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He tampered in God's domain.
— Bride of the Monster
Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.
Writers are not scientists. Whether it is because they perceive science as cold and emotionless, or because they just disliked science and embraced literature after failing math in high school, luddism is an all too common failing of writers in search of plot. The typical theme is that some sort of advanced scientific research has Gone Horribly Wrong, creating a monster, causing an impending natural disaster and/or a massive government cover-up. The heroes typically discover the side-effects of the research and investigate, discover what's going on, and try to stop it.
The antagonist (almost always either corporate or military/government scientists — and not hot) refuses to believe that his work could be so badly flawed, immoral, or simply doesn't care about who gets hurt by it, insisting that the research is For Science! They will generally use their influence with the government to make life difficult for the heroes, try to have them arrested and otherwise silenced, often leading to a shoot-out, jail break, or Chase Scene.
In the end, the scientist will be destroyed by his own creation, the heroes will be proven right, and through their efforts the world will be saved from the horror of science. Sometimes the theme is softened by the presence of The Professor among the heroes who represents a more reasonable take on the science involved.
This can often come off as a bit hypocritical, particularly when dealing with speculative fiction, as you get an Anvilicious message of "everything we have so far is good, but we should stop now."
Nearly every Robot War story is based off of this (except the ones where everything was all right, until humanity screwed it up by being jerks to the nice robots). There are a few popular current fields as well, like cloning, genetic engineering, and surveillance.
For obvious reasons, this is played down in series starring a Science Hero, heroic android or Robot Buddy such as in some anime. It's more likely there will be a (still obvious) distinction between good and bad scientists. This is usually played up if the heroes are Phlebotinum Rebels, though.
Note that not every work with a Mad Scientist or a threat borne of science falls under this; it's only the case where Messing With Things You Ought Not To is blamed for the problems.
The trope rarely makes a distinction between pure science and applied technology.
Frequently overlaps with Green Aesop.
Related tropes include the Mad Scientist, The Evil Army, Government Conspiracy, Corrupt Corporate Executive, Government As Villain, Mr Exposition, Technical Pacifist, and Well Intentioned Extremist. The protagonist is often assisted by an Anti Hero who used to work for the Mad Scientist, and frequently has to deal with a Pointy Haired Boss. See also Science Is Wrong. Polar opposite of most stories with a Campbellian Hero.
See also the Scale Of Scientific Sins.
Examples:
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- The Aesop of the anime Blue Gender is that humanity should never have advanced beyond an agricultural society.
- Same for Earth Maiden Arjuna.
- Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind, at least in the manga version (which goes longer than the anime), goes back and forth between playing this trope straight & subverting it. On the one hand, the world was destroyed in a nuclear war, on the other, the kindly & wise Big Creepy Crawlies were actually created through bioengineering and so were the giant killer fungi which are actually helping to purify the Earth. In the end, this is left really ambiguous. Nausicaa destroys the giant machine that had been controlling the world from behind the scenes. And even this is ambiguous — on the one hand, the computer had existed to allow humanity to survive and purify the earth. On the other, it existed to pre-program humanity's future and the manipulation of humanity, while ensuring its ultimate survival, was also causing the thousands of years of bloody conflict that persist past the destruction of the old society. It is also (at least implied) that the actual plan was to first destroy and the recreate humankind as a "better" version from specimen stored below the computer. Nausicaa believes that the natural order of life should prevail and that humanity needs to live or die without the benefits or burdens of the old technology. The ultimate question at the end is whether humanity can survive on their own or not — though how they do that is left unsaid as well, making no mention of whether developing new Science would be bad or not.
- All of Miyazaki's environmental works play with this trope, and often seem to play it straight and subvert it at exactly the same time. Princess Mononoke shows both the destruction of nature and peaceful societies through technology, but also presenting the reality that the technology allows the previously weak to be strong and protect themselves. The end of the film is again left to the viewer to interpret which side, if either, had the high ground and where the characters must go from there. Not surprisingly, this movie was heavily inspired by the themes he explored in Nausicaa. Spirited Away played this trope a little straighter — Haku is really the spirit of the Kohaku River, and lost his home due to the river being filled to make apartment buildings. Also, a particularly disgusting and smelly spirit is revealed to be a beautiful river spirit that was tainted by extreme pollution. It still never came out and advocated this trope directly.
- The main conflict presented in Steam Boy is: that though scientists try to help the world there will either be people who want to use it for profit or people who want use it for war. The protagonist's father is under the belief that science can save the world, the grandfather believes he is going too far, and the protagonist is neutral and just wants to make sure London doesn't get destroyed.
Comic Books
- Lex Luthor, Superman's archenemy, has long been a barometer of the great bogeyman of the era: from the 30s through the atomic age, as a mad scientist he played on readers' fears of science run rampant. (Later, he'd be a corporate shark in the '80s and a corrupt politician at the turn of the millennium.)
- Though from the Silver Age until the Crisis, Superman himself was portrayed as a scientist of great ability (having, at the very least, perfect recall and access to Kryptonian tech), regularly building robots and whatnot. His standard lament to Luthor in those days was his wish that Luthor would go straight and use his brilliance to help mankind instead of being a Jerk Ass.
- Iron Man contains an interesting variant of this trope. Tony Stark himself is a brilliant scientist, and his scientific discoveries are generally meant to benefit humankind... but Stark's enemies have repeatedly tried to steal his technology for their own selfish gain. Rather than science being inherently bad, the Aesop seems to be more that science can be either good or bad, depending on who's using it and for what purpose.
- Hoverboy: The Only Hero Protecting You From Science! It should be noted, however, that Hoverboy is merely an elaborate hoax. Probably.
- Subverted by the obvious Mengele analogue in a Boba Fett comic, in which Fett accepted a challenge to wipe out the crew of a
Nazi Imperial flying concentration camp genocide ship. The Mengele-wannabe is asked by his boss what experiment he's doing; Wannabe admits, "I gave up all pretense of science long ago. I do this for pleasure."
- Reed Richards and Doctor Doom can be viewed as symbolizing technology's potential for good or evil, depending on who is wielding it and for what purpose.
- The Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comics originally averted this in the same fashion as SatAM, from which it derived most of its cast. However, the series seems to have sunk into this as time has gone by.
- The original The Fly, contrary to popular belief, wasn't so much this trope than 'Science must not be approached with carelessness'. It even compares it to a 'great adventure'. In David Cronenberg's remake, this motif is absent altogether: just because it went disastrously wrong once doesn't mean that teleportation is irredeemably evil.
- Completely turned around by Darkman, who, admittedly, was hideously deformed in a Freak Lab Accident, but the accident in question was caused by The Mafia. When things are going bad, he reminds himself that "I'm a scientist!
- The documentary Expelled explicitly compares evolutionary biology to Nazism. Ben Stein's interview comments on it are even worse, saying outright that "science leads you to killing people", as though taking a degree in the sciences turns you into an Ax Crazy.
- Right down to insisting that the last time anyone in his family met scientists, they were being led into gas chambers. Which would of course contradict his film, where he discusses all the scientists he's talked to and he's obviously alive. If you want to watch the film whilst losing as little sanity as possible, substitute the infinitely more profound sequence from Michael Palin's New Europe in its place.
It is said that science will dehumanise people and turn them into numbers. This is false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.
- This is even more ironic considering that the other major argument of the film is that intelligent design is legitimate science. Therefore, by Ben Stein's own logic, intelligent design also leads to killing people. Given that Adolf Hitler believed in a course of human development that required outside intervention to create a master race, he shoots his own argument in the foot more than once.
- Inverted by The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, where blunt force could kill the rhedosaurus, but it spread the beast's disease far and wide, and only our heroic scientist can figure out a way to kill the rhedosaurus and the disease. Luckily, and unusually, the army guys are extremely cooperative.
- In the So Bad Its Horrible B Movie Bats, Mad Scientist Dr. McCabe initially justifies creating the rampaging super intelligent omnivorous bats with the words "I'm a scientist! That's what we do!". No one finds this explanation even the slightest bit strange.
- Averted in the original Godzilla in which sane scientist Dr. Serizawa's Oxygen Destroyer ultimately kills Godzilla at the end. Of course, Serizawa is also very careful not to let his invention fall into the wrong hands by dying alongside Godzilla and burning all papers that contain information on the device.
- Not quite so, Godzilla Vs Destoroyah questions the use of the Oxygen Destroyer as it led to, 1) flesh-eating microbes that can strip organic matter immersed in water in seconds that evolve into; 2) car-sized monsters spewing beams that disintegrate material that possess oxygen molecules and are immune to bullets, flamethrowers etc, which combine into; 3) A flying Kaiju monster that has a beam weapon that is explicitly dangerous to Godzilla, and is able to repeatedly fight and win against the most powerful Godzilla (ie verging on irradiating the entire planet beyond radiation levels that life could possibly survive). It also questions whether the doctor's sacrifice was actually heroic as the Oxygen Destroyer was, compared to other methods, less likely to destroy cities or attempt to exterminate the human race.
- Played straight in Godzilla VS Biollante in which genetic engineering causes the birth of a giant Godzilla-Rose hybrid monster (Biollante) with a human female soul. No... really...
- On the other hand, the scientists creating the Anti-Nuclear Bacteria is an aversion since it actually is one of the few things that can stop Godzilla. Despite the hero's fear that it will create another monster. That's right, a hero is proven wrong.
- Then again, it was our evil sciency nuclear weapons testing that created Godzilla in the first place. So Yeah.
- Bride of Frankenstein partially, and unexpectedly, subverts this. The reformed Dr. Frankenstein is forced by evil Mad Scientist Dr. Pretorius to return to his old ways. The twist: Early on, Pretorious shows us his collection of tiny humans in glass jars, practically announcing that he's Mephistopheles. To this, Frankenstein replies, horrified, "This isn't science!" Here, sane Science Is Good, and has standards, but Magic Is Bad.
- The 2007 and 2009 Live Action Transformers movies partially avert and partially embrace this trope. It is not so much science which is bad, but technology — and then only Decepticon technology. Since all human technology since the early 20th century is based on knowledge and systems gleaned from studying Megatron, that means all modern human technology is inherently evil — as proven by its behavior when animated by exposure to the Cube. Presumably technology arrived at by studying Autobots would in turn be inherently good.
- Word Of God states that they're more like animals and frightened because they don't know what's going on.
- Which made sense in the first movie, but not the second, where the appliance-bots immediately organize and hunt down Sam.
- Continuity Errors? In a Michael Bay film? What?
- Event Horizon. At one point the inventor of the gravity warp drive (which turns out to be a pretty evil warp drive) proclaims: "Captain, there's no danger... It's contained behind three magnetic fields, it's perfectly safe!" Oh science, what are you like?
- Is this a true example? Given what eventually happens, it could be that he knows very well it isn't safe and is leading them to their doom.
- GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra does this on a disgusting scale. Nanotechnology is the primary villain, both as gray-goo-inducing nanite warheads and as nanite injections that create superhuman flunkies for Cobra. There are many scientists involved in Cobra, and the only Joe scientist seen actually doesn't believe in having emotions; she seems to find happiness with Ripcord mainly by sacrificing (what she sees as) her scientific principles. Apparently, scientists can't be trusted: Rex switches sides because they have nanotechnology. Three or four successive Cobra scientists have a catchphrase of "science requires sacrifice", generally repeated when they inject a witches' brew of nanites into someone's bloodstream.
- Debateable; more like 'Science is Bad if used by evil'. The Joes also rely on advanced technology to say the day, and ultimately the film doesn't put much focus on any sort of message regarding science. Furthermore, the last sentence is false; the statement is only clear uttered once, and Cobra only has two scientist characters. We do see sympathetic scientists in the Paris segment.
- Yes, but you see, that advanced technology is what we have ''now'', and thus isn't science in the minds of the writers or general public. Nanotechnology is what's coming, and promises to end scarcity forever (whether it will actually follow through is another matter), which is suitably different to be scary and thus evil.
- The 2002 film version of The Time Machine. Near the start of the movie, the protagonist's friend asks him whether humanity's progress will ever go too far; the protagonist replies, "no such thing." He later has to admit that he was wrong — when, in the future, he sees the Moon shattered into little pieces by atomic bombs. Earlier, when the protagonist returned to the past to try and save his girlfriend, she was killed by a malfunctioning automobile (just as the protagonist stopped being fascinated with it because it was "just a machine," and not worth taking his attention off of his love). In the distant future, the Eloi are peaceful, good people with very primitive technology; the evil, ugly Morlocks have an industrial society Beneath The Earth. They also have a Big Bad with a giant brain who is especially good at engineering, and at being evil. And in the climax of the movie, the protagonist destroys the industrial Morlocks — by blowing up his machine in their lair (commenting on its loss with, again, "it's just a machine"). The only positive portrayal science or technology get in the film is with the generally helpful holographic librarian (who somehow survives hundreds of thousands of years and is shown reading books to children at the end). But his main function is to keep memories of the past (and, presumably, its follies) alive, not to represent, or aid, progress.
Folk Lore
- John Henry versus the steam hammer.
- This is not the point of Frankenstein. In the novel by Mary Shelley, the point of the story is that Doctor Frankenstein brought a creature into the world and allowed it to turn to evil by treating it like a monster. However, this is the point of just about every film adaptation of the story, which almost always deliver an Anvilicious Aesop.
- Making the film versions either Adaptation Decay or Did Not Do The Research, as Victor Frankenstein is a scientist in name only, performs nothing that could be referred to as science with a straight face, and none of the story's conflicts have anything to do with science whatsoever.
- With the surprising exception of the Mel Brooks parody Young Frankenstein, in which the titular scientist succeeds where his ancestor failed by accepting his creation like a loving father. When a group of his colleagues recoil in horror at the creature, he admonishes them "We are not children! We are scientists!", and the only real flaw in his creation (its permanently child-like, limited mind) is fixed by another scientific procedure, which Frankenstein risks his life to carry out.
- Stephen Jay Gould wrote one essay as a good-natured correction to people who thought Frankenstein was based around Science Is Bad, pointing out that while Shelley admits that being too excessive in a pursuit is usually a bad thing, all her examples were political.
- In Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels, some of the natives regard the newly rediscovered supercomputer as evil and try to destroy or discredit it, either through superstition or fear of change. But Pern is actually a subversion — the planet was originally settled by people who wanted to leave their technology behind. They did, and suffered. It was eventually returning to the technological state which saved them.
- Except that the original colonist weren't trying to create the nearly Luddite level civilization Pern was at that point, they wanted a planet were people weren't dependent on technology, but still had it, basically at and in some places slightly above our current level but significantly behind the current for them level. Then Thread changed there plans and all but the most basic stuff absolutely needed for survival was lost, till they found said AI which gave them access to all the tech the colonists planned on having, but lost.
- Very definitely subverted in The General series where science and advanced technology are clearly demonstrated to be key not only to Human comfort but the fulfillment of Human potential. In other words it's hard to lead a full and rewarding life as a barefoot peon.
- HP Lovecraft goes a step further, though it's not just science; H.P. Lovecraft's stories had a recurring theme that ''wanting to know more about the world'' would inevitably lead to insanity and corruption. Even without Cthulhu and company, he still was very much an author of the Romantic movement with a virtually pathological fear of human progress.
- Note that not all Romantic literary figures subscribed to Science Is Bad. Percy Shelley and Walt Whitman were both well educated in scientific matters.
- Also, the recurring theme in Lovecraft's stories could be just as easily considered to be 'what you don't know about the world can kill you in horrible ways' nowadays — that is, a criticism of the whole 'science is bad and ignoring uncomfortable truths makes them go away' concept. Might be deliberate or just a case of Values Dissonance.
- Lovecraft had a love-hate relationship with science. On one hand he was delighted and inspired by its discoveries, but on the other he found it horribly formulaic and unimaginative (complaints he also had about mainstream religion). His short story, Silver Key pretty much summarizes his less than flattering thoughts towards all forms of mainstream thinking.
- Oryx and Crake has more than a hint of this.
- Every book by Michael Crichton, a good deal of which got a lot of people interested in science. Crichton himself subverts this trope in that he was a big proponent of science and more science education.
- Maximum Ride loves this. No scientist character is ever good. Nothing science ever accomplishes is ever for the good.
- The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne concludes with the aesop that people shouldn't attempt to play God by improving on nature
- In the novel Feed by M.T. Anderson, having essentially an internet hookup directly into your brain lets you look up anything instantly—so no one ever bothers to really learn or remember anything, becoming imbeciles with the attention span of gnats.
- This is one of the main messages of Ceremony, along with "White people are evil beings created by witcherey to destroy the world''
- The War of The Worlds, of all things, has a touch of this. Wells's Martians are clearly designed as his projection of what man himself might evolve into, given enough time: little more than bodiless brains, helpless if separated from their machines. Wells may have viewed this fate as inevitable for mankind, but Your Milage May Vary as to how appealing an image it is.
- Although most of his later novels were much more pro-technology, Jules Verne's early novel Paris In The Twentieth Century portrays a cold, sterile future where artistic and humanistic pursuits have been all but abandoned in favor of technology as an answer to all human problems. The main character, a poet, can find neither work nor sympathy, and dies starving in the streets.
- Though more a case of "bio-engineering is bad", the superflu from Stephen King's The Stand escapes a government lab and kills off 99.4% of the world's population—of course the creators designed it to make sure an antivirus could never be made. Made worse by the fact that even while everyone is dying and the government knows the planet is doomed, they still try to cover it up and often shoot people who try to tell the truth, maintaining the lie until there's no one left to lie or be lied to. Why anyone would ever think that would be a good idea is never explained, since of course even if it were used somewhere on purpose, the inevitable outcome would be the same.
Live Action TV
- A recurring theme in the Outer Limits. It is the basis for the plot of many (though not all) of its episodes.
- The entire plot of Surface.
- That's not true, one of the main characters was a scientist. There was another scientist who helped them out. This is really more along the lines of an Evil Conspiracy.
- In Doctor Who, science is usually the cause of evil, and science (in the form of the Doctor) usually saves the day. Whether or not it uses this trope depends on the specific episode.
- Two words: Pertwee Era.
- New Who is more a case of "The Advance of Science by Humanity is only 'Good' when a shell-shocked or manic-depressive, time-travelling immortal gives you a big tick of approval. Not having this 'tick' can be very, very bad..."
- The Initiative in Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an arguable example. Whedon has said the idea was to create a conflict between science and magic, and when that happens, of course, magic eventually kicks science's ass. The Initiative goes on recon to study the habits of vampires and captures them so they can do further tests, all to better understand how they work and how they can best be contained. Buffy just stakes 'em. Guess which works better?
- However, it's worth noting that all the flaws of the Initiative are caused, not by Science being bad, but by the arrogance and in some cases raw stupidity of the military involved in running the Initiative. It's not so much that Science Is Bad, more that People Are Dumb.
- And to be honest, the Initiative would have worked perfectly if Maggie Walsh hadn't been completely insane. They even set in motion the chain of events that would eventually save the world (giving Spike a chip led to him getting a soul, leading to him sacrifice himself to defeat the First Evil).
- A scene where the Initiative briefing its soldiers about a demon's height, weight, and appearance is intercut with the Scooby Gang finding much more detailed and useful, if poetically phrased, information about it in an old book in "Doomed" is of interest here. Whoever wrote these ancient texts had to research the demons in question, which is science. One of the Initiative's problems was trying to reinvent the wheel. That, and Arbitrary Skepticism about very real things like the Slayer.
- Not to mention any sane implementation of something like the Initiative would include a big library of old occult texts and people working to verify or debunk the information in them.
- Star Trek, despite being the best-known Speculative Fiction series, often dipped its toe into this trope. Worked on a sort of sliding scale, where the level of science the Federation had at that particular point in the episode was the exact right amount and trying to advance beyond that was just asking for the technological equivalent of not being able to get away with a damn thing. Offscreen advance of science: good. Onscreen advance of science: bad.
- Put that way, it points out that Status Quo Is God is sometimes what prevents scientific advancement.
- In fact, the Borg are basically Science Is Bad personified.
- The Borg were surprisingly rarely actually used to make that message (except maybe in some later Voyager episodes). Early on, when they were still very mysterious, the science wasn't an issue since so little was known about it. They were all about the evils of the loss of individualism.
- The TOS episode which most directly addresses this is "The Way To Eden" (yes, the infamous "space hippie" one). Dr. Sevrin's followers want to abandon technology and return to a pastoral existence. Between his Vulcan half's admiration for their (ahem, technical!) pacifism, and his human half's submerged longing for exactly that sort of simple life, Spock of all people ends up sympathizing with them. He's deeply disappointed when their leader turns out to be nuts.
- Voyager's take on the Q is interesting. TNG had previously established that the Q believed humans might one day develop into a civilization comparable to themselves (and were not very pleased about it); yet, in Voyager, most of the all-but-omnipotent Q are shown to be bored half out of their minds, because life offers no challenges any more—which raises unfortunate implications for humanity's future. Then again, many of the novels treat the Q not as Sufficiently Advanced Aliens, but more as
Physical Gods "Energy Beings" with no mortal origin.
- Averted in Roddenberry's novelization of the first movie, which claims that most of humanity outside of Starfleet is actually going a transhumanist route, forming into massminds and such. Kirk, as narrator, regards this as a generally good thing and chides himself for being old-fashioned. However, this claim is not supported anywhere else in Trek canon.
- In TOS, Bunny Ears Lawyer Sam Cogley's speech in "Court Martial" about liking his book collection better than his computer, even though he admits it can display any of their contents instantly.
- The TOS episode "The Ultimate Computer" is a great example of this trope, combined with a little Ludd Was Right. The Enterprise is testing a brand-new computer that could automate starships completely, making crews and captains all but obsolete. Of course, AI Is A Crapshoot, things go south fast, and our heroes must pull the plug and save the day. The episode is positively filled with Science Is Bad speeches by the various characters. The scientist who designed the computer also turns out to be insane at the end, just to drive the point home.
- Fringe seems to take a stance of science being both bad and good, since its used to both cause and help solve the Freaky Mystery Of The Week!
- Nicely subverted in Stargate SG-1, in which a recurring theme is that the humans should develop their own technology at their own pace, rather than going up to other races and demanding that they share their technology (the usual effect being that the humans screw things up by messing with stuff they aren't ready for yet). As they grow and learn, they are eventually allowed to have other races' technology, but usually after they reverse engineer it first.
- Played with in the Stargate Atlantis episode "Trinity," wherein McKay finds an abandoned Ancient experiment to produce limitless energy. It's regularly suggested that he is getting in over his head (The Ancients did not complete the program, and it went rather wrong). Despite constant protestations that this is a field they are simply not ready for, McKay continues. In the end he ends up destroying a Stellar System. While the episode plays the aesop straight, a later episode has a solution to the problems from the first time, and the attempt is assisted by an Asgard, the most technologically advanced race who will talk with humanity.
- On an episode of CSI: NY, this trope is used to demonize the science of Genetics. Run that through your mind again: CSI, the crime and science show, demonized a science. It starts off with a supposed dead man being stolen from the back of the van that was bringing it to the morgue. Then the body is dumped in the river, fished out and then found to be alive... brain dead, but alive. They find their way to a genetics research lab that's making goats produce silk in their milk and rats grow ears on their backs. Even when the scientist in charge explains the benefits of it (silk in bulk, replacing a lost body part) the cops just remark about how weird it is and when they leave say that it was just plain wrong. The main character going so far as to say progress was great, "but should've stopped." Turns out the genetics lab induced human hibernation on the victim, which the victim was involved in voluntarily and by accident the vic took too much of the mixture they created too fast. He ran out choking and collapsed. They stole him from the van thinking he was alive, thought he was dead when they couldn't revive him and dumped him before they got in more trouble for their unethical experiments. When confronted by this news the head scientist can only remark about his delight that it worked and lists off all the benefits like prolonged space travel and how he will be famous. The second suspect tries to tell the cops how putting them away will "shut the door on the future" as no one else knows the formula but them, but to the cops the complicated issue is simple, they committed attempted murder (even though they thought the guy was already dead) and are going to jail. It's not "robot apocalypse" or "mutant monster" worthy, but it still denotes the same thing. Science is weird... and bad. Specifically genetics. And this is show that lives off of science! Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
- It's CSI: NY. It's pretty much only technically a CSI show, and is closer to being a Law & Order clone, where stuff like this is more common.
- It's particularly ridiculous when one remembers that genetics revolutionized crime scene investigation, with such advances such as DNA fingerprinting.
- Eleventh Hour generally runs on this trope, as should be expected of a show about a duo that takes down people who apply new technology unethically. However, it does at times subvert this trope, emphasizing the potential good that can be done with stem cells, genetic engineering and the like.
- Most of the new Battlestar Galactica avoids this, but the finale takes a great big swerve into Writer On Board territory. First, everybody decides to chuck their technology and revert to hunter-gatherer barbarism in the hopes that their descendants will do better. Second, Ron Moore confirms that, after a thoughtful examination of how difficult it is to break the cycle of revenge, he chucked the metaphor and explained that he's scared of our new Japanese robot overlords. Wall. Bang.
- well at least they were nice enough to give all their tech to the Robot Cylons who went off to make their own Empire
- Not only will anybody that requires medical help die pretty quickly without all that advanced medical technology, a future robot war is sure to happen because nobody will be around to tell humans not to make robots, or at least be nice to them. Humans must really hate their selves.
- Unless the difference between this iteration of the cycle and the previous ones is that the humans gave up their technology and adapted to the world, rather than try to uplift the native humans or try to build another New Caprica, hopefully leading to the civilization of 150,000 years later being mature enough to handle their technology without destroying themselves. Also, we have a half-cylon/half-human Mitochondrial Eve, so perhaps people will be nicer to robots anyway because they feel a connection with them.
- Just like how we know the all-Cylon Thirteenth Tribe and Cavil treated their robots with empathy and kindness... oh, wait.
- On that note, Caprica will reportedly explore how the people of the Twelve Colonies were more careless and more in love with the glitzy possibilities of technology than we are.
- An episode of The Colbert Report featured Stephen interviewing the author of a book about robots and AI. The author pointed out that the West is largely wary of AI (see 2001) while the East (especially Japan) generally sees AI as a positive thing (see Astro Boy). Then again, most Western robots feature AI while most Eastern robots are mechas controlled by humans... I guess, like the Miyazaki poster below, it (will) all comes down to human responsibility.
- Stephen often says things like "I'm no fan of science," but seemed entirely keen on one specific form when hearing about a superlaser that concentrated laser beams into a small area to produce the temperatures and pressures of a star:
Stephen: We have our own Death Star! (Cue rain of black balloons and a big "WE HAVE OUR OWN DEATH STAR" sign flashing in the foreground)
- An inversion in an episode of Sliders the gang ends up sliding to a world where all new technology was banned after the end of World War 2. This world's version of Quinn was killed by polio, and they convince Quinn's dad that technology is not bad and would have saved his son. He helps them to repair their timer with his dead son's illegal technology. Of course, the local Evil Corporation decides to steal the timer as they have been creating technology in secret so they can corner the market once the ban is lifted.
- The entire 01011001 album by the metal opera group Ayreon. See the song "Unnatural Selection" for a particularly anvilicious example.
- System Of A Down's "Science" is entirely devoted to explaining in detail how Science Is Bad and has "failed us," as "spirit moves through all things." Performed on electric instruments.
- Styx's album Kilroy Was Here includes some brief diatribes, not against science per se, but against technology:
The problem's plain to see
Too much technology
Machines to rule our lives
Machines dehumanize.
— Mr. Roboto
- The opening lines of the Aquabats song "The Cat With Two heads" are as follows:
Science! Brings wonders to the modern man,
Modern Man then continues, Continues to expand,
But what happens when man creates Something oh so Wrong?
Then Nature bites back in BIG WAY! Good heavens, what have I done??
- The song Good Technology by Red Guitars doesn't necessarily condemn technology, but does lampshade its absurdities and moral ambiguities. The last verse sums it up:
Sometimes I wonder what it is all about
There's lots of leisure time to sit and work it out
There's a TV show I've got to see
Good, good, good, good, good, good technology
Good technology
Tabletop Games
Video Games
- Lost Odyssey inverts this as technology is neutral and it's actually magic that's screwing with the natural order.
- Frequently a side plot of many Final Fantasy games, though never played straight.
- Arguably subverted in Final Fantasy X. The characters (and the population of Spira in general) spend most of the game thinking that the Big Bad was created as punishment for bad science, only to find out that it's actually magic gone wrong. Boy, were they surprised. They eventually defeat the Eldritch Abomination with machines believed to be evil, instead of the religious ritual they were meant to use. By X-2, both of the major factions (the Youth League and New Yevon) agree science is okay; their major disagreement is how fast it should be implemented (New Yevon being the more conservative faction).
- Final Fantasy VII waffles back and forth on this one. On the one hand, many of the characters rely on technology and science to live and get by, particularly after the events of the game itself. But characters like Hojo, who experiments on people purely to satisfy his own ego, rather than benefiting humanity, and the rest of Shinra Inc. tend to abuse it. Also, bear in mind the game's environmental message, and how going back to a simpler, rustic existence was seen as favourable to an advanced one.
- Final Fantasy VII didn't condemn science, only science that was explicitly causing harm. Advent Children showed that everyone still lived in advanced societies — just not Midgar, which wasn't a practical society anyway. Early in the movie, Barret was even doing his part to reshape the world by finding an energy supply that could supply the modern civilization with power without being nearly as damaging to the world as Mako.
- The irony of the situation comes from the fact that we know that an economy founded on fossil fuels is ultimately not sustainable. So the great new energy source is nothing more than borrowed time and will only lead to more problems.
- But then, considering the world just lost its primary power source, a quick and dirty method would be needed in order to research, develop and implement a more sustainable energy source. In other words, you don't go from coal (or mako) to solar power overnight.
- Also, without Shinra Inc.'s scientific advancement in the field of "Really Big Cannons", everyone would have been screwed. So there isn't really a science is bad thing here. It's more of a "science is only bad if you don't care about the consequences" thing.
- Final Fantasy VI doesn't beat around the bush. The problems start when Kefka is scientifically infused with magicite, driving him mad. One of the most memorable areas is the Magitek Research Facility, where Espers are captured and tortured to study their powers. While this theme dies down around the Floating Island, the message is still "Science caused this problem".
- Like FF7, the problem isn't science itself, but using it for evil purposes. The city of Narshe is only habitable because of the steam-powered heating, and this is presented as a good thing. Magic, a foreign element introduced to the world by three insane deities, doesn't come off as roses either — and has to be destroyed at the end of the game whereas technology is allowed to continue again.
- FF 6, swap "Magic" for "Power" and you'll get the idea of what the designers were trying to say. Power is by itself, neutral. It is a means to an end. When power is lusted after, it destroys, much like Kefka used it to destroy the world.
- The Empire of the Baten Kaitos series are technology-crazy and believe that relying on magic or the power of one's own heart is archaic and limiting. The first game played it pretty much completely straight, but the second revealed that in the distant past, humanity was entirely dependent on and dangerously obsessed with magic and the power of one's own heart, leveling the scales a little. The Very Definitely Final Dungeon is still a massive flying techno-fortress that requires its inhabitants completely give up the natural, however.
- In Okami the final boss Yami, god of darkness is said to be the source of Technology, taking a Mechanical form for most of the battle and the official bosses before him, Lechku and Nechku were robotic clockwork owls. A mild aversion is the fact that Waka's Tao Warriors use Magitek computers and the Moon Tribe apparently do have some access to advanced technology.
- Keep in mind that this game takes place during mythological Japan, making even more sense.
- Mother 3 heavily suggests that the proliferation of technology would bring about the world's downfall (twice), especially given how certain scenery transforms as the game progresses. Though it seems to hint more at an American Culture Is Bad message...
- Parodied, averted, and subverted in Fallout 3. The most prominent case is Doctor Lesko, a wannabe Mad Scientist who created the fire ants that destroyed Grayditch in an experiment Gone Horribly Wrong. Despite this, the game makes it clear that Lesko is merely careless, not evil, and science-oriented players have the opportunity to lecture on him on proper experimental procedure.
- The Fallout 'verse has its share of good and evil scientists. Most "good" scientists adapt existing technology to try to rebuild civilization (such as the Project Purity and Rivet City teams). Scientists who use Forced Evolutionary Virus are depicted either as irresponsible or outright evil.
- Crystalis takes place 100 years after a nuclear war ends civilization. Since then, the people have abandoned science in favor of magic.
- Mass Effect. Whenever you so much as hear about any kind of research project you can bet it's either been overrun by the monsters they were studying and/or making or a Mad Scientist human experiment. Or both.
- Note that most of the experiments can be traced back to are Cerebus or Saren. The exception is the VI experiment on the Moon and that was more of a Failsafe Failure that they have no idea how it happened. And Dr Heart.
- DOOM is based on the premise that teleportation is literal contact with Hell. Half or more of the demons are cybernetically augmented. On the other hand, experimental weapons tend to save the day. In the third game, the company that develops the teleportation device is shown to have also created breakthroughs in energy generation and storage, and is in the process of terraforming Mars.
Western Animation
- Practically every episode of the first season of Super Friends focused not on a villain but on a Well Intentioned Extremist, a Mad Scientist or a regular scientist whose invention accidentally runs amok.
- Particularly painful was an early episode in which a scientist gains hyper-intelligence (and a cartoonishly enlarged cranium) due to some sort of radiation experiment, and rather than use his superior intellect to take over the world, decides to broadcast the rays so that everyone on Earth can enjoy the same radically evolved intelligence as him. Thank god the Justice League saved us from the horrifying fate of becoming smarter!
- Dr. Blight from Captain Planet and the Planeteers is the show's resident embodiment of the trope.
- However this was subverted in the episode "The Unbearable Blightness of Being": in the beginning of that episode, Gaia expresses her loathing of technology and how it is destroying the environment. Shortly afterwards, Blight uses her latest invention to switch bodies with Gaia (despite her being, you know, the spirit of the Earth) and use her powers to wreak havoc. Gaia, trapped in Blight's body, then proceeds to use Blight's gadgets to undo her damage. When the crisis is resolved, Gaia then states she learned An Aesop on how technology can be good for the environment as long as it's in the right hands. The subsequent "Planeteer Alert" then urges the viewer to use "green technology". The show then subsequently forgets this moral and reverts right back to condemning technology and the advancement of civilization for the rest of the series.
- Also note that the Planeteers have some unexpectedly advanced vehicles such as their eco-cruiser, eco-sub et al. There's little mention where they got those, nor do they try to make the technology available for public use.
- Parodied in The Simpsons, with the ignorant townsfolk going on an anti-science riot, including attacking the Museum of Natural History, with Moe smashing a mammoth skeleton, having it land on his back and crying "Oh! My back! I'm paralyzed! I only hope medical science can cure me!"
- Another episode showed a similar mob set to burn Principal Skinner at the stake for insisting that the earth revolves around the sun.
- In the episode "Bart's Comet", when the titular comet burns up in Springfield's polluted atmosphere instead of destroying the town as predicted, Moe shouts "Let's go burn down the observatory so this never happens again!". Cue the angry mob.
- And in another episode, Lisa's class is shown a "documentary" in which Darwin makes out with Satan and the title of his book "The Origin of Species" is smeared on the screen with blood.
- Sadly this isn't too far off from "documentaries" actually made by creationists, see Expelled under film below. An example of Poes Law.
- Delightfully parodied in any episode of The Angry Beavers where they feature B-Movie star Oxnard Montalvo. ("The crawling spleen has grown an opposable thumb!")
- Averted in the "SatAM" Sonic The Hedgehog animated series. Despite the fact that the world has been conquered by Dr. Robotnik with an army of Mecha Mooks and a machine that lets him inflict Unwilling Roboticisation on the victimized organics, despite the fact he is deliberately running his energy plants and factories inefficiently in order to poison the environment and weaken them, science is not portrayed as evil of itself. All of the blame is instead placed on Robotnik being a power-crazed psychotic megalomaniac who is misusing and abusing scientific tools to enforce his own demented desires.
Webcomics
Other
- Every odd technology article on cracked.com.
- Justified in that, since Cracked is an entertainment site first and a news site fifty-seventh, it makes sense to make every other article "Seven ways X Scientific Advancement can Entertainingly Kill You." The other half tend to be "Eight More Animals That Can Horribly Kill You."
- Also hilariously subverted on occasion, for instance 7 Kickass Sci-Fi Cancer Cures.
- Subverted in a strange and depressing sort of way by Arch Oboler's Lights Out radio short "Chicken Heart" (as made famous by Bill Cosby); the scientist responsible for creating the spreading, cancerous blob of chicken muscle knows exactly how to stop the monster, but he can't get the authorities to drop the hammer in time or with enough force. If only they'd known about the monster-retardant properties of Jell-O.
- In the words of Jean Baudrillard in The Procession of Simulacra, "Science never sacrifices itself. It is always murderous."
- Keep in mind that he didn't think science was inherently bad, despite that quote.
Fan Fiction
- In Half Life Full Life Consequences, the "Combines" come from science and outer space.
- And science also makes Gordon Freeman tricked and live and strong and big.
Real Life
- Everything can be bad. Because often Humans Are Bastards.
- It's an aversion because most of it helps. Science doesn't do anything evil that enough motivated people wielding a rock can't do themselves, it just allows it to be done with less people. It does however allow people to build and create helpful things that no one can using only their hands and whatever materials they have around that aren't tools(MRI, filtered water, cars, medicine because the trial and error of plants to find out their effects is science, internet, food without any parasite remains in it after cooking, etc, etc.)
- Quite. But things are the more likely to be bad if one doesn't remember that everything can be bad. That point is hardly an insult to science.
- Technology is power. It allows people to do good things or to do evil (or merely foolish) things on a far grander scale than they could otherwise. Whether the enhanced potential for good outweighs the enhanced potential for evil and folly is a legitimate question, albeit one that is probably best approached on a case by case basis. At any event, it is folly to live in a world where a few individuals with access to nuclear arsenals could annihilate most (if not all) human life on the planet, and nearly destroy the rest of the ecosystem as well, and then to speak of technology as an unmitigated good.
- Nuclear weapons are often brought up as evidence that technology can be a force for great evil, since they seem to give a few people the power to end human civilization (or at least most of it). However, this assumes nuclear procedures allow someone to just blow everything up on a whim. In fact, there is a complex set or rules and procedures enforced by several different people checking and balancing nuclear decision so no one man can blow things up on his own, which is wny it has never happened. No one person can make or detonate a nuclear bomb by himself as building the things requires vastly complex infrastructure no one man can support and all nuclear weapons are designed to be specifically detonated by a certain mechanism. The closest thing to a one-man-detonatable nuke were the small ones like the Davy Crockett, and they don't give those out like candy. Even releasing those to people requires a LOT of security clearnace, people involved, and people keeping an eye on who has them. The only way all those checka and balances would be subverted is if everyone in control is a Card Carrying Villain, which is not realistic. The "few people decide to end the world on a whim" scenario is a fallacy, and using it to "prove" that technology is bad is dishonest. Especially since no one has called it an "unmitigated good" in the first place.
- The Amish.
- Many of the Amish do not believe that science is bad in and of itself and even use a good deal of it (those barn raisings require a lot of math to get it right). They simply believe that modern technology is a distraction from spiritual and mental purity. Some Amish children are allowed to exprience the modern world for a brief period and then choose for themselves to stay in the community or venture outside it. Several Amish communities work very closely with orgianizations designed to help acclimate those who choose to leave to modern society.
- Any worker who has lost his job to a machine and then worried where his children's next meal will come from is understandably likely to express this sentiment.
- Socrates once grumped that, as writing became a more universal skill, people would become forgetful because they could simply write things down. He was right. People routinely remembered oral records that hardly anyone could keep straight today. Memorizing an epic poem is almost inconceivable. Does this make writing any less of a boon? Of course not. The easy preservation and communication of information across generations is inestimably valuable. Yet it is not without cost.
- Although they often couldn't either, which is the reason early versions of a poem like Gilgamesch are often very different from the newer version.
- If "not having to spend weeks memorizing a two-thousand-line-long poem" counts as a cost, anyway. You still can, mind you, but why would you want to?
- In a sense, though, the epic poets often "cheated" — the Iliad and the Odyssey are riddled with stock phrases and filler lines that essentially shortened the memorization process by reducing phrases and whole sentences to single thoughts to be plugged into the meter of the poem as the teller recited it.
- Every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Like that time I took a home winemaking course and forgot how to drive.
- Similarly, obesity is becoming a problem as physical labor becomes less necessary.
- At least until science finds a simple method other than "eat less" to keep people from becoming fat.
- Yes, it will surely be good for the human character when moderate exercise and dietary self-restraint can be safely abandoned, and people are no longer obliged to practice the most basic responsibility for their own bodies.
- In addition to larger amount of food and not changing eating habbits.
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