When a writer explains something blatantly unscientific with something else that's blatantly (or not so blatantly) unscientific, he has shown an example of Unscientific Science. For example, a writer might explain why two characters can hear each other in space by saying that someone has put air into space.
This happens frequently when a hard science fiction show is serialized, and the writers can't think of a better explanation for something happening. The solution for them is often to be more vague about the science behind what happened.
This is not for something unscientific that goes unexplained or unacknowledged. This is only for when something unscientific is used as an explanation for something else unscientific. If this page was for the former and not the latter, this page would be incredibly long.
Compare
New Rules as the Plot Demands (when the science is normally hard until this trope comes into play) and
Magic A Is Magic A (when the writers are consistent about how the nonsensical science works).
A subtrope of
Hollywood Science.
Lots of overlap with
Artistic License of most forms.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Mazinger Z: During the Final Battle in the Gosaku Ota manga chapters, Mazinger-Z was thrown in a Lava Pit... and it emerged unscathed. When Big Bad Dr. Hell blurted out it was impossible (not even Made of Indestructium Mazinger-Z can endure a lava bath, let alone Made Of Flesh Kouji Kabuto), Kouji replied he had used the rockets located on Mazinger's feet to stir the lava and create an air bubble around his robot... which actually is harder to buy than the "It's Nigh Invulnerable and it emerged out very quickly" excuse.
Literature
- The Animorphs series has a couple. The biggest one is in The Mutation. The Nartec apparently used to be people who mutated after their island 'sunk'. This makes no sense. The explanation? Radiation sped up their mutation.
- In the Maximum Ride series, the gang have wings and other bird-like attributes, and Erasers are basically werewolves. This is explained by the fact that their DNA was altered. Apparently, there is one specific gene for bird wings (which there actually isn't), and there's a gene that allows humans to… transform into werewolves? The more you think about it, the less sense it makes.
- In I Am Number Four, the Loriens have seemingly magical powers. It's explained... that it happened by evolution. And apparently, these adaptations were to protect the planet they lived on. We're genuinely not sure whether or not the authors intended for this to make sense or not.
- The Reality Bug by D. J. MacHale. In it, the Reality Bug tries to break out of fantasy into reality. The explanation is that jumpers are somehow giving the bug physical power.
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is full of this, and it's played for laughs. For example, the engine of the starship Heart of Gold needs to generate infinite improbability, but it is only possible to generate finite amounts of improbability, which led physicists to say it's virtually impossible to build one. Then someone reasoned that a virtual impossibility is the same as a finite improbability, and thus it could be built.
- In Twilight, the vampires are supposed to be science-based. It was explained that when a person is turned into a vampire, they have all of their bodily fluids converted into a sort of venom, their eyes change color, their skin loses all pigmentation, they get flawless features (considered universally beautiful), and their cells become crystal-like. All of this is from venom "injected" by a single bite from normal teeth (that is, no fangs). Furthermore, the description of the sparkling means that the cells must be lined with tiny mirrors. Erm...
Western Animation
- Parodied a couple of times in Futurama.
- In "A Clone of My Own", the Planet Express Ship can travel faster than the speed of light, according to Farnsworth. When Cubert calls him out on how blatantly wrong this is, Farnsworth explains that scientists increased the speed of light. Of course, it turns out that the actual explanation is that the Planet Express Ship can achieve FTL travel by moving the entire universe around it as opposed to moving itself through the universe.
- In "The Deep South", the inhabitants of Atlanta evolved into mermaids due to consuming caffeine. Made even more hilarious by the fact that this is basically what happened in the Animorphs book The Mutation (the example above), only here, it's played for laughs.
- In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, main character Flint Lockwood invents a machine that turns the weather into food by, long story short, "mutating" water. Water, as we all know, does not have a genetic code.
