History Main / ScienceIsUseless

If there's any fair justification for this, it's that the scientist is operating only on [[DumbIsGood booksmarts and theory]], or using a untested prototype, and thus lacks the experience necessary to win. Perhaps after lessons learned the first time, a series of rematches would actually go in the scientist's favor from then on. Because of the attitude behind this trope, this rarely happens.

Very much related to DumbIsGood and RockBeatsLaser. Might somehow be related to ReedRichardsIsUseless. See also the physical equivalents TechnicianVersusPerformer (where TheGift overcomes intense training) and GoodOldFisticuffs (where simple fists beats flashy kicks).

'''Example'''
* This is OlderThanRadio due to the legend of John Henry, which is perhaps the defining example. Steel-driving man versus steel-driving machine... Man wins, but dies soon after. Even the mightiest of steel drivin' men would have to kill himself to barely beat out modern machinery. Man might win the moral victory, but machinery wins the long race.
* Amino High School in ''{{Eyeshield 21}}'' - whilst they have turned themselves into impossibly large-muscled superhumans using a variety of advanced methods, the Devilbats win in part because they've just returned from their TrainingFromHell, "the Death March." Subverted in that it's explained ''why'' they lost: the Amino team may be juiced-up and muscular, but their minimal training left them with poor endurance and a mediocre grasp of football fundamentals compared to the Devil Bats.
* ''RockyIV''. Ivan Drago is given steroids, computer monitors and high-tech work-out equipment to show his superhuman development. Rocky trains with farm equipment in a barn. In spite of being physically inferior, Rocky wins the day through heart. This is a bit of a case of ScienceMarchesOn, as strength-training machines such as those used by Drago have been revealed to be inferior to Rocky's old-fashioned free weights.
* In ''ShaolinSoccer'', the monks use their supernatural kung fu techniques against Team Evil's American steroids and high-tech training. The monks can only barely hang on, but ultimately pull out the victory with the unbeatable combination of [[ChekhovsGun two powerful techniques]].
* The baking contest between Kazuma Azuma and Shigeru Kanmuri in ''YakitateJapan''. Shigeru is a Harvard graduate majoring in food science, whereas Kazuma is the GeniusDitz, who works mainly by intuition and random inspiration. Kazuma wins, of course.
* In ''{{Twister}}'', TheRival is almost totally dependent on his weather-tracking technology to find and rate tornadoes while the heroes use their gut instincts and, more importantly, their past experiences with giant storms. However, he had simply taken the heroes' technology and gotten corporate backing - all the concept and experiments behind it had been done by the heroes, ''who were better scientists than he was''.
* The ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'' series had an example where Ash was up against a trainer who constantly statistically analysed all the Pokemons' abilities and used it to direct his Pokemon in battle. While this served him well for a time, when battling Ash, the weakness was exposed that when the battle got too fast, he couldn't focus on both his Pokemon and his laptop at the same time. (That and the fact that Ash's Pokemon started giving off [[ReadingsAreOffTheScale "impossible" numbers]]).
** Another Pokemon example came when Ash battled his Pikachu against the Cubone of an InsufferableGenius from the Pokemon Academy. Due to type advantage, Cubone was immune to Pikachu's electricity, but Ash was able to beat it by battling with trickery and speed. The genius was taken back by this idea, having fought her Pokemon mostly in simulators and never seen a Pikachu win without electricity.
* More clear in RobotechTheShadowChronicles, where Lt. Sterling points out "Skill over Technology". And [[spoiler: humans indeed win the combat against robotic shadows]]
* Virtually every series featuring combat robots will have them defeated by human opponents. If there are different groups of humans, the one with ''less'' tech will win (Like Vipers Mk II in Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|Reimagined}}).
* In ''Soldier'', Kurt Russell plays a veteran super-soldier who is pit against a group of genetically-engineered uber-soldiers. Russell loses to the new soldiers in purely physical contests, but when it comes to the battlefield, he slaughters them all single-handedly using his superior tactics (read: any tactics whatsoever) and cunning gained from years of experience.
* Possibly played in Discworld/ReaperMan, where Death is just barely beaten in a corn-harvesting competition by a "combination harvester". Though this is because Death insists on harvesting the corn one stalk at a time...
* In CrushGearTurbo manga, the final match is Kouya against Heinrich. Heinrich is trained to perfect his Vander Geshtpenst technique down to patterns with aid of machines and trains with help of cardiographs, etc. Kouya nonetheless beats him at his own game. Subverted that the ultimate cause of Heinrich's loss is that he lost his cool upon his theoretical moves being countered by someone who barely perfected it. It is highly implied that, were he to keep his cool, he'd have won in a battle of stamina attrition.
* In RealLife, this was true for a time in the quest to build a computer that could consistently beat the world's best human chess players (such as IBM's Deep Blue, which famously lost to Kasparov). Memory and processing power marched on, however, and modern chess engines can be run on a smartphone and are essentially unbeatable by human opponents.
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* In ''Soldier'', Kurt Russell plays a veteran super-soldier who is pit against a group of genetically-engineered uber-soldiers. Russell loses to the new soldiers in purely physical contests, but when it comes to the battlefield, he slaughters them all single-handedly using his superior tactics and cunning gained from years of experience.

* The ''{{Pokemon}}'' series had an example where Ash was up against a trainer who constantly statistically analysed all the Pokemons' abilities and used it to direct his Pokemon in battle. While this served him well for a time, when battling Ash, the weakness was exposed that when the battle got too fast, he couldn't focus on both his Pokemon and his laptop at the same time. (That and the fact that Ash's Pokemon started giving off [[ReadingsAreOffTheScale "impossible" numbers]]).

* Virtually every series featuring combat robots will have them defeated by human opponents. If there are different groups of humans, the one with ''less'' tech will win (Like Vipers Mk II in BattlestarGalactica).

But if the point is, instead, to [[ScienceIsBad deride technology or science]] as unworthy of human effort and manly men, the opponent is presented as a total joke and the hard worker wins easily. A Straw Man propaganda story. Also, what this trope consistently forgets is that science ''is'' hard work, requiring considerable intelligence, as well as lengthy and difficult procedures to create anything useful. Not to mention all of the dirty, unglamorous, and sometimes [[{{Squick}} gross]] field work involved. Yet rarely or never is the hard work of the science-user shown on screen in relation to plain old guts.

But if the point is, instead, to [[ScienceIsBad deride technology or science]] as unworthy of human effort and manly men, the opponent is presented as a total joke and the hard worker wins easily. A Straw Man propaganda story. Also, what this trope consistently forgets is that science ''is'' hard work, requiring considerable intelligence, as well as lengthy and difficult procedures to create anything useful. Yet rarely or never is the hard work of the science-user shown on screen in relation to plain old guts.

* ''{{Rocky}} IV''. Ivan Drago is given steroids, computer monitors and high-tech work-out equipment to show his superhuman development. Rocky trains with farm equipment in a barn. In spite of being physically inferior, Rocky wins the day through heart. This is a bit of a case of ScienceMarchesOn, as strength-training machines such as those used by Drago have been revealed to be inferior to Rocky's old-fashioned free weights.

* Amino High School in ''{{Eyeshield 21}}'' - whilst they have turned themselves into impossibly large-muscled superhumans using a variety of advanced methods, the Devilbats win in part because they've just returned from their TrainingFromHell, "the Death March."

* The ''[[{{Pokemon}} Pokemon]]'' series had an example where Ash was up against a trainer who constantly statistically analysed all the Pokemons abilities and used it to direct his Pokemon in battle. While this served him well for a time, when battling Ash, the weakness was exposed that when the battle got too fast, he couldn't focus on both his Pokemon and his laptop at the same time. (That and the fact that Ash's Pokemon started giving off [[OverNineThousand "impossible" numbers]]).

* Amino High School in ''Eyeshield21'' - whilst they have turned themselves into impossibly large-muscled superhumans using a variety of advanced methods, the Devilbats win in part because they've just returned from their TrainingFromHell, "the Death March."

* In ''Twister'', TheRival is almost totally dependent on his weather-tracking technology to find and rate tornadoes while the heroes use their gut instincts and, more importantly, their past experiences with giant storms. However, he had simply taken the heroes' technology and gotten corporate backing - all the concept and experiments behind it had been done by the heroes, ''who were better scientists than he was''.

* This is OlderThanRadio due to the legend of John Henry, which is perhaps the defining example. Steel-driving man versus steel-driving machine... Man wins, but dies soon after, making a rematch impossible -- the machine can never win, in a purely romantic sense. This story can also ignore the fact that John Henry was supposed to be a uniquely ''exceptional'' steel-driver, whereas machines can be mass-produced. Would you rather have one John Henry and a bunch of average joes, or a line-up of machines that came close to beating the best man at the job?
** This could be considered a subversion, since John Henry dies after the match, as pointed out above. The steel-driving machine is still fine, and can presumably repeat its performance on job after job, so in a sense it beat John Henry.
* There was an old cartoon featuring a similar match-up between legendary lumberjack Paul Bunyan, and this dapper little guy in a tux armed with a new-fangled thing called a ''chainsaw''. This example is actually a subversion of the trope, perhaps thanks to ChainsawGood -- Paul Bunyan loses the competition, and retires into the wilderness with his blue ox, where they continue to shape entire mountain-ranges with their wrestling matches.
** The chainsaw guy only won because his stack of logs was a quarter inch higher, and Paul Bunyan isn't exactly a normal human.

* ''{{Rocky}} IV''. Ivan Drago is given steroids, and computer monitors show his [[strike: increasing {{power level}}]] progress. Rocky runs on a mountain. Guess who ultimately wins.
** That's really the culmination of a theme running through II-IV. Whichever boxer trains using the crummiest facilities gets most out of his training.
* Same deal in ''ShaolinSoccer''. Then again, the unfair difference in sheer power is made heartbreakingly clear, and victory is achieved only from [[ChekhovsGunman the surprise use]] of [[ChekhovsGun one really advantageous technique]].

* ''FamilyMatters'': This was inverted when Urkel beat a JerkJock using a jetpack. Go Urkel, go.
* RealLife subversion: Chess computer Deep Blue vs Russian Grandmaster Garry Kasparov. During their first match, Kasparov won. Fair enough, since many say that chess requires a certain degree of intuition, and seemingly illogical moves can throw off an opponent's planning. A year later, an upgraded version of Deep Blue had a rematch against Kasparov, and won (much to his rage).
** It's worth noting that the computer ''did'' make a mistake, Kasparov was just convinced that the computer ''couldn't'' make such a mistake, and failed to capitalize on it.
*** That, and the computer had access to years of Kasparov's games, and Kasparov didn't have access to any of the computer's.
*** Kasparov ''did'' have access to the computer's games, but there weren't that many games played by it to begin with, as opposed to Kasparov's lifetime of experience.
*** The whole match is thrown into question due the way game 6 went down. [[ConspiracyTheorist Some]] even go as far as proposing that Kasparov was paid to lose the match, as it seems difficult to believe that he would make a big, well known blunder on move 6!
*** Besides, apparently one of the rules was that the programmers of the Deep Blue could reprogram the computer between matches. Which they did when Kasparov figured out and exploited a mistake that the computer just kept making.

* In ''Soldier'', Kurt Russell plays the role of a soldier who was trained from birth to be a very effective soldier. His group of soldiers is replaced by genetically-engineered soldiers who are far better than his group. In the end, the first-generation soldier is pitted against a whole squad of the second-generation soldiers. Thanks largely to Hollywood tactics (Russel's character uses ambushes, the new soldiers stand in the open alone), the first-generation soldier beats the second-generation squad.

* I think this could be the case in ''Twister'', where TheRival is almost totally dependent on his weather-tracking technology to find and rate tornadoes while the heroes use their gut instincts and, more importantly, their past experiences with giant storms.
** It's not really a very good example, as The Rival had simply taken the heroes technology and gotten corporate backing - all the concept and experiments behind it had been done by the heroes, ''who were better scientists than he was''.
*** True, but the bad guys still used expensive looking technology and impressive [[ColourCodedForYourConvenience black SUVs]]. The good guys used good old fashioned instinct and hard work to get the job done.
*** [[MemeticMutation JONAS!!!]]

* This was inverted in an episode of ''FamilyMatters'' where [[TheUrkel Urkel]] beat a JerkJock using a jetpack. Go Urkel, go.

* Virtually every series featuring combat robots will have the defeated by human opponents. If there are different groups of humans, the one with ''less'' tech will win (Like Vipers Mk II in BattlestarGalactica).

** This could be considered a subversion, since John Henry dies after the match, as pointed out above. The steel-driving machine is still fine, so in a sense it beat John Henry.

* Possibly played in Discworld/ReaperMan, where Death wins reaping contest with early, harvester. Subversion is obvious - Death's skill with schythe is supernatural and any normal man would lose in such contest.

* Possibly played in ReaperMan, where Death wins reaping contest with early, harvester. Subversion is obvious - Death's skill with schythe is supernatural and any normal man would lose in such contest.

* Possibly played in ReaperMan, where Death wins reaping contest with early, harvester. Subversion is obvious - Death's skill with schythe is supernatural and any normal man would loose in such contest.

* In ''Soldier'', Kurt Russell plays the role of a soldier who was trained from birth to be a very effective soldier. His group of soldiers is replaced by genetically-engineered soldiers who are far better than his group. In the end, the first-generation soldier is pitted against a whole squad of the second-generation soldiers. Thanks largely to Hollywood tactics, the first-generation soldier beats the second-generation squad.

** That's really the culmination of a theme running through II-IV. Whichever boxer trains using the crummiest facilities gets exponentially more out of his training.

* Possibly played in ReaperMan, where Death wins reaping contest with early, steam powered harvester. Subversion is obvious - Death's skill with schythe is supernatural and any normal man would loose in such contest.

* This troper once saw an old cartoon featuring a similar match-up between legendary lumberjack Paul Bunyan, and this dapper little guy in a tux armed with a new-fangled thing called a ''chainsaw''. This example is actually a subversion of the trope, perhaps thanks to ChainsawGood -- Paul Bunyan loses the competition, and retires into the wilderness with his blue ox, where they continue to shape entire mountain-ranges with their wrestling matches.
** If I recall correctly, the chainsaw guy only won because his stack of logs was an ''inch'' higher, and Paul Bunyan isn't exactly a normal human.
** Quarter Inch actually.

* This was inverted in an episode of ''FamilyMatters'' where TheUrkel beat a JerkJock using a jetpack. Go Urkel, go.

* More clear in RobotechTheShadowChronicles, where Lt. Sterling points out "Skill over Technology". And [[spoiler: humans indeed win the combat agains robotic shadows]]

*** [[TheNostalgiaCritic JONAS!!!]]

***[[ThatGuyWithTheGlasses JONAS!!!]]