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Author: KJMackley

Mar 30th 2013 at 12:53:51 AM

That's overcomplicating it. All the trope is supposed to be is that the story and/or characters use scientific methods of any kind and applying it to what we consider to be common social situations. They have a wide range of how they can use it but the key is that they are either "experimenting" on it or present their "theories" in a scientific manner. This runs the gauntlet of math, physics, biology, psychology, engineering, flowcharts, thought experiments and may use actual social science itself. Sometimes it is inaccurate (or fails to account for all variables) but other times it might end up spot on. That's why it is such a broad name because "nerd is at a lost without formulas" is much more narrow than the trope.

Thus {{Mythbusters}} fits the trope. And in TheBigBangTheory Sheldon created the frienship flowchart out of research and implemented it as part of an experiment, another episode he tried conditioning Penny using positive reinforcement. Using these theories is another form of experimentation.

Maybe TheScienceOfSocializing? SocialProofs? SocialTheorems?