History Main / ScienceIsUseless

-->--'''Music/JohnnyCash''', ''The Legend of John Henry's Hammer''

** Actually he is aversion of this trope, since he was the one being mocked after being hilariously wrong in the 2016 election.

* Sabermetrics, the "empirical analysis of baseball, especially baseball statistics" was hilariously considered to be the work of "heretic madmen", who "mulled over punch computer card, analyzing every single hit". It was not accepted by the community for many years, until Bill James started releasing his Baseball Abstracts in 1977, giving rise to a fresh subculture, and after "Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game" was published by Michael Lewis in 2003, coincidentally just a few months before Bill James started working for the Red Sox, a team who, coincidentally, won the World Series just a few years later. The book itself was an instant classic, as everyone loves a story about undervalued underdogs (the Oakland Athletics in this case) and their manager (Billy Beane) who use their skill and knowledge to defeat teams composed of people who cost more. The strategy behind the game had changed so much that the New York Mets, New York Yankees, San Diego Padres, St. Louis Cardinals, Boston Red Sox, Washington Nationals, Arizona Diamondbacks, Cleveland Indians, and the Toronto Blue Jays hired full-time sabermetric analysts. As the announcer in the Simpsons parody (of the film version of the book) MoneyBART put it, "It [was] a triumph of number-crunching over the human spirit!"

-->--'''JohnnyCash''', ''The Legend of John Henry's Hammer''

--­>'''Hiruma:''' It's not that your sport science is wrong. It's just that you can't win with just that.

* ''Film/{{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.

# [[ViewersAreMorons Hardly anyone in the audience]] knows much about RealLife science, and

-> ''"Then John Henry, he said to his captain,''\\
''He said a man ain’t nothin’ but a man,''\\
''But if you bring that steam drill round, I’ll beat it fair and honest,''\\
''I’ll die with that hammer in my hand--''\\
''But I’ll be laughing, 'cause you can’t replace a steel drivin’ man."''
-->--'''JohnnyCash''', ''The Legend of John Henry's Hammer''

In a competition of science and technology versus simple hard work, science and technology will almost invariably lose. Since science usually finds an easier, faster way to achieve something, it is therefore "cheating" and far less honorable than honest sweat and effort. Thus, no matter how much a scientist researches, experiments and innovates, he will never achieve what someone else can with good old practice and hard work.

This trope arises because of two main reasons:
# [[ViewersAreMorons Hardly anyone in the audience]] knows much about RealLife science, and
# People are always eager to believe that anything they don't understand couldn't possibly be important.

If there's any fair justification for this, it's when the scientist is operating only on [[DumbIsGood booksmarts and theory]], or using an 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 favour from then on. Because of the attitude behind this trope, this rarely happens. The scientists concede defeat to the "superior" people who have bested them and disappear from the story for good, unless their [[MotiveDecay wounded pride]] convinces them to later return as a villain.

This is not the quite the opposite of HardWorkHardlyWorks, because TheGift beats ''both'' hard work and science, and science may actually be given a fair shake by being represented as the hard work it is. But for hard-workers, science is the lowest spot on the tropic totem pole.

Note that this trope applies equally to scientific or technological methods that are explicitly cheating or explicitly allowed. It doesn't matter if the "scientific" competitor is illegally using steroids, or legitimately pitting man against machine as the whole point of the competition.

Whenever this trope shows up, the ideological basis for the conflict is usually RomanticismVersusEnlightenment, with the Romanticist good guys taking on the Enlightened scientists.

Further, there are two different flavors of this trope. If the point is to stress the importance of hard work, then the technological/scientific opponent is presented as [[DavidVersusGoliath an intimidating Goliath]] that the plucky underdog must struggle to overcome. This can be done fairly enough - [[SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped after all, hard work IS very important]].

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. In this version, science is little more than a strawman, forgetting 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, dangerous, and sometimes [[{{Squick}} gross]] field work involved. See also LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards for a comparison between hard work (warrior) and science (wizard): yes physical hard work works for you personally, but in the end science (with a lot of educative hard work) makes Human Civilization achieve incomprehensible feats such as [[CurbStompBattle dropping nukes on your head]]. Yet rarely if ever is the hard work of the science-user shown on screen, making them seem like arrogant [[InsufferableGenius know-it-alls]] who may have read a book or two, but never got their hands dirty.

Very much related to [[SquishyWizard Squishy Scientist]], DumbIsGood and RockBeatsLaser. May be related to ReedRichardsIsUseless. See also the physical equivalents TechnicianVersusPerformer (where TheGift overcomes intense training) and GoodOldFisticuffs (where simple fists beats flashy kicks). Often the logical result of ScienceCannotComprehendPhlebotinum or even ScienceIsWrong.

----
!!Examples:
[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* In the ''Anime/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.
* Amino High School in ''Manga/{{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." 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.
* ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'':
** 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]]).
** 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.
*** Ironically enough, she berated her junior for relying solely on type advantage beforehand when while he beat a Starmie with a Weepingbel in a simulator, he lost against Misty and in turn, Misty lost against the girl's Graveler.
* ''WesternAnimation/RobotechTheShadowChronicles'', where Lt. Sterling points out "Skill over Technology". And [[spoiler: humans indeed win the combat against robotic shadows]]
* The baking contest between Kazuma Azuma and Shigeru Kanmuri in ''Manga/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.
[[/folder]]


[[folder:Film]]

* ''Film/{{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.
* In ''Film/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]].
* In ''Film/{{Soldier}}'', Creator/KurtRussell plays a veteran super-soldier who is pitted 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. The GeneralRipper in charge of the new soldiers is so completely convinced of their superiority that he ignores the sound advice of his second-in-command who wisely points out that the harsh environment of the battlefield is negating the advantages the soldiers have in both conditioning and firepower. The entire fight is completely pointless and the commander is simply showing off his new 'toys'.
* In ''Film/{{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''.

[[/folder]]


[[folder:Folklore]]

* OlderThanRadio: The legend of John Henry, which is a decidedly mature take on the trope: 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.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]

* In the Literature/LeftBehind series, science ultimately proves to be useless, particularly against the Bowl Judgments during the Tribulation when medical science couldn't figure out how to deal with the outbreak of sores upon those who took the MarkOfTheBeast and worshiped his image.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Real Life]]

* 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). [[ScienceMarchesOn Memory and processing power marched on]], however, and modern chess engines can be run on a smartphone and are essentially unbeatable by human opponents.
* Statistician Nate Silver was attacked by conservatives during the 2012 elections when Silver predicted that Barack Obama would win reelection over Mitt Romney. Predictably, this was because people didn't understand the basic math Silver used and published. Most conservatives settled for calling Silver's methods "scientific gobbledegook", claiming he was biased and skewed the results, and then responded by releasing their own "unbiased/unskewed polls", which showed Romney winning by a large margin. Of course, Silver correctly predicted the winner of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, while his critics were mocked.
* Sabermetrics, the "empirical analysis of baseball, especially baseball statistics" was hilariously considered to be the work of "heretic madmen", who "mulled over punch computer card, analyzing every single hit". It was not accepted by the community for many years, until Bill James started releasing his Baseball Abstracts in 1977, giving rise to a fresh subculture, and after "Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game" was published by Michael Lewis in 2003, coincidentally just a few months before Bill James started working for the Red Sox, a team who, coincidentally, won the World Series just a few years later. The book itself was an instant classic, as everyone loves a story about undervalued underdogs (the Oakland Athletics in this case) and their manager (Billy Beane) who use their skill and knowledge to defeat teams composed of people who cost more. The strategy behind the game had changed so much that the New York Mets, New York Yankees, San Diego Padres, St. Louis Cardinals, Boston Red Sox, Washington Nationals, Arizona Diamondbacks, Cleveland Indians, and the Toronto Blue Jays hired full-time sabermetric analysts. As the announcer in the Simpsons parody (of the film version of the book) MoneyBART put it, "It [was] a triumph of number-crunching over the human spirit!"

[[/folder]]

----

# Hardly anyone in the audience knows much about RealLife science, and

* The baking contest between Kazuma Azuma and Shigeru Kanmuri in ''Manga/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.

[[folder:Literature]]
* In the Literature/LeftBehind series, science ultimately proves to be useless, particularly against the Bowl Judgments during the Tribulation when medical science couldn't figure out how to deal with the outbreak of sores upon those who took the MarkOfTheBeast and worshiped his image.
[[/folder]]

* In ''Film/{{Soldier}}'', Creator/KurtRussell 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. The GeneralRipper in charge of the new soldiers is so completely convinced of their superiority that he ignores the sound advice of his second-in-command who wisely points out that the harsh environment of the battlefield is negating the advantages the soldiers have in both conditioning and firepower. The entire fight is completely pointless and the commander is simply showing off his new 'toys'.
* In ''Film/{{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''.

* OlderThanRadio: The legend of John Henry, which is a decidedly mature take on the trope: 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.

* Statistician Nate Silver was attacked by conservatives during the 2012 elections when Silver predicted that Barack Obama would win reelection over Mitt Romney. Predictably, Silver was viciously attacked by conservatives who didn't understand the basic math Silver used and published. Most conservatives settled for calling Silver's methods "scientific gobbledegook", claiming he was biased and skewed the results, and then responded by releasing their own "unbiased/unskewed polls", which showed Romney winning by a large margin. Of course, Silver correctly predicted the winner of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, while his critics were mocked.

** Ironically enough, she berated her junior for thinking this when while he beat a Starmie with a Weepingbel in a simulator, he lost against Misty and in turn, Misty lost against the girl's Graveler.

-> ''"Then John Henry, he said to his captain,''
-> ''He said a man ain’t nothin’ but a man,''
-> ''But if you bring that steam drill round, I’ll beat it fair and honest,''
-> ''I’ll die with that hammer in my hand--''
-> ''But I’ll be laughing, 'cause you can’t replace a steel drivin’ man."''

* Somehow ''Manga/ACertainScientificRailgun'', a manga claiming to take the science side of Science VS Magic, manages to make scientific progress appear useless, unneeded or conventionally evil. No matter what technological advancements you do, no matter how many scientific and critically acclaimed papers you publish, if you are not an esper in this series you are essentially considered ''worthless''. Many a villain's motivation is the lack of recognition of their works compared to the "non-cheating" methods and training employed by espers (which is ironic because #1 espers only exist due to scientific method and #2 as stated they are ''called'' the science side of the Science Vs Magic battle). Hence most of them said "Screw it" and started using highly illegal methods to somehow continue their lives. Only very few of them are in fact genuinely evil.

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

* In ''Film/{{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. The GeneralRipper in charge of the new soldiers is so completely convinced of their superiority that he ignores the sound advice of his second-in-command who wisely points out that the harsh environment of the battlefield is negating the advantages the soldiers have in both conditioning and firepower. The entire fight is completely pointless and the commander is simply showing off his new 'toys'.

* In ''Film/{{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.

This trope arises because of two main reasons

1) Hardly anyone in the audience knows much about RealLife science, and:

2) People are always eager to believe that anything they don't understand couldn't possibly be important.

Very much related to [[SquishyWizard Squishy Scientist]], DumbIsGood and RockBeatsLaser. May be related to ReedRichardsIsUseless. See also the physical equivalents TechnicianVersusPerformer (where TheGift overcomes intense training) and GoodOldFisticuffs (where simple fists beats flashy kicks).

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. In this version, science is little more than a strawman, forgetting 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, dangerous, and sometimes [[{{Squick}} gross]] field work involved. See also LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards for a comparison between hard work (warrior) and science (wizard): yes physical hard work does work, but in the end science (with a lot of educative hard work) advances civilization as a whole and [[CurbStompBattle drops nukes on your head]]. Yet rarely if ever is the hard work of the science-user shown on screen, making them seem like arrogant [[InsufferableGenius know-it-alls]] who may have read a book or two, but never got their hands dirty.

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. In this version, science is little more than a strawman, forgetting 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, dangerous, and sometimes [[{{Squick}} gross]] field work involved. See also LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards for a comparison between hard work (warrior) and science (wizard): yes physical hard work does work, but in the end science (with a lot of educative hard work) {{Curb Stomp Battle}}s. Yet rarely if ever is the hard work of the science-user shown on screen, making them seem like arrogant [[InsufferableGenius know-it-alls]] who may have read a book or two, but never got their hands dirty.

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

If there's any fair justification for this, it's when the scientist is operating only on [[DumbIsGood booksmarts and theory]], or using an 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. The scientists concede defeat to the "superior" people who have bested them and disappear from the story for good, unless their [[MotiveDecay wounded pride]] convinces them to later return as a villain.

This is not the quite the opposite of HardWorkHardlyWorks, because TheGift beats ''both'' hard work and science, and science may actually be given a fair shake by being represented as the hard work it is. But science is the lowest spot on the tropic totem pole.

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. In this version, science is little more than a strawman, forgetting 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, dangerous, and sometimes [[{{Squick}} gross]] field work involved. Yet rarely if ever is the hard work of the science-user shown on screen, making them seem like arrogant [[InsufferableGenius know-it-alls]] who may have read a book or two, but never got their hands dirty.

In a competition of science and technology versus simple hard work, science and technology will almost invariably lose. See, science finds an easier, faster way to achieve something and is therefore cheating and far less honorable than honest sweat and effort. Thus, no matter how much a scientist researches, experiments and innovates, he will never achieve what someone else can with good old practice and hard work.

This trope works because 1) hardly anyone in the audience knows much about science, and 2) people are always eager to believe that anything they don't understand couldn't possibly be important.

If there's any fair justification for this, it's when 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.

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, dangerous, 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.

* OlderThanRadio: The legend of John Henry: 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.