This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
The quote at the top is partially incorrect. ""Thus Aristotle laid it down that a heavy object falls faster than a light one does. The important thing about this idea is not that he was wrong, but that it never occurred to Aristotle to check it." — Albert Szent-Györgyi de Nagyrápolt, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. " Aristotle is only incorrect when he is discussing a vacuum. If you are in an atmosphere, an object which is heavier than its total air resistance will fall faster than an object lighter than its air resistance (this is the whole concept of parachutes). Even though this quote can be refined to expressly demonstrate the differences in velocity resistance and vacuum, it would take up an entire paragraph, therefore it'd be better for someone to delete this quote entirely, because the way it's written now it makes the site sound stupid.
- The point of that quote is not the laws of physics per-se, but the importance of research. The quote is perfect iMHO as it shows the importance of experimentation and research.
Nibbles: In relation to a debate on another page, would anyone here argue that Did Not Do The Research is sometimes good, in and of itself? Has there ever been a time when you stopped and said, "Wow, I'm so glad that House screwed up how that drug works!", for instance?
The Bad Wolf: RE:24 entry. Yea the british guy could have gotten that stamp if he flew from a non-eu country back into frankford (aka went to america, stoped in frankfurt before going back to the uk). im deleting it.
Phartman: No one's pointed it out yet, but how about the trope where anytime a tornado is depicted, to only dangerous part is the funnel cloud? I call it: Do Not Touch the Funnel Cloud
Kizor: Heh. A relative of Convection, Schmonvection and Lava Pit, don't you think? I'd lump it.
Phartman: Nah. Same concept, totally separate applications. It'd get messy to lump them together. Besides, there are plenty of independant examples to support both.
Octal: Maybe they should both go under the Hollywood Science subsection? Actually, Law of Inverse Recoil, Not the Fall That Kills You…, Infrared Xray Camera, and maybe Soft Glass, Helicopter Blender, and 90% of Your Brain also seem like they would fit under Hollywood Science.
Guesss Who: Something that has bothered me since I was, like, six-the things in Jurassic Park are deinonychus, not velociraptors. Velociraptors were tiny!
Radioactive Zombie: They enlarged the size for dramatic effect. Speaking of which, I don't think we have a "did not do the research on purpose" trope.
I also must admit, this thing sounds like the accused shows are cliches or something.
Robin Adams: Would They Just Didn't Care count as "did not do the research on purpose"?
joeyjojo: no, that's for massive adaptation decay.
Ruthie A: I’d like to add an example from the CSI Season premiere, but I worry that it’s too much of a spoiler. It doesn’t really give anything away, but I suppose certain things could be inferred. Is it too much of a spoiler? And if so, is it too soon to post it?
- In the season eight premiere of CSI, the Nevada desert is bone dry and dusty not more than eight hours after a ‘’flash flood’’. Perhaps this would have been less egregious if the lack of water had not been a plot point. For this southwest dwelling editor and her family, the lack of research turned the last half of what should have been a very dramatic episode into one humongous narm.
Aliaras: Butting in here to say that worse than that (in the same episode!) was how Sara Sidle, a brilliant woman who would have doubtless encountered some form of basic survival lecture during her tenure as a CSI going to odd places decides to leave the large, bright red, clearly identifiable from air object behind in favor of wandering around the desert with a broken arm, carting the broken rearview mirror around with her without ever thinking to maybe make it shiny when viewed from the air. I mean yes, she had to be in trouble for dramatic tension, and yes, it worked on me, but the lack of research made the episode a bit of a Wall Banger
Tanto: I don't watch the show, but my gut says that's not enough of a spoiler to tag, much less cut entirely.
Across The Stars: In Sara's defense, she had been drugged heavily, thoroughly dehydrated for probably a couple of days, and pinned under a car. I know I wouldn't be thinking too clearly at that point, and would, in fact, want to get as far away from the bright red, shiny object that had almost killed me as humanly possible. Besides, how in the hell would she know that they'd be looking for a red car anyway? From what I could see, she'd practically given up already.
((Kite Ryagara)): Perhaps I am not in the correct place, but I merely am not sure where this would best fit. There was a Swiffer sweeper ad a while back concerning a court case. A woman is shown testifying about how she "saw the evidence all over the floor." A lawyer-looking man walks up, clearly the prosecuting attorney, and asks her to please "point at the defendant." She does so, gasps are heard, and the camera tilts to the defendant, an old broom or something along those lines. The defense attorney immediately begins to object to this, followed by the judge banging the gavel and shouting equally words of order and regulation. At the time, I was taking a law class and it just feels like they weren't trying. Where would this fit best?
Mini Nephthys: Is there a subtrope for where real-world religions are portrayed inaccurately? Other than Christianity, so it wouldn't go into Nuns Are Mikos. I'm mainly thinking of a fandom where a Buddhist temple is passed down through the family for generations, and one character's father currently runs it - nobody remembered that Buddhist monks have vows of chastity, apparently.
Antheia: That sounds like Sadly Mythtaken.
joeyjojo: pulled because it's more like one of those Public Domain Character things. like meeting Santa Claus or Dracula.
Zeke: Okay, the image I've posted does not strictly speaking fit the trope description, but I think we use this trope more broadly than just "history, foreign cultures, or the sciences" anyway. And could there possibly be a better example of Not Doing the Research? Capcom of America clearly never even looked at the game before designing box art for it.
[ETA: It's been removed. For the record, it was a picture of the first Mega Man game's preposterous box art, and while very much a case of this trope, I guess it's not that good a representation of it.]
In other news, when did we stop having examples on this page? Not everything falls under one of the subtropes.
Great Pikmin Fan: yah, I really want to post this some where (really):
- Guess what this show is, this is close to the official site, to:
Ed Edd and Eddy are the three mustketeers of adolescence, takiling pimples, big feet, and life's greatest mistery: girls.- from Cartoon Network's site
That show is nothing like that, at all. Sure, it had a few episodes a little bit like it, but that summary makes it look as if it was a edutainment show about puberty...
Obadiahthe Slim: Did Not Do The Research on my Did Not Do The Research Page? Its more likely than you think. New Mexico does have a bit of a bump where the border of Oklahoma is. That picture needs to be replaced. It's accurate.
Trouser Wearing Barbarian: Removed Mermaid Problem, because that's just Fridge Logic.
Puffy Treat: Is anyone seeing Did Not Dothe Research being applied to a -lot- of fantasy film entries, usually for things the screenwriters were probably well aware are fantastical and not realistic? I half expect to see that someone's added it to the entry for Ratatouille, with a snippy note that "Rats can't make humans their puppets by pulling on HAIR! Were Bird and Pinkava ON DRUGS?!?"
- Doom Tay: Yeah, plus there needs to be a subtrope where writers CAN'T do the research, usually because the element in question is too fictional, or asking for research of the subject is too questionable, even though It's for a Book. Does ANYONE know how Petting-Zoo People's ears would really work? Is there really a Square-Cube Law when dinosaurs were able to handle being so huge? Maybe there can be teleporters that work differently than "peel you apart and put you back together" so that, like in Half Life, you only have to worry about being placed in the right spot. But maybe the 'opposite' is the case. We don't know that! And for the second point, how many people got away with asking about how people would react to taking bullets of specific types of guns, or whether a human can survive having animal parts surgically added? If anything, it would be REALLY pointless to call out inaccuracies when they're 'the entire point of the work'. And the Internet forbid Refuge in Audacity doesn't save any of the other examples.
- Jack Wood: It so happens I totally agree with your first point. But running into "Is there really a Square-Cube Law when dinosaurs were able to handle being so huge?" really derailed my attention completely. Dinosaurs were able to be huge for the same reason elephants are: their bodies were actually adapted to being that size, not because they had magic physics and biology defying powers (Okay, the Earth was probably warmer and probably had more oxygen in the atmosphere at that point, but that's beside the basic point.) The trope page explains the fact that just scaling something up or down by an order of magnitude doesn't work. It doesn't say that things can't be large or small.
blackcatmoved example from below indexing on main page. I think it belongs some where else not sure where.
Film: Godzilla vs. Megaguirus - This movie practically rapes this trope especially in concern to astronomical physics. In one scene, a group of scientist plan create a black hole gun that shoots a black hole towards Godzilla so that it will be imprisoned forever. First, black holes are unfathomably dense (hense the divide by zero joke). The only way a black hole can be ejected is if its being influenced by ANOTHER BLACK HOLE! Second, black holes have regions where the gravitational forces are so powerful that not even light can escape them. How could a black hole gun hold a black hole without being sucked into its gravity? Third, the Japanese scientists run a test experiment on the gun by firing it towards a group of buildings, where everything in the immediate vicinity is sucked in and the black hole dissipates afterwards. In reality, a black hole will not just stop and dissapear. Fourth, the scientists try to shrink the black hole 2 meters so that it is easier to fire. The mass of the entire Earth compared to a Black Hole is the size of a pea. With this in mind, where are they possibly going to get enough mass to overcome the mass of the earth?
