I am not sussed by the rest of the description, either - too many bad links and sinkholes. Let's take a stab at it:
Many of these will be Disaster Movies or Action Movies and will use state of the art computer effects to keep your interest. This can be Played for Laughs by having a Book Dumb character make such an error so that a smarter character can spot and react to it.
Also see Didn't Think This Through, which is less about research failure and more about planning failure. Contrast with the MST3K Mantra, which tells us not to worry about these little details, Accidentally Accurate, which is when non-experts think the creators are wrong, but experts know the creators are right—by complete accident and Like Reality, Unless Noted, where what appears to be a research failure can be written off as the result of an Alternate History or Alternate Universe.
For Real Life examples of this in action regarding media, see Cowboy BeBop at His Computer. More specific failures have their own pages on Artistic License.
edited 7th Aug '14 3:03:22 PM by SeptimusHeap
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Better, but it's still more specific than a lot of the usage, since it covers writer errors as well.
edited 7th Aug '14 2:36:13 PM by Leaper
Is it a separate trope when the complete absurdity of the assertion is not addressed in-universe as wrong but is clearly meant to be funny? Because that Family Guy example is pretty plainly not meant to be serious but I am not sure if that means it does not count or what.
I think the in universe version does cover that. Not 100% sure, though.
Rewrote my draft description a bit. Anyhow, yeah, the In-Universe version can be Played for Laughs.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
The problem lies not with the topic itself. Critical Research Failure occurs often in many works. The problem is that the description in this article is so vague that anyone can add countless examples from any type of work. Therefore this article is bound to become enormously long, full of examples that have already been listed.
Personally, I would simply list all the links to the Artistic License articles here. They are at least more specific on what kind of topic the mistakes were made (Science, History, Medicine, Geography,...), therefore encouraging other tropers to list new examples according to the specific topic. And Artistic License has the advantage of being vague whether the creators of said mistake made the mistake delibaretely or accidentally. I've noticed that several examples have been removed over the years, simply because someone felt that the Critical Research Failure in question was nothing more than a "intentional joke." Indeed, this is sometimes difficult to prove.
More like giant cherries
Perhaps we should limit the page to examples that are acknowledged in-universe?
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play
The article is not that long, so I wouldn't jump towards trying to "fix" that yet. Rather, does anyone else support my description rewrite?
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Zzzzzzzzzz
I like the description rewrite.![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_up_emoticon_3268.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
Hi
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I do, too.
Looks like the update has occured. However, I'm finding the page doesn't seem to be living up to it's "If you have to explain it, it's not a Critical Research Failure" name. A lot of the examples do need to be explained (and not just the in universe ones).
On top of that, a decent number of examples are very nitpicky, adding examples that aren't really part of exposition, just plot holes in the background. For example, the pinball section, which has a single entry on how it's unrealistic that it uses a fictional geology group, rather than a real one.
I think it needs some major cleanup, possibly with a removal of all real world examples. While not exactly a 'The Same, But More' trope, it's defined by reaching a certain level of failure. Perhaps, however, with the addition of "If you need to explain why it's wrong, it's not this" it might be fine, after a culling of the entries that don't fit.
edited 8th Sep '14 7:14:02 AM by Sines314
Jupiterian Local
Yeah, this trope has always been full of bad examples. Some of them are obviously artistic choices rather than poor research, some of them are examples from classical art where the mistake is obvious now but wasn't then, and others aren't obvious at all unless you're familiar with the subject (which would make them examples for one of the Artistic License tropes, not this one).
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
Actually, the switch wasn't done, so I did it now.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Fan Myopia is a definite problem with this: just because you think something is obvious doesn't mean it will be for everyone. Conversely (and this may help explain the explanations), just because you don't know something doesn't mean you shouldn't have; you could be one of today's lucky 10,000
.
Clock is set.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
OK, so with the change in description, do we want to do a cleanup?
Clock expired with no progress; locking up.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
This trope's description's first paragraph is way too specific, and a cursory glance at the main page's examples show that it's not used in that context in the vast majority of examples.
So why is that paragraph so specific, especially when little of the rest of the description makes reference to it, and using that first paragraph as an important part of the trope would make every single non-in universe example wrong?
I simply want to rewrite those first two paragraphs to loosen it up. A lot. Objections/other suggestions?