No, those are exactly what this trope is for. When the work is said or strongly implied to be factually accurate, but is not.

If you're talking about Real Life examples, though, tread carefully. This isn't the place for Intelligent Design or Creationist vs Evolutionist stuff or things like that.

What about Dianetics? Most Triumphant Example as far as I'm concerned. The book is horrible in this way.

Then again, there might be an unreasonable abundance of pseudoscientific examples to include them all, maybe I should write some blanket statement about them instead.

If we can't attack popular religions we should be able to attack unpopular ones. It's only fair.

No. Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgement. Learn it, love it, live it.

I'm sorry, VVK, I completely misunderstood your original question. I thought you were asking about things like misusing science in a work. This one is for works of fiction only. Not religions, not science or pseudoscience.

It's not as simple as "How accurate is it?" There has to be a claim (or strong implication) of accuracy. House did have that (when it started it followed the pattern of CSI and kept pointing out that they were hiring a "medical advisor"); Scrubs doesn't.

Especially hilarious given that House fails basic high school biology: he once deduced that a woman was cheating on her husband because both had brown eyes, but their children had blue eyes.

There's only one: DanBrowned.Dan Brown

I would interpret that line to be a claim to accuracy, as it claims that's it's not sci-fi, (here meaning "made up stuff") and clearly based on accurate science with a bit of extrapolation like Re Genesis. I can't see any other way of reading it.

See, I take it as a denial of the sci-fi ghetto, rather than a statement about the factual accuracy of the science. And even if JJ thinks it's not science fiction, it's still being marketed as science fiction, it's publicly identified as science fiction, there's no claims that I know of that have been made about them having science advisors to make sure they get the science right. It's simply not being presented to the public as factually accurate. If you can point me at someplace where it is presented that way, I'd like to see it. "Within the realm of possibility" is not the same thing as "factually accurate".

"Within the realm of possibility" also means "not blatantly contradicting what we know about the world," so if there's instances of impossible things, it's still Dan Browned. The pituitary gland killer episode (1-2) had a baby age 80 years in minutes, the fourth episode of that season features telepathy and learning by osmosis, and the sixth episode had a woman take a drug that made her brain emit a microwave burst. In later episodes there was a teleporter, a pyrokinetic, and parallel universe travel on Earth. None of these things are remotely possible.

Right, they aren't. But for Fringe to be a case of Dan Browned, rather than simply "fiction", the show itself has to be presented to the public as factually accurate. Dan Browned isn't just "really, really wrong". It's "I tell you, it's true, TRUE!" when iut isn't. ''Fringe has the "it isn't" part, but it doesn't have the "It's True!" part. It is not being presented or marketed as anything but a science fiction show, no matter how badly JJ Abrams wants to keep it out of the sci-fi ghetto.

House is on the list because a big deal was made about how they were going to have medical advisors and actually listen to them, because (paraphrasing here,) 'it's a medical show. If the medicine is bad, the show can't be good.' CSI is on the list because of the same thing — back when it started there was a lot of hoorah about how they were gong to to be as accurate as possible. They quit making that claim, but they never repudiated it, so a lot of people still think that they're watching an accurate depiction of what a CSI does.

The characters in the show Fringe talk like what they're doing is true. But the show itself has never been presented as factually accurate science. Dan Browned is about how the work itself is presented to the public not whether the characters within the work say something is accurate.

OK. So we should go through and purge all the Word Of God based Dan Brown-ings as well.

That's not what I said.

Abrams didn't say "It's accurate science" He said "It's not sci-fi" which is a genre that may or may not include accurate science. He wasn't making a statement about its accuracy. The closest he came is making a waffly statement about its plausibility.

However the Dan Browns of this world like to claim that what they produce is accurate fact, ... That's a quote from the definition. He didn't say it was accurate fact. Because of that, it isn't Dan Browned.

You and I are just going to have to disagree on how to interpret that quote then. I won't argue any further, it's not going to work because we can never know what Abrams really meant with his sci-fi bashing.

Yeah, move it over here to the discussion page. I don't recall whether they're getting the basic version or the detailed version. We'll wait for someone who knows to weigh in. Good catch.

Moved over here for discussion:

• The C.O.P.S. in Tell Tale Games's Sam And Max games do this once. Their spiel on Easter Island in "Moai Better Blues" includes factoids such as it being founded in 1914 by members of prog-rock band Asia and being located off the coast of "Your Mom", causing Sam to note he can tell they're still doing all their research on the Internet.
  Bluster Blaster: INFORMATION WANTS TO BE WRONG!

Is there any representation that Sam And Max are factually accurate games? If so, please add it when you restore this example. If not, do not restore the example. Dan Browned isn't "oh, a character got something wrong," It's "the author or the marketing department banners the accuracy of the work, but there are major errors in it."