That 10% of the time while you're fiddling with chemicals on the bench is memorable and is where all the "stories from the lab" come from, and there's an occasional flash of brilliance during a meeting with colleagues that gets remembered, while the rest just blends together in a large, forgettable blob. 

[Spacescifi]

19 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

Oh yes, this is 100% true IRL. One has huge temper and self-control issues, another always tells bad jokes and stupid pranks, another possesses a Buddhist virtue of infinite patience and lack of concern for material world, and then there’s the Boss...

And therein lies your story!

 

It is always interesting to learn that the people who were greatly talented or smart people were often also flawed in other ways (Mozart was poor at managing his finances so he ended up begging his friend for money several times).

By the way... tell me more about the boss character type scientist.

Lemme guess, he is some person is really strict because he can lose his job if his lower scientists working undet him screw up right?

 

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, DDE said:

I think you're at least partially overestimating the effect. Social media made the cauldron boil, but bad ideas were just as able to proliferate.

Yes, but not as widely or globally as today. People did not choose their social circle back then, or at least not as much. If someone held a strange, but otherwise isolated belief, it was really hard to escape the pressure to conform. The best way to kill an idea is to surround everyone who holds it with people who don't. Now, you can find an echo chamber for everything. Before, bad ideas still proliferated, but they died after media has found another hot story to trumpet about. Not that they weren't holdouts, but they were localized enough to be irrelevant. Science, on the other hand, was a constant, taught in schools to everyone. Most myths from that era were based on bad or outdated science (at least, from what I've seen), and were usually accepted as truth at some point of time.

[sh1pman]

Just now, Spacescifi said:

Lemme guess, he is some person is really strict because he can lose his job if his lower scientists working undet him screw up right?

I had 2 different bosses. The first is the Buddhist-type that you wouldn’t even know he’s there until someone calls him by a phone. Extremely busy, 12-14 hours at work every day, talks only to other professors and never to us mere mortals. Didn’t even attend lab seminars or other events like birthday parties. That’s why there was his «lieutenant» or second-in-command, senior researcher who organized the work and events. 

The second was (and is) the polar opposite. Very involved, remembers your deadlines better than you, very nervous about every project, paper, and grant in the lab. Backbone of the group, basically. Has lunch with students every day. Arguments between the Boss and the person who has rage issues get so loud and unbearable that I sometimes have to leave the room to keep my sanity. 

[Codraroll]

27 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

A realistic depiction of almost anything, if shown "warts and all", would be boring, unless people themselves are interesting enough to watch. 

Or unless they take the Hot Fuzz approach, and shoot the mundane stuff with fast cuts and dramatic music. Seriously, that movie contains an ungodly amount of paperwork you barely notice because it's made to look cool.

[Guest]

Yes, but that one was comedy. If you make it silly, you can usually fit anything in a comedy. Serious depictions are tougher to make interesting. It is possible to write an interesting dramatic story about bureaucrats, though comedies are easier, seeing as bureaucracies in general tend to be somewhat ridiculous even in reality, unless you have a very good idea of what all this paperwork is good for (and sometimes even then).

[Spacescifi]

22 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

Yes, but that one was comedy. If you make it silly, you can usually fit anything in a comedy. Serious depictions are tougher to make interesting. It is possible to write an interesting dramatic story about bureaucrats, though comedies are easier, seeing as bureaucracies in general tend to be somewhat ridiculous even in reality, unless you have a very good idea of what all this paperwork is good for (and sometimes even then).

Not to totally derail the thread, but I am asking you.... what paperwork would you eliminate from work and government if you had the power?

 

I know much information must be recorded, but what would you eliminate if you could?

 

I would eliminate all those forms you have to sign to verify.

Instead I would send a link to a website that explained all you were giving the right to sign for in PLAIN ENGLISH, not legalise.

You would be required to link up and read the information and also be quizzed on it to ensure you know what you signed up for. If you fail the quiz, then you must retake it a week later.

But when you sign... I would only make you do it once!

[kerbiloid]

9 hours ago, sh1pman said:

75% of time it’s just sitting in front of a monitor or a laptop

surfing wiki. It knows everything.

9 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

And when you get a group of guys together, one of them will always be a joker.

Spoiler

9 hours ago, sh1pman said:

One has huge temper and self-control issues, another always tells bad jokes and stupid pranks, another possesses a Buddhist virtue of infinite patience and lack of concern for material world, and then there’s the Boss...

Spoiler

 

***

Quote

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Until XX it was the Age of Mages, when standalone freaks enthusiasts were mining particles of knowledge.

Since XX it's the Age of Clerics (in the fantasy games sense of the word), when a chorus of apprentices casts a combine spell to enforce their Dean's magic with mana.

[ChrisSpace]

16 hours ago, Spaceception said:

I think scientific accuracy is something that more science fiction needs. But another important aspect is the portrayal of people who make those discoveries. And how it happens. So what are some glaring problems with it, and how should it be remedied? Are there examples of acceptable simplification, to avoid boredom?

Well, something I've noticed is that scientific breakthroughs are most often portrayed as being the work of just one inventor or scientist, rather than a large team or group of teams. It certainly used to be the case that individuals could single-handedly create new technologies, but these days that simply isn't the case.

For reference, look at everything Nikola Telsa did pretty much on his own, and then look at how many people the Manhattan Project took.

[magnemoe]

23 hours ago, DDE said:

The Blight is over-the-top stuff, an alien terraforming parasite that is methodically decreasing the amount of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere.

That, and NASA went underground because USG was trying to have them disperse bioweapons for worldwide population control.

Great worldbuilding, guys.

True, Idiot plot is an term used then the plot require all major characters to be totalt idiots for it to work: the heroes, the villains and the support characters and over time, not one major blunder. 
And nothing complex like an housing boble about to break but using weather satellites to control the weather. 
And then manages to mess that plot hole wide open to add others. 
No the surprising part was not getting the T72 tank past airport security, its not the stuff they are looking for after all. Its getting it on to the plane as carry on luggage. Yes I had to stuff it on the hold at the end.