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10[[quoteright:346:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/1902_vs_1969.jpg]]
11[-[[caption-width-right:346:1902: [[Film/ATripToTheMoon Shoot a manned projectile at the Moon]] with a cannon.\
121969: [[RealLife Launch a manned rocket to the Moon]].]]-]
13
14->'''Planet Master:''' Feel the strength of Jupiter, the speed of Mercury, the cold of Pluto!\
15'''Blue Beetle:''' News flash: Pluto's not considered a planet anymore.\
16'''Planet Master:''' ''Insolence!''
17-->-- ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold'', "Aquaman's Outrageous Adventure"
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19%% One quote is sufficient. Please place additional entries on the quotes tab.
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21SpeculativeFiction often uses the real-world scientific knowledge that was ''actually available'' when it was written. There is nothing wrong with that, and indeed powering and justifying your world with Hard Science is, to many people, preferable to AppliedPhlebotinum and TechnoBabble. Basing your fictional science on real-world science is an excellent way to create WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief.
22
23There's one problem with this approach, however: [[UsefulNotes/{{Science}} Science]] ''progresses''. Around the 1500s, some cultures thought that the sun revolved around the earth. Around the 1900s, there still were scientists who openly questioned the existence of subatomic particles, like electrons and photons. As recently as the start of the millennium, the existence of dark energy, and the corresponding fact that the expansion of the universe is accelerating rather than slowing, was not widely known in the scientific community. And many of our current assumptions about [[Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy Life, the Universe, and Everything]] will inevitably be questioned or disproven in the future. Therefore, when a scientific theory used widely in speculative fiction gets {{Jossed}} by new scientific discoveries, it's because Science Marches On.
24
25Scientific [[SciFiNameBuzzwords terminology]] is also subject to change, and it can be particularly jarring if a story set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture uses names that were widespread a few years ago, but are [[HaveAGayOldTime obsolete now]], and are likely to remain so. For example, the word "atomic" has been mostly supplanted by "nuclear". Likewise, older science fiction written in the US did not foresee the adoption of [[TheMetricSystemIsHereToStay metric measurements]].
26
27As a result, what seems like bad research in older fiction (in particular ArtisticLicenseSpace and ArtisticLicenseBiology) is actually this: They ''did'' do the research; it's just that said research is now outdated. TechnologyMarchesOn is a subtrope. {{Zeerust}} may be considered a sub-trope of this, as the old ideas of "futuristic" look dated now due to new advances in unforeseen directions. For instances where the change is in the historical record, see DatedHistory.
28
29This can also include cases where writers predicted an advance in ''engineering'' that never happened for practical reasons, such as having our entire civilization powered by nuclear reactors by 1990 or having cities on the Moon in 2000. It's at least conceivable that such a thing could have happened in hindsight, but it would have been so expensive and unrewarding that it seems as absurd as things that have been actively contradicted by new scientific discoveries.
30
31See also IWantMyJetpack, ConvictionByCounterfactualClue, ArtisticLicense. This ''can'' overlap with AccidentallyCorrectWriting, where instead of being proven wrong, something presented in fiction is proven to be correct by science. Sometimes there is also overlap with SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale, when a number that might look ridiculously small/large to modern audiences made good sense in a previous scientific paradigm.
32
33----
34!! Sub-tropes:
35[[index]]
36* AlphaAndBetaWolves
37* AnimalsSeeInMonochrome
38* AquaticHadrosaurs
39* AquaticSauropods
40* BrainFever
41* DumbDinos
42* EarthIsTheCenterOfTheUniverse
43* ExtraYExtraViolent
44* KillerGorilla
45* StrollingOnJupiter
46* VenusIsWet
47* UsefulNotes/WestermarckEffect
48[[/index]]
49
50----
51!!Examples:
52[[index]]
53!!Works
54* ''ScienceMarchesOn/DinosaurPlanet''
55* ''ScienceMarchesOn/JurassicPark''
56* ''ScienceMarchesOn/WalkingWith''
57
58!!Topics
59* ScienceMarchesOn/{{Astronomy}}
60[[/index]]
61
62[[foldercontrol]]
63
64[[folder:Biology]]
65[[AC:{{Anime}} & {{Manga}}]]
66* ''[[Anime/AfterWarGundamX Gundam X]]'' has a scene in which the protagonists meet an extremely intelligent dolphin, and Jamil says that dolphins have no concept of killing their own species. Well, this was a popularly-believed theory, but [[http://www.fishingnj.org/artdolphagress.htm it turns out]] that it couldn't be more wrong...
67
68[[AC:Comic Books]]
69* The Golden Age version of ComicBook/TheFlash got his super-speed powers from inhaling hard water vapors. No, not ''heavy'' water (though that would be equally absurd), ''hard'' water, as in water that has a high mineral content. At the time it was thought that ingesting hard water would somehow heighten one's reflexes.
70
71
72[[AC:Film]]
73* ''Film/TheBlackStork'' is a 1917 pro-eugenics movie in which a man's affair with an unclean servant leads to a "blood taint" in his seemingly normal grandson, whose own son is born severely deformed as a result. We now know that this is not how genetics works.
74* The DownerEnding of ''Film/{{Chinatown}}'', in which the villain gets away with asserting custody of the girl he'd fathered on his own now-deceased daughter, would have come out ''very'' differently after the development of DNA testing, which could easily prove him guilty of ParentalIncest.
75* An actual plot point in the film version of ''Film/TheGeneralsDaughter''. In 1992, the Army leadership covered up a rape of a cadet, as they believed that there was no way to positively identify the rapists, and an unsolvable rape would destroy West Point's reputation. Seven years later, with advances in DNA testing methods, Sunhill convinces one of the rapists to rat out the others. [[spoiler: No DNA test had actually been done; Sunhill only said that DNA testing could expose the rapists.]]
76* The [[AnimalNemesis Man-Vs-Rat]] film ''Film/OfUnknownOrigin'' got its title from how, at the time, scientists weren't sure where the Norway rat had lived prior to its becoming dependent upon humanity's leftovers and its diaspora across most of the planet. Studies have since traced the species' likely origin-point to the plains of northern China and Mongolia.
77* ''Film/OrcaTheKillerWhale'': This movie, made back in 1976, is about a male orca seeking revenge on the fisherman he blames for the death of his mate. Since the film came out, much has been learned about orca social structure, and it's now known that orca males generally don't stay with their mates. That being said, the movie still works if one interprets the Orca as an enraged ''son'' avenging the death of his ''mother''.
78* The first ''Film/PlanetOfTheApes1968'' movie kept the "chimps are intelligent and kind-hearted, gorillas are aggressive brutes" idea from the novel and portrayed the former as heroic scientists and civilians and the latter as more or less villainous soldiers and hunters. By the time the [[Film/PlanetOfTheApes2001 2001 "reimagining"]] was produced, the idea had been so thoroughly debunked that make-up artist Creator/RickBaker pressed Creator/TimBurton to [[AdaptationSpeciesChange change]] the villainous General Thade from the script's KillerGorilla to a [[ManiacMonkeys chimpanzee]]. The second reboot ''Film/RiseOfThePlanetOfTheApes'' still uses gorillas as shock troops, but Buck is portrayed as a misunderstood creature with UndyingLoyalty to Caesar [[spoiler: and is given a HeroicSacrifice.]]
79
80[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
81* In one chapter of ''Literature/TwentyThousandLeaguesUnderTheSea'', Aronnax lists how fishes are classified into six groups. Now this classification is outdated.
82* In ''Literature/AfterManAZoologyOfTheFuture'', contains many instances of this, combining with {{Zeerust}} and RuleOfCool. Some of the most egregious examples is that many of the future animals are descended from "insectivores", as in the order "Insectivora", which is now considered a defunct [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wastebasket_taxon wastebasket taxon]] of small, generalist, insect-eating mammals that aren't particularly closely related in reality, and the false notion that bats are poor-sighted and will eventually [[WeWillNotHaveAppendixesInTheFuture lose their eyes]], but really, bats have pretty good vision, and no species is blind.
83* Although Creator/KAApplegate made an effort to do her research, ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' still can't help but be dated in a number of its animal depictions. The notion of AlphaAndBetaWolves is treated as fact, as is the idea that dolphins are naturally friendly creatures (in real life, they're fiercely territorial and sexually aggressive).
84* In ''Literature/CherryAmes: Cruise Nurse'', a little boy shows Cherry his stuffed panda. She pities him, because he had asked for a "teddy bear", and his grandmother had given him a panda, which "isn't even a bear." Since the 1940's, during which the book was written, DNA tests have proven that pandas are in fact bears.
85* In Lawrence Block's ''Literature/EvanTanner'' series, the "sleep center" (the idea of sleep being controlled in one region of the brain being outdated in itself) of the narrator's brain was destroyed by shrapnel during the Korean War. As a consequence, he never sleeps ''at all'', leaving an enormous amount of spare time for him to do things like learning multiple languages. Even if you ignore symptoms such as depression and hallucinations, the eventual effect of chronic long-term sleep deprivation is ''death''.
86* In ''Literature/{{Felidae}}'', "European Shorthair" is used as a synonym for "Domestic Shorthair". In the 1980s, this was commonplace. However, since then, "European Shorthair" has become known exclusively as a breed, while "Domestic Shorthair" is a fancy term for "mixed-breed/moggy cat".
87* In Arthur C. Clarke's 1990 raise-the-''Titanic'' novel ''Literature/TheGhostFromTheGrandBanks'', the Human Genome Project is still ongoing in the second decade of the 21st century. Thanks to breakthroughs in genetic sequencing, it was actually declared to have accomplished its primary task in 2003.
88* Creator/AlanDeanFoster's ''Literature/HumanxCommonwealth'' novel ''Midworld'', from 1975, makes ample use of the then-popular notion that a rain forest's ecosystem was sharply divided into "levels", top to bottom. This concept is now downplayed in ecology, as it's turned out that very few species are actually restricted to one "level", and this mode of thinking had ignored numerous other factors of topography and microclimate that can impact a forest's environment just as much. (The 1995 sequel, ''Mid-Flinx'', makes almost no mention of "levels", indicating Foster has Marched On along with the science.)
89* In ''Literature/HumanxCommonwealth'' novel ''The Tar-Aiym Krang'', Flinx's adoptive parent Mother Mastiff is said to resemble the Terran canine, both in appearance and in her irascible, unfriendly personality. While this may have been the stereotype for the breed back in 1972, when ''Krang'' was published, breeders already saw this as a negative trait for mastiffs even then, and most mastiffs today are calm, good-natured, and easy-going animals.
90* In Edwards Le Comte's autobiographical work ''In and Out of the University and Adversity'', Edward, who had brown eyes, was told in 1934 by someone looking at a color photo of his mother that he must have had a brown-eyed father. When he asked why, the woman said because two people with blue eyes [[http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/aprilholladay/2004-10-14-wonderquest_x.htm cannot conceive someone with brown eyes]], and that "Biology doesn't lie. People may." She seemed to have noticed his alarm because the next time she saw him, she informed him that he actually had hazel eyes. Nevertheless, in the following years he would from time to time ask people he met what color his eyes were. However, he seems to have come to terms with the question by the time the book was written (in 2001), writing that, "Half my heredity is a blank. At eighty what matter?"
91** We now know that two people with blue eyes ''can'' produce a child with brown eyes, as eye colour is not determined simply by one gene. It's actually quite common for a blue-eyed person to carry a gene for brown eyes that can be passed on to their children.
92* ''Inu Monogatari'' is a 1901 Japanese book that insists native Japanese dog breeds are descended from dholes. This is now known to be inaccurate. The dogs are descended from wolves, just like all domestic dogs.
93* A curious example of this comes from Creator/{{Juvenal}}'s satires, which brought us many still popular phrases and concepts such as 'BreadAndCircuses' to keep the masses happy, wishing for 'a sound mind in a sound body' or asking 'WhoWatchesTheWatchmen?'. He also coined the phrase of a 'rare bird in the land' such as 'black swan' meaning to him a nonexistent thing. For many centuries afterwards and in many languages the phrase meant something that did not exist until somebody discovered a black swan in Australia. The phrase changed its meaning and nowadays is used to describe an idea based on a hypothesis that can be disproven by a single counterexample or [[OutsideContextProblem are extremely hard to predict or anticipate events that throw everything into chaos]].
94* In Louisa May Alcott's ''Literature/LittleMen'', a boy with a severe cough of long duration is given cough syrup, which has honey in it. Then a healthy toddler is allowed to lick the sweet-tasting spoon. Luckily, the older child doesn't have tuberculosis, but he might have had it, and the toddler doesn't catch whatever is actually causing the cough. The novel was written before the germ theory of disease was generally known.
95* In the ''Literature/LordPeterWimsey'' story "The Image in the Mirror," a left/right inverted man is experiencing mysterious circumstances. Finding that the man is inverted, Wimsey infers that he must have a opposite (an Evil Opposite) twin who is causing all the mystery and cites experiments with salamander eggs tied off with threads. The experiments were real and important in understanding how the left/right gradient is formed. However, while left/right inverted twins do exist they are vanishingly rare. Most twins are not left/right inverts and most left/right inverts are not twins.
96* In ''Literature/TheManWhoEvolved'' (1931), evolution is caused by cosmic rays and, therefore, concentrated cosmic rays make you evolve faster. Aside from the obvious OvenLogic at work here, the idea is (loosely) consistent with the early 20th century notion that new species arose as a result of large mutations caused, e.g., by natural radiation. The current view on evolution as a combination of natural selection and genetic variability (the so-called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_eclipse_of_Darwinism#End_of_the_eclipse "Modern Synthesis"]]) would become widespread in the following decades.
97* A good portion of the 15th book of Creator/{{Ovid}}'s ''Literature/{{Metamorphoses}}'' has Pythagoras giving a lecture on the fundamental role played by, well, metamorphoses in nature. In a matter of speaking, Ovid has laid the epic poem's thesis on this section. Naturally, almost all of Pythagoras' examples, pulled from science of the day, are complete bunk. For example: if you watch a horse's corpse a hornet will (always) come out of it (ostensibly because it turned into one).
98* Creator/IsaacAsimov wrote a short story titled "Pâté de Foie Gras", which scientifically analyzed the goose that laid the golden eggs, and asked readers to find solutions to the problem that since golden eggs can't hatch, there's no way to get more geese. In a comment years later, Asimov pointed out that advancing science caused there to be a better solution than the one he had originally intended: [[spoiler: keep the goose in a closed environment until it uses up all the Oxygen-18 in the air (in the story, they found that the goose was converting the O-18 isotope into gold). Without O-18, it can't produce gold, so it will just lay normal eggs]]. The simpler solution which came later is to [[spoiler: just clone it]].
99* In ''Literature/PrinceCaspian'', Creator/CSLewis writes that Reepicheep wanting his tail back was mainly a matter of mouse pride, and all the other mice are prepared to sacrifice their tails so as not to embarrass their leader. This book was written in the 1950's, before it was known that mouse tails help regulate body temperature. Then again, talking mice probably had to have their temperature regulation jiggled a bit due to their greater size.
100* Robert Heinlein again. In ''Literature/StarshipTroopers'' the planet Sanctuary has very low radiation level and colonists supposedly risked to "[[EvolutionaryLevels stay frozen at their present level while the rest of the human race moves on past them]]", but "it's a bit safer -- leukemia and some types of cancer are almost unknown there". While "[[AlienKudzu more advanced]]" Terran wheat [[AlienKudzu beats local weeds]]. There are problems. First, usual set of bugs with EvolutionaryLevels. Second, while major radiation poisoning causes particular forms of cancer, there's no compelling reason to tie most cases to the ''normal'' radiation background. Third, a result of the previous two: conditions for evolutionary ''adaptation'' include gamma rays just like everything else, so modern radiobiology pulled the low end of the scale out of OvenLogic.[[note]]It's better known for the plants, as their optimums are already orders of magnitude higher, so fallout levels dangerous to humans may still be stimulating to them. For algae, it was known from 1898, the "radiation hormesis" hypothesis appeared in 1981 or so, and at least from 1983 it's about specific numbers [[http://www.biomedexperts.com/Abstract.bme/6844555/Possible_effect_of_natural_background_radiation_on_the_development_of_mammals for mammals]].[[/note]] E.g. rats grown (not even born) in a low radioactive background have health and development problems, thus ''some'' background seems desirable. Sanctuary's choice could boil down to "eat radioactive isotopes or slowly die out". There is some discussion in the book about detonating nuclear weapons on a regular basis to increase the background radiation, but there is a difference between steady but low-level radiation and acute, high levels.
101** An even more fundamental error: the main driving force behind evolution is competition for survival and for mates, the only needed force is a means for introducing genetic diversity (spontaneous mutation will occur without radiation present), and therefore Sanctuary will not be a stable island of unchanging organisms. All the details of DNA replication were not known in 1959, as its structure had been announced only in 1953.
102*** In ''Starship Troopers'' at least these could be in-universe mistakes made by the protagonist, who is narrating the story in the first person. While he's a top-notch SpaceMarine and definitely not stupid, he is explicitly stated not to be strong in science (particularly mathematics).
103*** In any case, it's now known that a fairly small amount of cross-breeding between two breeding groups that are mostly separate will prevent species divergence. So even granting all that is said in the novel as true, interstellar travel will keep humans on all planets in regular contact with each other the same species.
104** ''Stars!'', on the other hand, got it: whether gravity, temperature or radiation on a planet are out of the species' acceptable band to either side, you're in the same amount of trouble.
105* In Creator/JamesBlish's novella ''Literature/SurfaceTension'', the protagonists are genetically engineered humans the size of large protozoa (one hundredth of an inch), living in a puddle of water. In the introduction setting up the story, we hear one of the genetic engineers say that the people can be so small and still be intelligent because their cells are the size of viruses. When the story was written, we did not realize viruses are not cells.
106* When ''Literature/TailchasersSong'' came out in the 1980s, domestic cats were seen as solitary animals who only sometimes live in clowders. This is why it gets repeatedly mentioned that it's uncomfortable and unnatural for cats to be in large groups for long periods of time. Since then, research has shown that cats are more social than previously thought.
107
108[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
109* In several episodes of ''Series/TheInvisibleMan'' series, the protagonist's [[AppliedPhlebotinum invisibility gland]] takes over his personality with RNA injected in it. He essentially becomes that person.
110* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E12Violations Violations]]" Geordi and Data are discussing human memories, and explicitly state that memories are stored as RNA molecules in the brain. Although we still do not know exactly how memory functions, we can by now fairly safely say that our memories are not stored as individual strings of RNA.
111
112[[AC:VideoGames]]
113* ''Bio Inc: Redemption'' has "Moderate Drinking" as a positive lifestyle choice, citing the common belief that light drinking can actually have health benefits. While this does technically hold true, not even a year after the game left Early Access, some studies claimed that the benefits are outweighed by the risks and that there really isn't a "safe" amount of drinking one can do.
114* ''VideoGame/EndlessOcean'' and its sequel contain specimens of goblin sharks in deep-sea regions. Realistic enough. However, their jaws are depicted as permanently protruding, an out-of-date assumption as we have learned more about goblin shark physiology.
115* ''VideoGame/WolfDOS'' is a 1994 educational game that references "alpha" wolves. The concept of beta and alpha wolves became an outdated concept within fifteen years of the game's release.
116
117[[AC:{{Webcomics}}]]
118* ''Webcomic/{{Freefall}}'': The Bowman's Wolf was designed as a genetically modified, intelligent wolf, and when first introduced, Florence was described as colorblind. Creator Mark Stanley has since invented in-universe reasons, but [[http://www.crosstimecafe.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3543&start=20#p68841 freely admits]] she is more colorblind than an actual wolf would be, because that was the popular understanding at the time the comic started.
119* Every ''Webcomic/KevinAndKell'' strip involving lions has some reference to the idea that only lionesses hunt (Edgar and Frank are presented as highly unusual exceptions, and Edgar at least is ostracised by lion society as a result - plus he's incompetent). In 2013, it was discovered that [[http://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/male-lions-do-help-hunting-after-all-f6C10149668 male lions do hunt, but differently]]. And long before this study it had been known that male lions do at times assist on group hunts, especially when their extra bulk is helpful in finishing off large prey that the lionesses have restrained.
120* ''Webcomic/OneOverZero'': in an early plotline, [[http://www.undefined.net/1/0/?strip=285 Terra the earthworm is forced to the surface during a rainstorm to avoid drowning.]] However, it is now known that earthworms do not drown in moist soil -- in fact, [[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-earthworms-surface-after-rain they can survive for several days fully submerged in water.]] Instead it seems earthworms come to the surface during rain simply because it takes less effort to move above ground compared to digging, and it is only when it is raining that they can be assured they won't risk drying out in the sun.
121
122[[AC:WebOriginal]]
123* ''WebOriginal/Sagan4'': Seen occasionally in the original, and surprisingly less often than one might expect from a project with so many young contributors. The reboot is so new that there are no examples from it yet, but they will inevitably happen eventually.
124** Though later retconned to have bones, Plents originally walked on thick muscular tentacles. Since then, such limbs working on land has been questioned and proven to not be possible.
125** The locomotion transition rules stated that a species must glide before it can evolve flight. Since then, scientific study into the origins of flight have suggested that flight does not come from gliding--it comes from parachuting. To reflect this, in the reboot the rule has been revised to require parachuting instead.
126
127[[AC: WesternAnimation]]
128* In the ''Franchise/KungFuPanda'' franchise, Master Mantis occasionally refers to his hope that one day he will find a female mantis he can settle down with and [[MantisMatingMeal get eaten by]]. It is now understood that female mantises do not ''routinely'' kill the male after mating. They do so in a quarter of cases observed in the wild, but 100% of cases in captivity. Theories for this include diet and stress; if the latter, it's possible that it occurs even less often in the wild when they're ''not'' being observed by scientists.
129
130[[AC:RealLife]]
131* Any discussion of "pack dynamics" in wolves (''Literature/JulieOfTheWolves'' comes to mind.) Modern research has shown that wolf packs are more or less nuclear families, with the "alpha" male and female simply being the parents of the rest of the pack. They still let strangers in, but it's mostly based on one family. The original study that created the idea was done with captive wolves, who take on more of a prison-style hierarchy. Even the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._David_Mech researcher who popularized the idea]] has long since [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_(ethology)#Controversy rejected it]] in the face of better research.
132* Speaking of wolves, the notion of canines only seeing in black and white or having worse vision compared to humans. In actuality, while humans have three color-sensitive cone cells (red, green, and blue) dogs only have two (yellow and blue). They can see colors, but just can't distinguish between green, yellow, and red objects based on color alone. They ''can'', however, distinguish between them based on perceived brightness as they have more rod cells and more easily distinguish between grays. It's more accurate to say dogs see ''differently'' than humans: humans see better in daylight thanks to our superior cone cells while dogs see better in the dark and at dusk due to their superior rod cells, allowing the two to team up and vastly increase the times and effectiveness of hunting.
133* Any depiction of dolphins or other whales mating for life. A nice romantic notion in its day, but it turns out they're [[ReallyGetsAround promiscuous breeders]] at best and into sexual harassment or ''gang rape'' at worst.
134* A lot of older works (and some today) will often make it a philosophical point about how animals only kill each other for food, or that abuse and cruelty are human inventions. However sadism and abuse have in fact been documented in numerous species and it is thought to be the norm in others. Plenty of predators have been observed to kill out of boredom and herbivores will injure and kill one another over territories and mates.
135* The dynamics of various animal groups are far too complex to go into here, but suffice to say that none of them fit the antiquated view of herds as roughly mirroring human social groups, with an alpha male leader who calls all the shots. In many polygynous species the "alpha male" is (in effect) nothing more than a walking sperm bank.
136* For the longest time, people believed snakes to be deaf to airborne sound (it was known they could sense ground vibrations), since they have no external ears and seldom appear to react to airborne sounds. It's now been shown that snakes ''can'' hear to an extent (to what extent is unclear) by picking up vibrations from the air or ground through their bodies and processing them through the inner-ear. In fact, loud noises can actually cause stress to snakes.
137* Taxonomy runs into a lot of problems with this trope. Due to a complicated hierarchy and scientific species names based on species' places in the hierarchy (i.e. the binomial nomenclature of ''Genus species''), every time new information on evolutionary lineage is discovered, binomial names or the bigger groupings higher up in the ranking may have to change and go obsolete (see the ''Brontosaurus'' example in Paleontology and Anthropology's section below for the exception to this rule). It's confusing enough to change the old lineages, but that's the way of science -- but changing the ''names of species'' is simply confusing. There is currently a campaign attempting to abolish the binomial system and give each species an unchanging monomial name.
138** This problem largely arose with introduction of genetic studies; before that, taxonomy was largely based on morphology. Modern molecular biology has shown that many taxa previously thought to be monophyletic (that is, sharing a common ancestor that's not also the ancestor of anything outside that taxon) are actually just examples of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution convergent evolution]]. Reevaluations of the old morphological data in light of this will often reveal new characters that support the new topology as well.
139** Genetic studies also introduced problems in that not all taxa are equal. Let's take the most well-known example—the different classes of vertebrates (Kingdom Animalia, phylum Chordata), such as Mammalia, Reptilia, Aves (birds), and Amphibia. The problem here is that they didn't diverge at the same time, and so these groups are not a dependable way to distinguish amount of genetic difference, i.e. what ''actually'' differentiates species. The common ancestral species of amphibians diverged from the common mammal-reptile ancestor before mammals and reptiles diverged from each other, and birds are technically a subset of reptiles according to genetics and morphology, only considered different due to superficial differences. Therefore, if the proper way to denote an amphibian is Animalia Chordata Amphibia etc. etc., the proper way to denote a bird while still maintaining accuracy would be Animalia Chordata Reptilia-Mammalia Reptilia Aves. That's a mess, and we're only up to the class! Likewise, within mammals, the common ancestor of monotremes (such as platypi) diverged from the placental-marsupial common ancestor before placentals (e.g. humans, dogs) and marsupials (e.g. kangaroos) diverged from each other, making them not on the same level. For these reasons, classical taxonomy is beginning to be abandoned.
140*** Reptilia-Mammalia is commonly known as Amniota. And there's several (about 7-8 at current thinking) levels both between then and Chordata, and them and Aves, a quite complex link in that case, which sees lizards splitting off from birds, crocodiles, and turtles and then turtles splitting off, and finally crocodiles and birds parting ways, with birds continuing down through dinosaurs.
141*** With the discoveries of more and more feathered dinosaurs (and the latest research a high probability that ''most'' dinosaurs likely had feathers, just as most mammals have hair)[[note]]The dinosaurs that evidence shows (through skin impressions) probably didn't have some kind of feathers are descended from ancestors that did, similar to the way mostly hairless cetaceans evolved from furry ancestors[[/note]], and are, some people are questioning whether birds should be considered a different class from dinosaurs at all. Some researchers even speak of the K-T extinction as only having wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs. Others suggest "dinosaurs" should be reclassified as birds.
142* One of the unspoken justifications for early "Lost World" fiction was the tacit belief that God wouldn't ''really'' allow any of His creations to be killed off, so there must be some hidden region where organisms that had vanished from the landscape were still around. Only as more and more species were wiped off the map by other species including humans and an ever-growing variety of fossils were discovered did the idea that extinction was (and still is) a real phenomenon take hold, relegating the notion of such isolated refugia to SpeculativeFiction.
143* One of the most commonly repeated factoids about reptiles is that they grow throughout their lives. However, actual evidence for this is rather lacking and open to interpretation. There is substantial evidence that how big a reptile gets depends a lot more on their individual genetics and food supply than it does on how long they manage to live, and if/when it is true that they keep growing, growth becomes so slow past a certain point in the reptile's life that it is almost inconsequential. A decades-long study of American alligators in particular showed that that while they do grow past adulthood, they stop growing many years before they die of old age. It seems beliefs about most reptiles having indeterminate growth lie partly in biases from studying animals that were still relatively young and still growing (crocodilians, in particular, being a lot easier to measure when they are smaller).
144* Spotted hyenas have fallen under this several times in history. They were once thought to be {{hermaphrodite}}s that regularly switched between being male and female because of the female's infamous "pseudopenis" and larger size. This was eventually understood to be wrong, but the idea of them being stupid scavengers still persists. In reality, they are [[ItCanThink the smartest social carnivore]] (smart enough to solve some kinds of puzzles more quickly than primates), and they hunt most of what they eat; it's actually far more common for lions to hijack hyenas' kills than vice versa. The fact that hyenas do the majority of their hunting ''at night'', and hence, couldn't be observed taking down prey until night-vision video photography was an option, accounts for much of this.
145* Creator/{{Aristotle}} named the ChickenAndEggParadox with the observation that there was no obvious way for either the chicken or the egg to have come first, considering it a key ontological mystery for understanding the nature of the universe. With the advent of the theory of UsefulNotes/{{evolution}} over 2,000 years later, we now know that the egg came first: eggs predate the existence of chickens, having first evolved in invertebrate species.
146* It was once assumed that in lion prides, the lionesses did all the hunting. However, analysis of data collected from radio collars eventually showed that male lions ''do'' hunt. It was previously assumed they didn't because they generally hunted in places with thick vegetation where it was harder to observe them and used stealthy ambush tactics (in contrast to females usually hunting in open plains and using less sneaky methods), making it a lot more difficult for humans to see them in action.
147* When giant monitor lizards known as Komodo dragons were discovered in 1910, it was assumed that their size was due to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_gigantism island gigantism]]. Thanks to the remains of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalania even larger prehistoric monitor lizards]] being discovered in Australia, we now know different: Komodo dragons are actually a relic of a time when such gigantic monitor lizards were more widespread. In fact, Komodo dragons also used to live in Australia.
148* The Komodo dragon in more recent times has become the subject of another often-repeated bit of misinformation, including in many nature documentaries. Namely, the notion that it kills large animals via infection from dangerous bacteria in its mouth, and that it will follow a bitten animal for days until it dies. While scientists did at one time infer this happened, more detailed studies have shown it to not be the case. The mouth of a Komodo is no more dirty than that of other monitor lizards, and while wounds from its bites can become infected this is exacerbated due to its largest prey (water buffalo) tending to retreat into stagnant ponds when wounded, leading to potential sepsis (water buffalo were introduced to Komodo long ago, and retain this escape behavior despite the waters in Komodo being generally more stagnant than in the buffalo's native range). Many animals heal from their bites just fine. Komodos do appear to possess some level of venom, though the extent of this and the role it plays in hunting is still debated. What is clear is that the majority of the time if a Komodo's hunt succeeds it kills the prey animal on the spot after wounding its legs, blood loss being the actual cause of death as the Komodo basically kills it by eating it. If the animal escapes, then it's a failed hunt for the dragon, who isn't likely to waste energy following it for long when it can simply wait to ambush something else. If the animal does die later then whatever dragons are nearby will simply take advantage of the free meal.
149* It was once thought to be possible for living organisms to arise from nonliving matter in a process called {{spontaneous generation}}. This theory was increasingly challenged from the 17th century on and finally disproven once and for all in the 19th century by Louis Pasteur.
150* Consensus once held that the barnacle goose did not come from eggs like other geese, but emerged fully formed from goose barnacles, since only adult barnacle geese were ever seen. It wasn't until the late 19th century that it became clear that barnacle geese ''did'' lay and hatch from eggs like other geese. The reason this had never been seen before was because it happened in remote Greenland.
151* For a long time, and still persisting today, it was believed that giraffes are completely mute. Modern research demonstrates that not only do giraffes make vocalizations, but they are also one of the three families of terrestrial mammals, alongside elephants and rhinos, capable of communicating in the subsonic range. They have been found to be able to communicate with each other over astonishing distances. Research into giraffe communication has barely started, and already there is evidence that it may be the most complex of all even-toed ungulates. The okapi is more well-known to be vocal, but early research also shows their communication to be much more complex than initially given credit for.
152* It was once assumed that elephants, hippos and rhinos were all closely related because they were all large herbivores that had thick gray skin. They were grouped together under the order ''Pachydermata''. While all three (especially elephants) still get referred to as "pachyderms" from time to time, further research has shown that all three are actually members of different orders, and that elephants are more closely related to ''manatees'' than they are to the other two.
153[[/folder]]
154
155[[folder:Chemistry]]
156[[AC:ComicBooks]]
157* ''ComicBook/TomStrong'' references this trope and uses it in a PostModern sort of way: Tom comments that scientists proved that “liquid heat” could not exist after his nemesis Paul Saveen had successfully created it. The wink at this trope seems like Creator/AlanMoore making a statement about how everything is fair game in a story until science disproves it, and writers need not be ashamed of using a cool idea that was later discredited.
158** Which is supported by similar events in his run on ''ComicBook/{{Supreme}}'', where Billy Friday points out various scientific or logical flaws in Supreme's past adventures, seemingly ignorant of the fact that they still happened just the same.
159
160[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
161* The original ''ComicStrip/BuckRogers'' novelette had a form of {{antimatter}} called "inertron" that flew towards the nearest vacuum rather than explode.
162* In Creator/RobertEHoward's ''Literature/ConanTheBarbarian'' story "Literature/TheSlitheringShadow", gems fused with radium glow—except that the light can be turned on and off by rubbing them.
163* In an Creator/HGWells novel, ''Literature/TheFirstMenInTheMoon'', gravity is said to travel as waves that can be blocked by a {{phlebotinum}} alloy of metals and helium called “cavorite.” This is how they get to the moon.
164** Creator/JulesVerne complained about the gravity blocking metal, calling Wells a hack for not taking science seriously enough. On the other hand, there is a book from as late as the 70's calling Wells' conception of time as a fourth dimension ridiculous, and, though Wells himself couldn't have known it at the time, relativity and quantum physics have since given credence to the idea of gravity waves and a graviton particle. We still haven't found any {{Hive Mind}}ed alien insects on the moon, or gravity-repelling metal alloy, though.
165*** Also, Verne had to hand-wave away a basic problem with the physics of ''his'' moon-shot launching system (the acceleration required to reach escape velocity within the length of a gun barrel would reduce the passengers to chunky salsa). Although it seems that [[ExecutiveMeddling this was due to Hetzel, Verne's publisher]], who thought a self-propelled rocket wasn't believable (or maybe [[RuleOfCool cool]]) enough to the audience. Hence the problem which had to be explained away.
166** The basic physical considerations (like energy conservation law) suggest that all the energy obtained from canceling gravity must somehow be introduced into the system in some other way -- most probably, during the manufacture of the very gravity-canceling material, which would make it hideously impractical, if not outright impossible, in the first place.
167
168[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
169* New radioactive elements are being synthesized, which may only last as much as a millionth of a second before they decay. They have been granted official names and chemical symbols, causing at least one incident of an inaccurate periodic table of elements being portrayed in ''Franchise/StarTrek''.
170** Lampshaded in Music/TomLehrer song "The Elements", in which Lehrer sings the names of the different elements of the periodic table (at the time the song was written). He ends with the following: "These are the only ones of which the news have come to Harvard, and there may be many others, but they haven't been [[HahvahdYahdInMyCah dis-kah-vd]]".
171** An in-universe case of this happens in ''VideoGame/{{Singularity}}''; when the Russians discover a unique element with properties that put most {{Phlebotinum}} to shame, they classify it as Element 99, or "E99," and you can even see some periodic tables in the labs printed shortly thereafter with E99 in the correct place and highlighted. Despite this, the research is ''very'' secretive, and the discovery is made before Einsteinium, the element that actually goes into that spot. Shortly before the discovery of Einsteinium is made public, the research into E99 is shut down and completely buried, so the rest of the scientific world has Einsteinium as 99 in their periodic tables.
172** Referenced in the ''Series/StargateSG1'' episode "The Torment of Tantalus". A 1940s scientist, stranded on another planet for fifty years, discovers through alien records that there are 146 basic elements. The main characters (from the 1990s) tell him that Earth science only recognizes 107 basic elements, to which he nonchalantly replies, "only ninety when I last looked". [[note]] [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium Ninety-two]], to be exact.[[/note]]
173* In the ''Series/{{Astrid}}'' episode "Fulcanelli", at least two murders are committed to obtain the secret of the Renaissance alchemist Fulcanelli. It turns out that the "secret" is a method for preparing elemental phosphorus, which was a valuable secret in the Renaissance, but a fairly trivial chemical fact nowadays.
174* In both the ''Franchise/StarTrek'' episodes "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E4TheNakedTime The Naked Time]]" and "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E2TheNakedNow The Naked Now]]", both episodes' versions of the ''Enterprise'' comes under the influence of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywater polywater]], a syrup-like form of water created from massive compression of normal water that has a lower freezing temperature (which allowed it to stay fluid despite the environmental controls on the space stations the substance was on being set to ''freeze everyone onboard to death'') and the ability to convert any other water it touches into more of itself (leading to the "drunken" states of anyone "infected" with it). Thing is, while polywater was debated as a viable substance in the 1960s (when "The Naked Time" was made), by time "The Naked Now" was shot, it has since been proven to be bogus (forcing an awkward change of the term used to describe the substance from a water to a ''virus'').
175* Series/{{QI}} had an episode where [[Creator/DaraOBriain Dara O'Briain]] remembers and states the "Triple point of water" where water exists in all three states of matter, which was 0 degrees of celsius. Two series later the viewers at home had apparently sent in so many letters correcting him which had been adjusted to 0.01 degrees. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7SOLBuy8HI They deducted points from his then-current score]].
176
177[[AC:VideoGames]]
178* ''VideoGame/{{Contact}}'' has GreenRocks in the form of power cells made of "element 117". Inevitably, the discovery of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessine the real element 117]] was recognized by IUPAC almost a decade later, and naturally, tennessine has none of the properties shown in the game -- the most obvious difference, as usual, being the stability.
179* The original ''[[VideoGame/XCOMUFODefense X-COM]]'' game introduced the alien element Elerium-115, so called because it is supposedly the 115th element on the periodic table. This was perfectly feasible when the game originally came out, but the 115th element has since been discovered. It was given a placeholder name (Ununpentium) until a proper name, moscovium, was eventually proposed. It is known that it would not display any of the properties of Elerium shown in the game (particularly the stability).
180
181[[AC:WebOriginal]]
182* ''WebOriginal/ProtectorsOfThePlotContinuum'': The mission "Eyes of Fire" features a Sue named Astarai, who Narto Telyan jokingly refers to as Astatine. This leads to a discussion about the properties of the element astatine, including the fact that it's the heaviest of the halogen elements. While true at the time of the mission's writing in 2004, Tennessine took the title of heaviest halogen in TheNewTens.
183
184[[AC:RealLife]]
185* Not SF, but OlderThanRadio: Dr Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence and surgeon general of the Continental Army, was also a temperance activist. In 1784, he published ''An Inquiry into the Effects of Spirituous Liquors upon the Human Body, and Their Influence upon the Happiness of Society'', describing the negative physical and social effects of distilled liquor such as rum and whiskey ... but ''fermented'' drinks like beer were ''good'', because they didn't have the same type of alcohol as distilled drinks. (To be fair, Rush couldn't exactly do a chemical analysis to see that ethanol is ethanol. He was having to go off the way people acted after a few mugs.)
186** The same idea was expressed decades earlier by [[Art/MarriageALaMode William Hogarth]] in two prints. The better-known one (and likely Hogarth's best-known work) is [[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/GinLane.jpg "Gin Lane"]], and shows the very real horrors brought to London by the trade in cheap gin. The lesser-known print, [[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Beer_Street_-_Calle_de_la_cerveza.jpg "Beer Street"]], shows the benefits of good English ale. This being Hogarth, nothing is quite as clear-cut as it seems; some critics believe that aspects of the prints point to Hogarth blaming the despair and poverty seen in Gin Lane on the smug and self-satisfied inhabitants of Beer Street.
187* Look no further than old chemistry texts for good examples of this. ''General Chemistry'' by the great Linus Pauling and a former standard first-year text has element 104 on its periodic table as kurchatovium; you might perhaps know it as rutherfordium. (A number of transfermic elements suffered from dueling names for decades during the Cold War; for instance, element 105, now called dubnium, was referred to as "hahnium" and "nielsbohrnium" by American and Soviet chemists respectively, and many periodic tables simply called it "unnilpentium" until a consensus was achieved.) For fundamental particles, it makes reference to there being eight each baryons and antibaryons (there are considerably more), eight mesons and antimesons (again, more), eight leptons and antileptons (there are twelve, six each), and lists the graviton, which is theoretical. In many other respects, however, it's accurate to a modern understanding.
188* In 1926, chemist Andreas von Antropoff proposed an Element 0, which he called Neutronium, and placed this at the top of the Periodic Table (this was six years before the neutron was discovered). This was eventually dismissed. Turns out a form of neutronium DOES exist -- specifically, degenerate neutronium in the cores of neutron stars. It isn't an element, though.
189[[/folder]]
190
191[[folder:Geography]]
192[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
193* UsefulNotes/{{California}} (!) was originally a literary invention, a golden island full of amazons in various adventure novels written in 16th century Spain (the same novels ''Literature/DonQuixote'' mocked). When some land was eventually named California by the Spanish (inspired by the books), the idea it was an island persisted in many maps up through the late 17th and early 18th century.
194* Creator/LFrankBaum's ''Literature/LandOfOz'' (if you piece together the clues) appears to be in the deserts of the American Southwest in the first books, but as the series went on, it got shifted to a Pacific Island of some kind, within the author's lifetime, to escape this trope.
195
196[[AC:Multiple]]
197* The LostWorld -- even MagicalLand -- is situated just outside the bounds of known geography. Geography tramples all over these and has for millennia.
198** The TropeNamer, ''Literature/TheLostWorld1912'', whilst falling afoul of this trope six ways from Sunday in most other aspects of its plot, actually manages to just barely dodge this one through the narrator being intentionally vague about its location and geography.
199[[/folder]]
200
201[[folder:Geology]]
202[[AC:{{Film}}]]
203* The film ''Film/CrackInTheWorld'', whose creators prided themselves on scientific accuracy, had the extreme misfortune to be released in 1964, very shortly before the phenomenon of tectonic plates was confirmed. This instantly made the film's premise of the Earth having a completely solid crust which is endangered when it develops a crack quite laughable.
204** Putting aside the basic premise that a nuke could have an effect on the globe to that scale. A dozen Tsar Bombas (the largest nuke ever developed) couldn't do that.
205* In ''Film/TheMolePeople'' the characters reference the existence of a "Flood Layer", referring to the theory by Biblical geologists that there exists a geological layer formed as a result of the world-wide flood from Noah's story. Even at the time of the movie this theory had been rejected by the majority of geologists, though it has persisted to the modern day as part of Creationism.
206* Prior to the acceptance of plate tectonics, an elaborate series of prehistoric land bridges were posited to explain how similar species had ended up being separated by oceans. In Disney's ''Film/SwissFamilyRobinson'', released in 1960, this land bridge theory is cited to HandWave the movie's use of MisplacedWildlife ([[Literature/TheSwissFamilyRobinson the original novel]] also features MisplacedWildlife, but offers no explanation for it). In addition to since being proved wrong, this has the problem of the land bridge theory having [[AnachronismStew not been developed yet as of the film's Napoleonic era setting]]. But hey, they tried.
207* The original ''Film/TotalRecall1990''. Mars having an ice core was pure fiction when the film came out, but later studies proved it to be partially TruthInTelevision. The latest research and pictures taken from satellites have proven that there actually is ice right under the surface in some areas of Mars. On the other hand, there is still a pretty huge difference between "ice right under the surface of some areas" and "ice core".
208
209[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
210* Creator/HPLovecraft's ''Literature/AtTheMountainsOfMadness'' got it right by going against conventional scientific belief when he uses continental drift at a time when most geologists didn't accept the idea. Subsequent scientific marching has proved the story mostly right on this point. But he got it wrong when he wrote about continents rising and sinking from the ocean. He also wrote that the Pacific ocean had been created when the moon was separated from Earth, and that parts of the Antarctic had remained unchanged for almost 4 billion years.\
211That said, even rising and sinking landmasses aren't implausible: Though plates don't tend to rise and fall, there's evidence of significant landmasses sinking over time (e.g. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zealandia Zealandia]]), and Antarctica's geology is still a mystery box (while there are parts of North America and Australia which ''are'' at least over ''three'' billion years old, with some older rock samples mixed in) so the idea of there being deeply ancient chunks of Antarctica isn't ''that'' far-fetched.
212* In ''Literature/TheHoundOfTheBaskervilles'', Watson ponders the Neolithic stone artifacts of Dartmoor and feels a bit sorry for their builders, whom he presumes had been forced onto such poor land by aggressive neighbors. It's now understood that millennia of human agriculture ''created'' the acidic soil conditions in Devon, which had previously been covered in forests.
213* ''Literature/JourneyToTheCenterOfTheEarth'' [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin is a story about men of science journeying to the center of the planet]] that was written before any definite theories were made in regards to Earth's interior. The book (and subsequent film adaptations) depicted the center of the Earth as a large ocean in a world inhabited by long-extinct prehistoric life forms, which is accessible through a series of caverns starting with an extinct volcano. On the other hand, the narrator, Axel, who is a geology student, repeatedly {{lampshade|hanging}}s how incompatible is [[ThisIsReality their journey]] with then current scientific theories. More an example of the {{Rule of Cool}} and {{Artistic License Geology}}.
214** Though what he depicts is ''still'' false, it wasn't as unlikely as it seems. Verne only used the title "Journey to the ''center'' of Earth" because his editor thought it would sell well. He did make enough research to understand that the ''literal'' center of the Earth would be uninhabitable due to pressure and heat. In Verne's vision, his underground world is nothing more than a very, very, very vast cave, deep underground, and nobody quite knows what's ''under'' the ground of that underground world.
215*** The title is itself a case of InUniverse Science Marches On. The heroes find a note by a 16th Century scholar where he claims to have journeyed to the center of Earth, and the narrator's uncle attempts to repeat it, insisting on taking the words literally. However, the more level-headed narrator notes that back then, the scholar would have had no means to know how deep he actually went.
216* In several of his novels (''Literature/AroundTheMoon'', ''Literature/TheMysteriousIsland''), Creator/JulesVerne states through his characters his conviction that the Earth is getting colder as its core is dying, and that in a few hundred thousand years it will be as cold as the moon. Earth's core is indeed getting colder, as the heat is at least partly produced by decay of radioactive material. However, it would take longer than the current age of the universe for it to cool down completely.
217
218[[AC: RealLife]]
219* Once upon a time, it was generally believed that the Earth was largely shaped by sudden, violent events, a theory known as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophism Catastrophism]]. Today, the consensus is that while such occurrences ''did'' play a role, more gradual and less extreme processes were also important.
220[[/folder]]
221
222[[folder:Mathematics]]
223[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
224* Martin Gardner's short story ''[[http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/mfview.php?callnumber=mf100 The Island Of Five Colors]]'' is about the -- then unproved—[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem Four Color Theorem]] being proven false. Since the theorem has been proven true in RealLife, the story is no longer included in later collections, and Gardner claimed that "the tale is now as dated as a story about Martians or about the twilight zone of Mercury".
225
226[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
227* An episode of ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' from 1989, five years before UsefulNotes/FermatsLastTheorem was solved, depicted it as still being unsolved in the 24th century. Wiles' proof was later referenced in passing in an episode of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine,'' probably to address the earlier gaffe.
228[[/folder]]
229
230[[folder:Medicine and Health]]
231[[AC: Anime and Manga]]
232* The MedicalDrama ''Manga/TeamMedicalDragon'' revolves around the Batista procedure, which reduces the size and volume of an enlarged heart. While the procedure may have been considered promising when the original manga was written (mid-1990s), by the time the LiveActionAdaptation came around in 2004 the procedure's effectiveness had been largely discredited.
233* In one episode of ''Manga/YakitateJapan'', Azuma and Kawachi were tasked to develop a butter-less bread that could be eaten safely by those allergic to milk. Azuma completed his task by using goat milk in his butter. While it was once believed that goat milk could safely be consumed by those allergic to cow milk due to its lack of alpha-s1 casein, this has since been debunked since goat milk contains other milk allergens, i.e. beta-lactoglobulin and immunoglobulin-E, which would trigger cross-reactivity in people allergic to cow milk.
234
235[[AC:ComicBooks]]
236* In ''ComicBook/{{Camelot 3000}}'', Sir Tristan's constant angsting about having been reincarnated as a woman seems bizarre in a series set a thousand years in the future. Apparently, doctors in that Verse were too busy finding ways to turn dissidents into [[SuperSoldier Neo-Men]] to bother developing gender-reassignment surgery (which when this came out had been done for years).
237* ''ComicBook/StarTrekUntoldVoyages'': In "Past Imperfect", Dr. [=McCoy=] refers to the unproven theory of the 20th Century that the outbreak of AIDS was caused by a mutation of the polio vaccine used in UsefulNotes/{{Africa}} several decades earlier. This theory has since been thoroughly debunked. In 2014, it was determined that AIDS originated in Léopoldville in the Belgian Congo (which is now Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in the 1920s.
238
239[[AC:{{Film}}]]
240* At the time ''Film/AndYourNameIsJonah'' came out in 1979, it was widely believed that a deaf child allowed to use sign language would become unable to read lips and speak, and thus be unable to function in a hearing world. It is now known that the earlier a child is exposed to language, the better, and knowing sign language increases a child's chances of gaining functional speech later on.
241* In the 1950's sci-fi classic ''Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill1951'', two doctors sit and discuss Klaatu's race's amazing health care -- ''as they both smoke cigarettes inside the hospital''.
242* ''Film/ChangeOfHabit'' has an autistic child who is hiding behind a "wall of rage" to cope with her mother's [[ParentalAbandonment emotional and later physical abandonment]]. She is cured using [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_therapy rage reduction]], which involves deliberately causing enormous distress in order to "release the anger." It is now known that autism is biological and has nothing to do with parenting, and that rage reduction does nothing but cause PTSD. In fact, Robert W. Zaslow, who supervised the rage reduction scene, was [[https://web.archive.org/web/20120213140910/http://www.kidscomefirst.info/zaslow.pdf stripped of his medical license]] in 1971 after a young woman was severely injured under his care.
243* In ''Film/{{Exam}}'', Black claims that urine is sterile. Because it's both amusing and surprising, urine being sterile is an oft-cited factoid in general, which until recently has enjoyed the rare vindication of accurately reflecting scientific understanding. In recent years, it's been discovered that urine isn't sterile after all.
244* Parodied as long ago as the 1973 Creator/WoodyAllen movie ''Film/{{Sleeper}}'', a RipVanWinkle comedy in which the protagonist wakes up in 200 years to discover, among other things, that wheat germ is bad for you and deep fat, steak, cream pies, and hot fudge were health food and cigarettes were the healthiest thing on the planet.
245* In ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'', released in 1982 and set in 2285, Kirk receives reading glasses from [=McCoy=] because he's allergic to the drug that's normally prescribed for vision correction, implying there is no other option to fix Kirk's eyes. Within 3 decades of the film's release, and over two and half ''centuries'' before the film is set, laser corrective surgery of vision is a routine procedure.
246* In ''Film/{{UHF}}'' in the restaurant scene at the very beginning, you can see a sign saying that they cook all of their meat medium with a pink center unless otherwise specified. This was in 1989 and ''not a joke'', as it was before the 1993 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_in_the_Box#E._coli_outbreak Jack-in-the-Box E coli disaster]] in which four children died and hundreds of others became sick in the Seattle area as well as California, Idaho and Nevada, after eating undercooked and contaminated meat from Jack in the Box. These days all meat in fast food restaurants is cooked well done, while in dine-in restaurants, the menus have mandatory warnings against eating undercooked meats. This way no one eats undercooked meat unless they ''ask'' for it (and many restaurants have a ''required minimum'' cooking temperature as well), thus keeping the restaurant from being sued.
247
248[[AC: Literature]]
249* In ''Literature/TheBible'', many people are described as having DemonicPossession, such as a young boy who was suffering from ConvulsiveSeizures, and that their healings were exorcisms. Now that more is known about medicine than was known in the first century, most of them are thought to have been suffering from various mental and/or physical disorders, such as {{UsefulNotes/Epilepsy}}.
250* ''Literature/TheDraculaTape'', Creator/FredSaberhagen's snarky PerspectiveFlip of Bram Stoker's ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'', [[LampshadeHanging hangs a lampshade]] on the fact that Lucy Westenra receives blood transfusions from four different people. The initial scientific discovery of blood type groups came four years after the original novel was published, so Saberhagen's Count -- as something of an expert on matters of blood by necessity -- turns her into a vampire only to save her from immediate death brought on by the inevitable complications, of which van Helsing's companions, if not necessarily the doctor himself, were blissfully unaware. (It's actually implied that van Helsing, a less heroic figure in the retelling, may have inadvertently killed other patients in this fashion before.)
251* In James Gunn's ''The Immortals'' stories, teeming masses of poor citizens are deliberately ''allowed'' to suffer all manner of diseases so their infection-fighting antibodies can be strained out of their bought-by-the-liter blood and used by the wealthy to remain permanently disease-proof. Production of monoclonal antibodies for chemotherapeutic use is now routinely done using mouse or rabbit spleen-cell hybridomas, which eliminates the many risks of administering extracts from a human donor's blood.
252* ''Literature/JoeyAMechanicalBoy'' is about a boy who develops autism because of his refrigerator parents, then is completely cured through kindness and self-expression. It is now known that autism is a lifelong condition that has nothing to do with parenting.
253* Creator/LFrankBaum's ''Literature/LandOfOz'' book ''The Patchwork Girl of Oz'' features a subterranean race called the Horners who attribute all the wonders of their society and long-lasting good health to a miracle substance called ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium radium]]''. Made all the more tragic by the many, many real-life cases of anemia and cancer due to people actually believing radium, a radioactive element, was a cure for everything -- some people even ''brushed their teeth'' with radium-laced toothpaste.
254* The Creator/ElleryQueen novel ''The Last Woman in His Life'' contains some now extremely outdated psychological ideas regarding homosexuality, and which would have been on the way out at the time the novel was written. Unfortunately, some of these ideas are integral to the solution of the mystery.
255* This was referenced in-story in the second looking ''Literature/LittleHouseOnThePrairie'', which was set in the 1870s but published in the 1930s. One chapter has the family falling ill with something dubbed "fever 'n' ague". It's suggested by one character that the illness was contracted by eating tainted watermelons, while Laura's father believes it's contracted from breathing night-time air (the latter reflects the beliefs of miasma theory, see the RealLife section for more information). The chapter ends with a statement that they had malaria but no one at the time, not even the FrontierDoctor, knew it came from mosquito bites.
256* ''Literature/ALittlePrincess'': In the original book Sarah Crewe's father is said to have died of BrainFever after becoming bankrupt. Science has since proven that "brain fever" is Victorian nonsense and not an actual disease, which may be why some adaptations give [[SparedByTheAdaptation Sarah's father]] a DisneyDeath and let them reunite at the end.
257* When ''Literature/MartianTimeSlip'' was first published in TheSixties, autism was believed to be the same thing as childhood schizophrenia. It's now known that the two conditions are unrelated.
258* In the first Literature/RalphSMouse novel ''The Mouse and the Motorcycle'', Ralph brings aspirin to a sick child. It wasn't known when the book was published in 1965, but aspirin can cause Reye syndrome in children, a very serious illness which can cause death or severe brain damage.
259* In ''Literature/TheOctoberChild'' (1976), Kerry explains to Douglas that his autistic brother Carl is incapable of love, hatred, or any other feelings about other people. It's now known that most autistics do have feelings about others, even if they don't express them in the usual ways.
260* In "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone", Literature/SherlockHolmes justifies his habit of eating little or not at all while he's on a case, claiming that he's denying blood flow to his stomach so more will be available to his brain. Although blood flow to the digestive and urinary organs does decrease when in a state of excitement, anger or fear (sympathetic activation), such blood is redirected to the skin, heart, and skeletal muscles. The brain is the one organ from which blood flow is '''never''' diverted, even when the body is starving or hemorrhaging.
261* The solution of the Literature/LordPeterWimsey novel ''Strong Poison'' in which a particular character had a strong motive for killing the victim with arsenic, but had no opportunity since he'd eaten and drunk exactly the same things during the meal they shared, is that the person in question had built up an AcquiredPoisonImmunity to arsenic by regularly consuming small amounts of it. This was believed to be possible in the 1930s, but nowadays is considered not to work and to be an urban legend. In fact, nowadays murder mysteries will have small amounts of arsenic used to ''slowly poison someone'' instead.
262* [[KillItWithFire Burning a scarlet fever patient's personal belongings to stop the infection from spreading]] was common in 1922, when ''Literature/TheVelveteenRabbit'' was first published. Modern children can be reassured that [[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/inkfish/2014/03/25/classic-childrens-books-ruined-modern-medicine/#.XKwe-IzTWhA this won't happen to their favourite toy]]; we now know that scarlet fever is very unlikely to spread through personal effects, and even if we hadn't learnt better, less drastic disinfection methods have been developed since the publication of a book approaching its centenary, and it's been a doddle to treat since penicillin became widely used in 1942, so it's no longer dangerous enough to warrant destroying everything the patient touched during the illness.
263* In ''Literature/TheYellowWallpaper'', the narrator is placed in solitary confinement ("the rest cure") for [[HystericalWoman hysteria]]. Her condition is now thought to be postpartum depression, now easily treatable with medications and/or therapy. And, yes, the "rest cure" was one of the (many) horrible ways a diagnosis of "hysteria" was treated. (Others included cutting or burning the clitoris and/or labia, {{lobotomy}}, electroshock "therapy," and [[RapePortrayedAsRedemption rape]].) The story itself functions as a critical response to such medical treatment as we watch the main character [[GoMadFromTheIsolation lose her sanity]].
264
265[[AC:LiveActionTelevision]]
266* An example concerns the discussion of anti-bacterial hand soaps, which carried over onto episodes of ''Series/{{ER}}'', ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'', and ''Series/{{House}}''. When the soaps came out in the late 1990s and early 2000s, nobody bothered to do the research to see if they worked better at killing germs than regular soap. It turns out that [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibacterial_soap#Research various studies]] have suggested little relative benefit. Additionally, it has been suggested that overuse of anti-bacterial soap is promoting resistance to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triclosan Triclosan]], the active ingredient, and has the potential to promote development of resistance to similar antibiotics.
267* ''{{Series/MASH}}'':
268** Frank once voiced an intention to remove a patient's perfectly-healthy appendix, simply because the abdominal surgery he was performing gave him access to it. While this was once a common practice to avert the (low) risk of future appendicitis, it's now known that the appendix plays a role in immunity and in maintaining the bacterial flora in the event of severe diarrhea, so is no longer routinely done merely as a precaution.
269** Invoked in "The Red/White Blues". Everyone was supposed to take chloroquine to prevent malaria. By mistake, primaquine was sent instead, but this causes anemia in black people. When Klinger and another Caucasian (Corp. Goldman, who is Jewish) suddenly got strange symptoms, they were found to be anemic; the doctors eliminated all but the medicine. Klinger and Goldman were fine once they stopped taking it. The credits mentioned the medicine was later found to also negatively affect those of Mediterranean descent.
270* In the ''Series/MurdochMysteries'' episode "Shock Value", two psychologists are working on a predecessor to the infamous [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment Millgram experiments]] (although with real electric shocks), coming to the same conclusion that most people really will electrocute someone else just because an authority tells them to. However, in recent years, doubt has been placed on Millgram's methodology and results.
271* In an episode of ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' Worf comes down with a disease most Klingons get as children. Dr. Pulaski compares it to measles, implying that even centuries into the future measles is a common childhood disease, while in actuality measles is now almost unknown in the US at least thanks to vaccines. Although thanks to anti-vaccination campaigners, measles outbreaks are on the uptick again.
272
273[[AC:StandUpComedy]]
274* In his 1983 comedy show ''Delirious'', Creator/EddieMurphy expresses fears about having a girlfriend that [[FagHag spends time with homosexuals]], worrying she might kiss them and get AIDS, and then give him AIDS when she kisses him. Scientists have long since disproved the idea of getting AIDS by kissing, barring circumstances like a sore or bleeding inside the mouth. Plus, the difference between contracting HIV and getting AIDS. For those too young to remember, back in the 80s, homosexuals were seen to be the origin, or more often the sole victims, of AIDS. Later research proved that this wasn't the case, it was just that the symptoms of AIDS appeared in homosexual communities sooner than straight communities, for reasons best not discussed here. Eddie Murphy, to his credit, has [[OldShame long since apologized]] for this mistake.
275
276[[AC:VideoGames]]
277* True to its historical setting, ''Videogame/TheSimsMedieval'' has the Physician Sim using leeches as part of his/her repertoire. Unlike in RealLife, bloodletting is apparently an effective treatment in the game's universe.
278
279[[AC:Western Animation]]
280* ''WesternAnimation/CloneHigh'': "A.D.D.: The Last 'D' is for Disorder" revolves around Gandhi being diagnosed with both attention deficit disorder and "its hyperactive cousin," attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Ten years after the show's first season ended, the American Psychological Association stopped using ADD as a diagnosis, instead merging it with ADHD in the DSM-5. The two variants are now distinguished as inattentive type ADHD (ADD) and hyperactive-impulsive type ADHD ("classical" ADHD).
281
282[[AC: RealLife]]
283* Wearing a wedding ring on the ring finger originally symbolized the joining of the married couple's hearts, due to the belief that the ring finger contains a vein that leads directly back to the heart. While that vein does go to your heart, so do all other veins; it's what veins do (though portal veins only do so indirectly by way of the liver or pituitary gland).
284* Associating the heart, an organ that propels blood, with the capacity for love is an even older example. Ancient peoples noticed that its beat sped up when someone's emotions were aroused, not realizing this was a secondary effect of feelings arising in the brain.
285* The big one is bloodletting, which is perhaps the oldest medical practice in the world.
286** It was in use for thousands of years, dating back as far as AncientEgypt and UsefulNotes/AncientGreece, and all that time it was considered an awesome way to treat everything. In comparison, bloodletting has only widely been considered quackery for about a hundred and fifty years. Why did the practice continue for so long? Well, patients thought it worked due to the PlaceboEffect. Plus, doctors thought they ought to be doing ''something'' and they had no idea what actually caused disease. More than anything else, it was the discovery of germs which brought an end to bloodletting.
287** Bloodletting ''does'' work in certain specific circumstances -- such as the relief of laminitis in horses (who are not susceptible to placebo effects). One of Creator/JamesHerriot's books describes his horse-expert boss doing it to a pony suffering from severe acute laminitis, to the astonished horror of both Herriot himself and the Roma who owned the pony. It worked.
288** Blood-letting is also a useful treatment for compartment syndrome and for re-attachment of severed body parts, in both cases because deoxygenated blood that's trapped inside a crushed or newly-reattached appendage can accumulate so much pressure that no new oxygen-rich blood can enter to keep its tissues alive. It is also used to treat hemochromatosis (iron overload), these patients are very reliable blood donors.
289** Bloodletting (technically a much more modern form called phlebotomy) is still used today for a very specific condition called hemachromatosis (an excess of iron in the blood and excess red blood cells). It's not very common and generally only comes up during blood transfusions. This condition would not have been known when bloodletting was a common practice, though.
290* Another idea discredited by germ theory was that of the "four humors", which was developed in Ancient Greece and lasted over two thousand years. Humorism held that illness was caused by imbalances in the four humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile) and health could be restored by restoring that balance. This is tied into the prevalence of bloodletting, as this theory held excessive blood to be one of four possible causes for disease. Some modern English words come from the "four humors" theory. For example, excessive blood was believed to lead to excessive cheerfulness, which is why "sanguine" means both "bloody" and "cheerful". Similarly, black bile was believed to be the cause of depression, hence the word "melancholy" means "black bile". There are also numerous references to the four humors in the works of Creator/WilliamShakespeare.
291** As with bloodletting above, the four humors theory did have consequences that could be beneficial. While bloodletting is the most well-known treatment rooted in humorism, a major component of the theory's application was in diet, balancing what humors specific foods were assumed to favor against what the patient was believed to need. In particular, while they didn't understand exactly how to prevent it, gout was understood from rather early on to be related to diet. Depending on what was prescribed, this could encourage the patient to pursue a more balanced diet that would mitigate gout as well as vitamin deficiencies. [[GoneHorriblyRight Or it could backfire]], and cause problems if the resulting dietary restriction was missing something important.
292* In the mid-19th century, the prevailing theory of disease was miasma theory, which blamed disease on bad air and smells. It is from miasma theory that we get our word "malaria", meaning "bad air". Although the theory was wrong, its focus on sanitation improved the treatment of disease from what it had been like previously. For example, Florence Nightingale's work at improving sanitary conditions in hospitals was based on miasma theory. Then again, while miasma theory was wrong about bad smells being the cause of disease...the organisms that actually were responsible for disease were also responsible for the bad smells. So by coming up with traps and modern plumbing to keep sewer air out of houses, they were actually preventing disease, just [[RightForTheWrongReasons not for the reasons they thought]]. The theory of airborne disease transmission also met with a lot of resistance initially due to its similarity to the miasma theory.
293* [[ConsummationCounterfeit The idea of the hymen as a reliable indicator for virginity/lack thereof]], akin to the "freshness seal" on many foodstuffs. It is now known that it can break or tear in ways ''completely'' unrelated to sex (horseback riding, for example), and some women are born without one. It's also now known that most women have a hole (or even multiple holes) in it, and some women can have an intact hymen even if they've been sexually active for ''decades'', or even given birth before. The majority of women ''do not'' bleed the first time they have penetrative sex. (There ''are'' some women who do have the "Hollywood hymen" that completely covers the vaginal opening, but that is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperforate_hymen a medical condition]], not the average woman's default state.) Therefore, it is ''not'' a reliable indicator for virginity (or lack thereof.) In fact, all the hymen actually is is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymen a vestigial remnant of the Mullerian ducts that formed the reproductive tract during fetal development.]]
294* The practice of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanning trepanning]], which consisted of [[MeatgrinderSurgery boring a hole in the skull]], with the idea that doing so would cure headaches, seizures, head injuries, and mental disorders. It was widely practiced in antiquity, but has (with only a very few exceptions) fallen out of practice today. Ironically, trepanning ''could'' save lives when administered to victims of recent head wounds, by alleviating pressure from cerebral edema or intracranial bleeding. But applying the same technique to uninjured mental patients was a case of WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer applied when a hammer (and chisel) was actually the ''worst'' option.
295** Along with bloodletting, trepanning is among one of the oldest procedures developed, to the point where prehistoric human remains have been found showing evidence of undergoing (and recovering from) this procedure. Whereas the conditions that bloodletting WOULD be effective at treating likely weren't understood, head wounds are a much easier concept for ancient people to [[{{Pun}} wrap their heads around]], and thus may have been used for medical purposes, in addition to speculated ritualistic reasons possibly explaining prehistoric examples of skulls with holes in them (and evidence of bone healing indicating survival).
296* The concept of [[HystericalWoman "hysteria,"]] which was that the uterus would (somehow) escape from its normal place in the lower abdomen and pummel other organs, like a pinball game, causing all sorts of physical and mental problems. This alleged problem stemmed from (depending on whom you asked) the patient either not having enough sex (or not having enough ''good'' sex), or having too much of it, or not conforming to traditional ideas of femininity...and thus legitimate (sometimes life-threatening) diseases were dismissed as "hysteria," or "it's all in her head." Thankfully, "hysteria" is no longer a valid medical or psychiatric diagnosis.
297* Historical "medicines" were often at best ineffective and at worst deadlier than the disease they were meant to treat. Plants and substances that triggered some reaction from the body (rashes, coughing, itchiness, etc) were widely used to treat aliments as the body's reaction to the substance indicated it was doing "something." Harmful medicines included mercury, which was the most common "cure" for syphilis even though it probably killed the patients faster than the disease it was meant to treat.
298* The idea of gastric ulcers being caused by worry and stress has also been discredited in the 21st century. Doctors now tend to identify H. pylori bacterium as the main culprit and prescribe antibiotics to clear the infection. Although chronic stress can contribute to the condition, it's no longer believed to be the primary cause.
299* Due to a lack of scientific evidence for otherwise at the time, battlefield use also making it hard to evaluate (they were usually employed by placing it into a fortification's opening, hosing the inside, and checking the inside was clear a few minutes later which makes its operator unlikely to ever actually see a living enemy killed by it) and mischaracterizing some incidents where people killed by them did not appear to be especially burnt, [[https://mmrjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40779-020-00237-9 flamethrowers were suggested by some American officers during the second World War as being a merciful weapon that killed instantaneously]]. This was later refuted by more comprehensive scientific studies on the weapon's methods of lethality in the hopes of improving their use and developing counter-measures to them.
300* The nature of the relationship between diet and scurvy is an oddly cyclical example of this. Multiple inaccurate theories as to what caused it and how it could be prevented were proposed, but in the late 18th century, it was determined that lemon juice could prevent it. The explanation at the time was that the acid in the lemon juice was somehow burning the scurvy out. So the Royal Navy included lemon juice as part of each sailor's rations, later switching to lime juice because it was cheaper, hence the slang term "limey" for British people. During the 19th century, however, this theory fell out of favor because some expeditions rich in lime juice saw outbreaks of scurvy, while others where crews ate plenty of fresh meat didn't. This led to the adoption of a new theory, that scurvy wasn't a nutritional problem, but a form of food poisoning, possibly caused by ptomaine in tinned meat. Then vitamins were discovered in the early 20th century and it was found that lemons did prevent scurvy after all, as scurvy was actually caused by a lack of Vitamin C. As it turned out, the reason lime juice failed to prevent scurvy was because limes didn't have as much Vitamin C as lemons, and the process of juicing the limes and pumping the juice around in copper pipes destroyed what (relatively) little there was.
301[[/folder]]
302
303[[folder:Paleontology and Anthropology]]
304
305[[AC:{{Film}} - Animation]]
306* Disney's ''WesternAnimation/{{Fantasia}}'' not only featured inaccurately-drawn dinosaurs, but at the very beginning of the "Rite of Spring" segment, the Earth is seen being formed from material thrown out from the Sun, the Sun itself being made of fire instead of hot gas, and at the end, the dinosaurs go extinct as a result of a global drought caused by climate change rather than by a meteorite impact.
307* At the time of its creation, ''WesternAnimation/TheLandBeforeTime'' actually took several pains to be accurate (disregarding a few [[AnachronisticAnimal temporal mishaps]]). Now, a large portion of its portrayals -- its elephant-footed ''Brontosaurus'', single-horned infant ''Triceratops'', flightless juvenile ''Pteranodon'', and [[AquaticHadrosaurs primarily aquatic]] ''Saurolophus'' -- are outdated. (At least it can still find use as a historical document: "This is what we thought at the time....")
308
309[[AC:{{Film}} - Live Action]]
310* In ''Film/TheNeanderthalMan'', a MadScientist cites [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man Piltdown Man]] to demonstrate that humanity's ancestors had larger brains. Piltdown Man was exposed as a hoax about five months after the movie came out.
311
312[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
313* ''Literature/AfterManyASummer'' by Aldous Huxley is based on the "neotenous ape" theory which held that humans were mutations based on ape babies which didn't grow up. A character in the book has lived several hundred years, but paid the price by becoming more apelike as he ages.
314* ''Literature/DinosaursTheMostCompleteUpToDateEncyclopedia'' was indeed one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date popular texts on dinosaurs... when it was published in 2007. As the author himself admits, palaeontology is a rapidly changing field, and within a decade most of the information presented had become outdated. [[https://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/dinoappendix/ A website]] was maintained with updated information... up until 2015, at which point updates stopped and ''that'' also became outdated!
315* Despite having [[ShownTheirWork Shown His Work]], author and illustrator James Gurney fell victim to this with the earlier ''Literature/{{Dinotopia}}'' novels. The latest book showing up-to-date dinosaurs is evidence of this.
316* Creator/HPLovecraft made frequent references to the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_man Piltdown Man]], a famous fraud with a mix of human and ape bones, in his works.
317* Although Robert J. Sawyer definitely [[ShownTheirWork shows his work]] in his ''[[Literature/TheNeanderthalParallax Neanderthal Parallax]]'' trilogy, there are still some errors as a result of more recent scientific discoveries:
318** The research available at the time the books were written indicated that Neanderthals and ''Homo sapiens'' were genetically incompatible, which plays a pivotal role in the plot. New research shows the opposite: not only were the two species compatible, there was significant interbreeding.
319** Dogs in the Neanderthal universe are physically indistinguishable from wolves. The reason given is that Neanderthals only selected for behavior and hunting companions, and did not care what their dogs looked like. Research with tame silver foxes has shown how selecting for tameness inevitably results in other neotenous traits (shorter legs, larger skulls, folded ears, curled tails), even without specifically breeding for them. With this in mind, Neanderthals would have had to actually put a great deal of work into breeding dogs that still resembled wolves in any way shape or form, and the primitive appearance of dogs would actually have had to be very deliberate.
320** The book's anthropologist character says there's no clear evidence for Neanderthals believing in an afterlife. Subsequently, this seems to be why Sawyer depicts them as uniformly having no concept of that, or gods. Since then, anthropologists have concluded that they did deliberately bury their dead with tools intended for use in another world.
321* The horrors of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII made many anthropologists of the 50s drop the idea that HumansAreSpecial, intelligent, tool-maker conquerors of Nature and switch to HumansAreBastards instead, the only primate that is a carnivorous, egotistical, weapon-making killer beast that loves violence and is doomed to destroy itself. The influence of this idea can be noted in Pierre Boulle's novel ''[[Literature/PlanetOfTheApes La Planete des Singes]]'', which would later inspire the ''Franchise/PlanetOfTheApes'' movies, as apes were then regarded as what "we" should have been before becoming homicidal beasts: peaceful leaf-eaters sitting in the rainforest, and that once we've wiped us out ourselves they'd build a real harmonious civilization. However, when primatologists actually began to study ape communities in the wild in the 1960s they found that apes (especially chimpanzees) weren't that peaceful in reality and actually had their share of hunting, fights for supremacy, stealing, rape, infanticide, war and cannibalism. As [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Goodall Jane Goodall]] once declared (paraphrasing): "I came thinking that apes were better than us, and I discovered that they were just the same".
322** Ironically, bonobos, currently the species widely considered to contain the most intelligent nonhuman individual (a bonobo called Kanzi), actually ''are'' considerably more peaceful in their intraspecific interactions than humans and most other apes. They just solve their disputes through creative and ''extremely'' regular sex, instead.
323* ''Literature/QuestForFire'' has aged surprisingly well over a hundred years but it still shows its age in some areas. Most notably, the Kzamm do not closely resemble any human species, being hulking brutes with ape-like long arms and short legs. They are likely supposed to represent the [[FrazettaMan "ape man"]], then represented by the now defunct species ''Pithecanthropus erectus'' or "Java man". Known from fragmentary remains, Java man was thought to be essentially a bipedal ape until more remains of the same species revealed a physiology closer to modern humans, resulting in reclassification as the familiar taxon ''Homo erectus''.
324%% * ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'' has a story where an old man takes a "youth serum" extracted from monkeys, which also gives him simian traits like climbing trees and annoying the dog.
325
326[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
327* ''Series/DoctorWho'' has two prominent mentions of ''Brontosaurus'' in the 1970s—a small one in the Fourth Doctor's "The brontosaurus is large and placid... and [[DumbDinos stupid]]!" speech (which at least has the excuse that [[TalkativeLoon he had no grasp of reality at the time]]), and a big one in "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" where a ''Brontosaurus'' is one of the main dinos encountered. While originally inaccurate, a study published in 2015 has concluded that ''Brontosaurus'' is in fact a valid genus and [[AccidentallyCorrectWriting Doctor Who was actually right all along]]!
328* The 2007 documentary series ''Series/PrehistoricPredators'' made significantly more effort to be accurate than many other prehistoric life documentaries of the time. However, some of its claims have been cast in doubt or outright debunked.
329** The episode on the dire wolf claims it to be a close relative of the modern grey wolf. This was believed to be true at the time, but a 2021 DNA study indicated that it was more distant than previously thought, causing it to be reclassified under the genus ''Aenocyon''.
330** ''Arctodus simus'', aka the giant short-faced bear, was hit with this twice over.
331*** Based on then up-to-date molecular isotope analysis, the bear was assumed to be hypercarnivorous. However, the specimens tested were uncovered in Alaska, a place where non-meat dietary options were severely limited during the Ice Age. Since the bear's range extended as far south as Mexico, it was determined that a broader sample was needed. Indeed, examining remains from other areas found that it was more omnivorous than previously thought and would eat plants when they were available.
332*** The series runs with the then-popular theory that it was an obligate scavenger that engaged in kleptoparasitism (in LaymansTerms, stealing other predator's kills). This model has been cast into serious doubt, since it's hard to imagine that a large, warm-blooded animal that couldn't fly would have been able to gain enough calories just by scavenging. While it almost certainly did at least some scavenging, that's probably not how it obtained all of its meals, especially since (as mentioned above) it didn't only eat meat.
333** Entelodonts are repeatedly described as "pigs", since they were believed to be pig relatives at the time. Since the show's airing, however, morphological and molecular studies have indicated that they were more closely related to hippos.
334* You can actually see Science Marching On in the dinosaur-themed seasons of ''Franchise/SuperSentai'' and ''Franchise/PowerRangers''. In ''Series/KyoryuSentaiZyuranger'' and ''Series/MightyMorphinPowerRangers'' from the 1990s, the Tyrannosaurus mecha had an upright kangaroo stance. ''Series/BakuryuuSentaiAbaranger'' and ''Series/PowerRangersDinoThunder'' in the 2000s later corrected this to make their Tyrannosaurus horizontally-oriented. And by the 2010s, the Tyrannosaurs in ''Series/ZyudenSentaiKyoryuger'' have feathers (though its adaptation ''Series/PowerRangersDinoCharge'' is inconsistent on this point). [[http://25.media.tumblr.com/f7b9a142e69e6f8a733b073910bc11e2/tumblr_mjone9JNfq1qfbt2oo1_500.jpg Comparison pic.]]
335
336[[AC:VideoGames]]
337* While ''VideoGame/PaleoPines'' was in development, ''Troodon'' was considered a valid dinosaur genus, so it was included in the game. By the time it was released in late 2023, it had been deemed invalid, with most specimens being reclassified as ''Stenonychosaurus''. [[https://twitter.com/PaleoPines/status/1711750509973962805 The developers acknowledged this in a tweet.]]
338* ''VideoGame/PokemonXAndY'' introduced Amaura and Aurorus, Pokémon themed on the ''Amargasaurus''. Though it is quite accurate in other regards (such as its toe structure and head shape), both Pokémon have a characteristic pair of membraneous sails on their necks, which is now less popular among paleontologists than the idea that the spines were bare and used for intimidation and combat. Then a 2022 study on the morphology of the neural spines came out stating that ''Amargasaurus'' and its relatives probably did have [[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/joa.13659 sails on their necks]].
339
340[[AC:{{Webcomics}}]]
341* [[{{Troperiffic}} Naturally]], Webcomic/{{xkcd}} has something to say [[http://xkcd.com/1104/ on the subject]]. [[http://xkcd.com/1527/ And some more]].
342
343[[AC:WebOriginal]]
344* ''Website/{{Cracked}}'''s [[http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_767_42-sci-fi-movies-if-they-were-updated-realism/ 42 Sci-Fi Movies (If They Were Updated for Realism)]] shows a retouched ''Jurassic Park'' scene with the feathers that dinosaurs are now known to have had.
345* The girl in [[https://notalwaysright.com/blue-in-the-face-over-the-dino/ this]] ''Website/NotAlwaysLearning'' story is punished for coloring dinosaurs imaginatively with blue stripes, instead of solid brown and green which the teacher claims are the only "correct" colors. Not only does the girl's mother point out the teacher and principal are punishing a student for ''being creative on a creative assignment'', the comments (which were lost in numerous site reformats) pointed out that newer finds of preserved skin and feathers with pigments show that dinosaurs were ''very'' colorful, with stripes, spots, and iridescence that would look blue.
346* [=YouTuber=] [[https://www.youtube.com/@redraptorwrites6778/videos Red Raptor Writes]] has a series where he reviews documentaries on prehistoric life. He grades them on their accuracy, and makes sure to include and discuss cases where claims and depictions have become outdated due to new discoveries and analyses.
347
348[[AC:WesternAnimation]]
349* ''WesternAnimation/DinosaurTrain'' does its best to stay on top of current discoveries, but sometimes it finds itself the victim of this.
350** For starters, in 2017 a study determined that ''Troodon'' [[https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/78296/1/cjes-2017-0031.pdf was a dubious genus]]. As such, members of the genus have been reassigned to ''Stenonychosaurus''
351** ''Eoraptor'' might not have been a theropod, but [[http://news.discovery.com/animals/running-dinosaur-ancestor-carnivores-110113.html a sauropod ancestor]].
352** ''Stygimoloch'' may not represent a distinct creature after all, but [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYbMXzBwpIo the subadult form]] of ''Pachycephalosaurus''. Whether or not it is different, young pachycephalosaurs [[http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/pachysmanyone.gif probably had flat (if somewhat knobbly) heads, growing domes as they aged]].
353** ''Brachiosaurus'' never lived in Africa. That was ''Giraffatitan''.
354** Many of the enantiornithines are depicted with a pair of ribbon-shaped tail feathers instead of a modern-style tail fan. However fossil discoveries have found that there was a much greater diversity of tail structures than previously thought. With some having elaborate tail feathers and some basal members possessing full tail fans akin to modern birds.
355** The ''Hesperornis'' has lobed instead of webbed feet.
356** The discoveries of ''Kulindadromeus'' and ''Psittacosaurus'' suggest ceratopsians might have had quills on their backs.
357** The character design of Sunny ''Sauroposeidon'' is clearly based on brachiosaurids – a group that the taxon probably doesn't belong to after all, instead being more related to titanosaurs. Granted, the largest macronarians would have had a brachiosaur-like appearance.
358** Adult ornithomimosaurs are now known to likely have had wings of some sort.
359** The limb proportions of ''Spinosaurus'' were far more unusual than depicted in the show. In 2020 it was discovered that their tails had [[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2190-3 tall neural spines]] that would have formed a newt like tail structure.
360** The discovery that ''Dimetrodon'' may have been nocturnal casts doubt on the idea that its sail was primarily used for thermoregulation.
361** The giant ''Shonisaurus'' material has been reassigned to ''Shastasaurus''.
362* ''WesternAnimation/TheMagicSchoolBus'' episode "The Busasaurus" did its best, specifically going back in time to the Cretaceous Period to disprove Carlos's assertion that all dinosaurs were carnivores. All the dinosaurs are period-appropriate, but unfortunately they still had featherless theropods, and ''Troodon''[[note]]now called ''Stenonychosaurus''[[/note]] has been suggested to have been either omnivorous or even an herbivore, rather than a carnivore as depicted.[[note]]This view is controversial and does not appear to be supported by analysis of troodontid tooth wear patterns[[/note]]
363* One strange example and correction of this is the designs of the Dinobots in ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}''. In [[Franchise/TransformersGeneration1 the original designs]] their [[TransformingMecha alt-modes]] showed many inaccuracies to fossil records that [[WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated later]] [[Film/TransformersAgeOfExtinction counterparts]] ''corrected'': they're no longer bow-legged or sluggish and Grimlock is no longer in the "kangaroo stance" but the proper bent-over position. The ''Age of Extinction'' Dinobots do have inaccuracies, but they were deliberately introduced as ArtisticLicense to make them look more fantastic.
364* An example would be Bubba the Cave-Duck and Tootsie the ''Triceratops'' in the ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'' episode "Timephoon!". They clearly show corrections of the many outdated aspects seen in [[WesternAnimation/DuckTales1987 the original show]]: Bubba is now a GeniusBruiser and Tootsie is no longer bow-legged or dragging her tail. A later episode "Louie's Eleven!" shows ''Tyrannosaurus'' skeletons in the modern horizontal position, rather than the kangaroo-like stance seen in the ''Tyrannosaurus'' in the original series.
365
366[[AC:Other]]
367* The case of the ''Brontosaurus'':
368** In 1879, paleontologist Othniel Marsh misidentified an ''Apatosaurus'' (deceptive lizard) skeleton as a new genus, which he named ''"Brontosaurus"'' (thunder lizard). The error was pointed out in ''1903'', but the newer name proved more persistent in pop culture; even when the more proper term is discussed, it's often related as if Science only recently Marched On (e.g. this [[http://www.sheldoncomics.com/archive/070815.html ''Sheldon'' strip]]). There is a loophole in the form of a grandfather clause: "The prevailing usage must be maintained" when "the senior synonym or homonym has not been used as a valid name after 1899" and "the junior synonym or homonym has been used for a particular taxon, as its presumed valid name, in at least 25 works, published by at least 10 authors in the immediately preceding 50 years". Looks like "Brontosaurus" missed by only a few years, but thank goodness ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' slipped in, otherwise we would be calling him "Manospondylus gigas".
369** The ''Brontosauri'' in ''Film/KingKong2005'' were consciously called ''Brontosaurus'' as a homage to the old use of the name and (in [[AllThereInTheManual associated in-story material]]) because the name was recycled for the newly discovered creatures.
370** The ''Brontosaurus'' was also provided with an incorrect skull—a ''Camarasaurus'' skull that Marsh incorrectly figured would be close enough to what its real skull probably looked like—but, contrary to popular belief, this problem is unrelated to its being renamed. It wasn't even definitively proven until 1970 that the skull was incorrect.
371** In another twist, it's believed ''"Brontosaurus"'' may still have hope for revival after all, especially after being a valid genus again since 2015; if ''Supersaurus'' is indeed found to be simply a ''Apatosaurus'' species, ''A.excelsus'' would end up as a different animal to ''A.ajax'', ''A.louisae'' and ''Supersaurus''. Currently scientific opinion is somewhat divided on the matter, but Tschopp et al. (2015) found that several mostly temporally earlier species, including one that had previously been split from ''Apatosaurus'', had significant differences in vertebral structure from the ''Apatasaurus ajax'' holotype.
372*** The use of this trope was humorously {{Lampshaded}} (or depending on how you look at it, DoubleSubverted) in Science Comics' ''Dinosaurs: Fossils And Feathers'', where page 53 makes a mention of ''Brontosaurus'' becoming an invalidated genus with a panel showing "''Brontosaurus''" saying "What's up, guys?" [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer only to be ignored by the other sauropods]]. Then, at Page 112, the very end of the book…
373---->'''Caption:''' A lengthy re-examination of the different species of ''Apatosaurus'' led researchers to conclude that there were enough differences to make ''Brontosaurus'' its own genus again, weeks before this book was due at the printer.\
374'''''Brontosaurus'':''' ''<smirking>'' [[IronicEcho What's up, guys?]]\
375'''[[CreatorCameo Author MK Reed]]:''' This is so awkward.\
376'''[[CreatorCameo Illustrator Joe Flood]]:''' Can we pretend we don't see him?\
377'''Caption:''' Fact: ''Brontosaurus'' is now MK and Joe's least favourite dinosaur.
378* In the late 19th century, a sculptor named Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins built massive statues of what the current science thought dinosaurs looked like, as they had only been recently discovered and rarely in complete skeletons, most of which run contrary to modern science's view. His most famous mistake was the ''Iguanodon'' that walked on all fours and whose thumb was placed on its nose. [[Art/CrystalPalaceDinosaurs These sculptures]] still exist, and can be seen in [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Palace_Dinosaurs Crystal Palace Park, London, UK]].
379** More precisely, the sculptures represented the theories of paleontologist Richard Owen, who in fact coined the name "Dinosauria". Other scientists like Gideon Mantell thought that ''Iguanodon'' could have, from time to time, stood on its hind legs. However even he imagined the animal as a gargantuan iguana with a nose-horn, and he sadly didn't live to see the discovery of several well-preserved ''Iguanodon'' fossils a couple of decades later, which drastically revised science's ideas about the animal and consequentially caused a drop in the Crystal Palace dinos' popularity.
380** After finding complete skeletons, ''Iguanodon'' reconstructions for a long time also suffered from the "kangaroo stance"-fallacy. Later it turned out that they were indeed at least capable of walking on all fours. The latest reconstructions are nevertheless still a far cry from Hawkins' rhino-lizards.
381** One of the greatest differences between old and modern models is that up to a point in time, it was believed that the legs of quadruped dinosaurs were bound exactly like crocodiles' (since they're also reptiles, right?). This is also linked to the "kangaroo stance" theropods mentioned above.
382** And the long-held view that dinosaurs dragged their tails along the ground. It wasn't until the late 80's that this began to change, considering the structure of the hips and tails wouldn't have allowed it. However, some paleontologists are now suspecting that ''Spinosaurus'' would have been one dinosaur that actually dragged its tail, due to its hindlegs apparently being very short (fitting, as ''Spinosaurus'' was essentially the dinosaurian equivalent of a crocodile).
383** Also the "swan neck" many sauropods were depicted in (with the exception of the brachiosaurs, sauropods couldn't lift their necks more than 30 degrees above the horizontal). And there's now paleontologists arguing that the thinking on sauropod necks went too much the other way: that many were actually flexible enough to make an S-bend, and probably were held in that position normally.
384* While nowadays it is an almost universal consensus amongst scientists that the extinction of the dinosaurs was brought about by an asteroid, up until the 1980s this was not so much the case; for decades, the reason behind the disappearance of the dinosaurs was considered perhaps one of the world's greatest scientific mysteries, with many hypotheses devised by scientists to explain why the dinosaurs died out. Among these various explanations included solar radiation from a nearby star going supernova, mass volcanic eruptions leading to drastic changes in climate, and even a sudden evolutionary onset of new, poisonous plant species. ''ComicStrip/TheFarSide'' most famously spoofed this mystery in a comic depicting a group of dinosaurs [[SmokingIsNotCool smoking cigarettes]]. The hypothesis that the extinction was caused by an asteroid hitting Earth was first proposed in 1980 with the discovery of geological evidence that a giant meteorite had landed in Mexico at around the time that dinosaurs vanished from the fossil record, though it took the concurrence of many paleontologists and scientists, as well as popular writers such as Creator/IsaacAsimov, before the theory began to gain serious traction; it was only after the geologic mapping of a massive crater around the theorized impact site that the asteroid hypothesis became widely accepted and the extinction of the dinosaurs was no longer considered to be the puzzling mystery it once was.
385* Relatedly, once the meteor theory was accepted, the new consensus was that dinosaurs were already dying out due to climate change and increased volcanic activity, with the meteor being what pushed them over the edge. This was gradually debunked as more fossils were dug up from the end of the Cretaceous, revealing that dinosaurs still maintained a spectacular amount of diversity right up to the end of their reign. To give one example, works in TurnOfTheMillennium would likely feature only tyrannosaurs as the top predators at the end of the Cretaceous, while TheNewTwenties would reveal that they lived alongside giant raptors in the northern hemisphere and didn't exist in the south, instead having their role filled by abelisaurs and megaraptorids.
386* 2017 saw the publishing of [[https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/78296/1/cjes-2017-0031.pdf this paper]] which found ''Troodon'' to be a dubious genus as the holotype specimen is only a single tooth. As such, all members of the genus have been reassigned to the genus ''Stenonychosaurus'', which is known from better remains.
387* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennewick_Man Kennewick man]] ("the one that looks like Creator/PatrickStewart"). Nobody actually believes in "race" per se anymore, and American Indians were only considered "mongoloid" for phylogenetic, rather than anatomical, reasons. Finally, even ''creationists'' acknowledge variation within a species. Despite this, these errors were deliberately made "in the interest of science" during the Kennewick man debacle. That the media repeatedly misstated that until then human habitation in the Americas only went back some 8000 years, when it had been known since the 1920s that humans had been in the Americas for at least some 12000 years, only made it worse.
388* As more and more studies are made about the bone structure of dinosaurs, how their bones connected and just how flexible the joints were, the smaller details of the way we perceive how the animals might have looked and behaved changes so fast, media and the public have a tough time keeping up. One of the more "radical" findings that frequently gets overlooked when it comes to depicting dinosaurs is the revelation that most dinosaurs couldn't rotate their hands the way humans can, and that their palms were almost permanently stuck facing inward. Thus the classic (and to most people, standard) way of positioning their hands the kangaroo-way became as obsolete and incorrect as the kangaroo-stance itself. But it's such a relatively insignificant detail that most pictures/movies/sculptures/toys still get it wrong.
389* It was formerly believed that feathers originated in the theropod lineage at some point during the Jurassic period, with small, arboreal theropods such as ''Archaeopteryx'' evolving them for flight. However, molecular evidence has shown that the origin of feathers go even further back than that. A paper published in 2006 confirmed that alligators possess the same gene for growing feathers that birds do, which would punt the origin for feathers back to the common ancestor of birds and crocodilians, sometime back in the Triassic period. Indeed, it would appear that bird feathers, dinosaur protofeathers and pterosaur pycnofibres are all variations on the same basal archosaur fuzz, which evolved as a form of insulation rather than for flight. Pennaceous (ie: bird-like) feathers have been pushed back farther in the line of feather evolution; the so-called "protofeathers" are actually just crushed pennaceous feathers; thus animals like ''Velociraptor'' (which has quill knobs, a dead giveaway of pennaceous feathering) or ''Yutyrannus'' (with its feather imprints on the fossil slab it was preserved in) sport pennaceous feathers. Another feathered theropod, ''Sciurumimus'', is an ''incredibly'' basal coelurosaur; it was only ''slightly'' more advanced than the megalosauroids (and was even jumping between being a coelurosaur or megalosauroid for a while).
390* ''Edmontosaurus'', was long considered the quintessential "crestless" hadrosaur, until studies of some extremely well-preserved "mummified" individuals suggest that it actually had a [[http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/12/12/surpise-well-studied-dinosaur-actually-had-a-cocks-comb/ crest after all]] (albeit a fleshy one rather than the hollow bony ones of ''Parasaurolophus'' and ''Corythosaurus''). However, at the moment, this seems to only apply to one of the two known ''Edmontosaurus'' species, the older and smaller ''E. regalis'', with the larger, younger ''E. annectens'' (previously known as ''Anatotitan'', and before that ''Anatosaurus'', and before that ''Trachodon'') still being mostly regarded as wholly crestless.
391* ''Basilosaurus'' was originally thought to be a marine reptile, and its bones were arranged like a [[SeaMonster sea serpent]], hence the name it received. It was later discovered that ''Basilosaurus'' was not a reptile at all, but an early ''whale.'' There was an effort to rename the animal ''Zeuglodon'' as a result of this discovery, but the rules of taxonomy prevented this from occurring (although that doesn't stop the '"Zeuglodon'' name from popping up every now and then in old paleontology books).
392* The mysterious ''Tullimonstrum'' of Carboniferous Illinois was infamous for over 50 years, due to its extremely strange characteristics that confused many a paleontologist. The only conclusion that anyone could even reach was that it was an invertebrate, and thus many (now-outdated) paleoart depicts it as a strange [[https://www.isgs.illinois.edu/sites/isgs/files/images/outreach-images/tully.gif annelid-slug-arthropod-cuttlefish]] conglomeration. As of 2016, a study proves that it was none of those, and wasn't even an invertebrate. It in fact was a vertebrate that was closely related to the [[LampreyMouth lamprey]]. Despite this, it is still portrayed as a weird MixAndMatchCritter rather than the [[http://cdn4.sci-news.com/images/2016/03/image_3708_1-Tully-Monster.jpg fish-like animal it actually was]]. [[https://www.isgs.illinois.edu/outreach/geology-resources/illinois-state-fossil-tullimonstrum-gregarium Illinois' Geological Survey still refers to it as an invertebrate]]!
393** [[https://news.upenn.edu/news/tully-monster-mystery-far-solved-penn-led-group-argues Come 2017 and Tullimonstrum might have been an invertebrate after all]].
394* One thing that's ''not'' covered by science marching on is [[HollywoodPrehistory the depiction of cavemen living alongside dinosaurs]]. At no point in the history of paleontology did actual scientists believe this. The first scientific paper on dinosaurs, Gideon Mantell's "The Geological Age of Reptiles" in 1831, said in its first sentence, "Among the numerous interesting facts which the researches of modern geologists have brought to light, there is none more extraordinary and imposing than the discovery that there was a period when the earth was peopled by oviparous quadrupeds of a most appalling magnitude and that reptiles were the Lords of Creation, before the existence of the human race." This was a decade before the word "dinosaur" was even coined, so there's never been any excuse for not getting this right if you're trying for accuracy. Old-timey Hollywood was trying for RuleOfCool. The reason the trope faded around the 1980s was not science marching on, but the general public becoming more aware of what scientists knew all along.
395** Ironically, the fact that dinosaurs went extinct millions of years before humans ''did'' become outdated; it is now known birds are dinosaurs themselves, as birds and other coelurosaurs share a common theropod ancestor from which they split off at the end of the Jurassic.
396* Scenes where dinosaurs have tongues of a similar dexterity to mammal tongues (for grooming, friendly licking, or in general [[RuleOfCool sticking them out when roaring]]) were called into question by a paper that posited that non-avian dinosaurs have weaker tongue movements more akin to those of crocodiles (IE, flat and incapable of extending outside the mouth but able to move while inside it), with ornithiscians having them slightly stronger in being able to be extended, but more akin to tortoises than mammals.
397* It was once wildly believed and taught that dinosaur/extinct animal coloration would always be something fundamentally impossible to know, but it was discovered in 2008 that melanosomes, which are responsible for animal coloration, are sometimes capable of fossilizing -- they've just been previously thought to be traces of bacteria or misidentified as traces of other things. Comparing the structure and amount of fossilized melanosomes to that of living animals allows one to infer the color of the extinct animal, and now there is a small handful of dinosaurs and extinct birds (including a long-beaked extinct penguin) with full [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur_coloration color restorations]] that are believed to be highly accurate, so now we can know awesome things like that ''Microraptor'' looked like a four-winged black iridescent crow, and there is a species of one genus of dinosaur ''(Sinosauropteryx)'' that was reddish-brown, had a white striped tail and underbelly, and had something similar to a raccoon mask. And while most of these are small feathered dinosaurs, one extraordinarily well-preserved fossil from Canada of a large nodosaurid ankylosaur called ''Borealopelta'' preserves pigments that suggest it was a reddish-brown color in life.
398* This phenomenon is very evident in [[OurCryptidsAreMoreMysterious cryptids]], especially of the "[[LivingDinosaurs late-surviving dinosaur/prehistoric reptile]]" variety. Oftentimes, cryptids like Mokele-mbembe, the Ropen, or the Loch Ness Monster will be described as looking very similar to classical dinosaurs, even if more modern discoveries suggest that the described capabilities of the cryptid don't match up with the actual creature. For instance, Nessie (often purported to be a plesiosaur) is often depicted as raising its head and neck high to look out of the water like a swan, which was a common image at the time in media and paleoart. [[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/laelaps/why-the-long-neck/ More recent discoveries]] suggest that a plesiosaur wouldn't be able to pull off that posture without breaking its neck. [[note]]Though this hasn't stopped some cryptozoologists from countering with the claim that [[MovingTheGoalposts they could have somehow evolved in ways that made them more similar to older ideas]].[[/note]]
399* [[https://whendinosaursruledthemind.wordpress.com/2014/08/25/when-dinosaurs-ruled-the-mind-8-dinosaurs-over-the-years-spinosaurus/ This blog]] points out that the [[https://whendinosaursruledthemind.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/tumblr_mg02l99a3x1s2o2t1o1_1280.jpg first depiction]] of the ''Spinosaurus'' is actually one of its [[https://whendinosaursruledthemind.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/spinosaurus-walrusb1.jpg?w=556&h=313 most accurate]]. In recent years, there has been a lot of back and forth on ''Spinosaurus'', with different ideas being proposed and alternating between an aquatic animal, or one who mainly lived on land.
400* Some anthropologists once believed that humans did not share a common ancestor; instead, different races of humanity supposedly evolved from different kinds of primate. This theory, called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygenism Polygenism,]] was often used as a justification for racism and has very few adherents today; just about everyone nowadays agrees on a monogenic hypothesis, whether the traditional "Out of Africa" model or a variant.
401* The first known ''Oviraptor'' specimen was discovered in a nest of eggs; since they were assumed to be ''Protoceratops'' eggs, ''Oviraptor'' was thought to be a specialized egg-eater. Later on, though, it was discovered that they were actually ''Oviraptor'' eggs, implying the specimen was trying to protect its own eggs rather than steal another's. While it's certainly possible that ''Oviraptor'' helped itself to eggs on occasion like many carnivores and omnivores are known to do, the model of it as primarily an egg eater has been discredited.
402* Old depictions of ''Dimetrodon'' and other Permian fauna have referred to them as "mammal-like reptiles", and have been traditionally depicted with scaly skin and sprawled-out limbs. Newer knowledge now knows them to be ''synapsids'', a branch of amniotes entirely separate from sauropsids (reptiles and para-reptiles) and represented today only by modern mammals (meaning that while still somewhat inaccurate, calling them a "reptile-like mammal" is more precise than a "mammal-like reptile"; although "protomammal" or "stem-mammal" is preferred). As such, this has changed their modern portrayals to have smooth, glandular hippo-like skin (or even outright fur in more advanced therapsids) and more-upright limbs more akin to a mammal than a lizard.
403* Paleoanthropologists have, for a long time, believed that brain size relative to body size is an indication of a hominin's potential for intelligence. Then, in the early 2020s, we find that ''Homo naledi'', which had a brain a third the size of ''Homo sapiens'' (us), appears to have used fire, buried its dead, fashioned tools, and created cave art; all of these behaviors are commonly associated with intelligence in modern hominins. What's more, they were doing these things a hundred thousand years ''before'' Sapiens and Neanderthal.
404[[/folder]]
405
406[[folder:Physics]]
407[[AC:ComicBooks]]
408* Franchise/{{Tintin}}: In ''[[Recap/TintinTheSevenCrystalBalls The Seven Crystal Balls]]'': Up until the 1960s, scientists were skeptical of the very existence of ball lightning, putting them on the level of {{Flying Saucer}}s and other hocus pocus. Hence their mystical properties as shown on the book cover.
409
410[[AC:Film]]
411* The opening to ''WesternAnimation/BeeMovie'' famously says that we have no idea how bees have been able to fly, although we've since figured it out. Turns out, bees should only be incapable of flight if you assume their wings are rigid boards. However, they can and do flex, which provides enough extra lift to get their fat little bodies off the ground.
412
413[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
414* Creator/HGWells has his explorers in ''Literature/TheFirstMenInTheMoon'' travel to the moon by means of a metal that is "opaque to the radiant energy of gravity".
415** For which Creator/JulesVerne gave him hell, [[DontBeRidiculous arguing that his own use of a giant cannon was much more realistic]].
416* ''Literature/FromTheEarthToTheMoon'':
417** The early silent film based on the book describes the astronauts and their spacecraft being fired from a giant gun. Launching a spacecraft in that manner would thoroughly kill the astronauts from excessive G-forces, which is why real manned spaceflight is done with staged rockets. (The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_gun space gun]] concept ''has'' been proposed in real life, but only for launching cargo.) This was [[LampshadeHanging thoroughly discussed by the characters themselves]] and HandWaved away by Captain Nicoll inventing an [[InertialDampening ingenious shock absorber device]] (which wouldn't work anyway, really). Now it is thought that the gun thing was suggested to Verne [[ExecutiveMeddling by his publisher Hetzel]], who thought that the rocket (which Verne envisioned originally) [[RuleOfCool wouldn't be cool enough]].
418** The book also mentions zero-G environment only for a brief moment when the projectile was passing the point where the gravities of Earth and Moon cancel each other out. The better application of the mechanics well known even in Verne's time would show the zero-G state prevailing for the whole flight, as it happens in RealLife.
419** There's is one even ''worse'' offender: in the book, the heroes get rid of their dead dog by ''opening a window on the bottom of the projectile and throwing it out''. They are concerned about the loss of air, but they do it fast enough that "only a few particles" of air escape. It's mentioned they later casually get rid of litter this way throughout their voyage.
420* This happened so often to Robert Heinlein that he decided to stop rewriting his short stories for accuracy and simply declared them part of an AlternateHistory. His editors decided to call the whole "series" ''Future History''.
421** His story "Literature/BlowupsHappen" centered around a nuclear power plant consisting of a ''solid two and a half ton ball'' of uranium-235. Blowups don't just happen, but are ''inevitable'' when you try to exceed critical mass (in this case, 52kg). Considering that the story was written in 1940 and Fermi wouldn't even get to the University of Chicago for his famous experiment until 1942, he can probably be forgiven. Heisenberg himself and a number of other nuclear scientists also thought the same thing -- supposedly Heisenberg's 1940 calculations on the "random walk" principle gave him a figure two tons for sustained criticality.\
422\
423The mass was changed to 10 tons in a later revision of the story. It's not exactly a solid ball, though; in both cases the fission reaction is keeping the fuel in a liquid state. There's another error, though: even the ten-ton version simply would not contain enough energy to produce the world-wrecking detonation the story posits -- it ''would'' be an enormous explosion, but historically there have been more powerful volcanic events. The explosion ''would'' likely release a ghastly amount of radioisotopes into the environment when it blew, however, making it a "world-wrecker" in a different way.
424* The ''Literature/{{Lensman}}'' novels:
425** Creator/EEDocSmith justified both FTL and [[SpaceFriction Constant Thrust Equals Constant Velocity]] with the inertia-negating "Bergenholm" device. At the time of writing, the negation of inertial mass, though hideously energy-intensive, was believed theoretically possible. Advances in relativity and quantum mechanics have since destroyed the concept's viability.
426** Also, the first novel, ''Triplanetary'', had [[StarfishAliens fish-like]] aliens (more indifferent to humanity than actively hostile) raiding near-ish future Earth to steal ''iron'' to fuel their atomic star drives. Humans rapidly copied their tech and developed atomic iron star drives of their own. The problem is that there are two ways of getting energy out of atoms; fuse light ones together, or split heavy ones apart. As atoms' weights move away from the extreme light and heavy ends you get less and less energy out as you fuse or split them, and in the middle there's an element that's the atomic energy equivalent of a deflated balloon; fusing or splitting it releases no energy, and you actually need to pump energy in to change it in any way at all. That element is iron -- the absolute worst possible choice for a nuclear fuel. At the time the specifics of the nuclear binding energy curve wouldn't have been well known, so there's every chance Smith chose iron simply because we use a lot of it on Earth, making it a good candidate for a material avaricious aliens might want to steal.
427** Complete mass to energy conversion is also possible by the mutual annihilation of matter and antimatter. This concept does appear in the Lensman series in the form of the negasphere, which is essentially a planet-sized sphere of antimatter which is used to "eat" planets (in the process disappearing itself). In terms of Science Marches On, this point is affected by Smith's idea of antimatter being much closer to the tentative ideas that Dirac came up with when first considering the concept than to the modern conception of antimatter. It is also affected by Smith plain getting it wrong, in that while he correctly states that the energy is released in the form of floods of energetic gamma rays, he does not envisage these as having any effect other than radiation poisoning for anyone nearby -- whereas in reality the gamma rays would be absorbed by nearby matter and their energy converted into heat, resulting in a massive explosion as opposed to the spooky silent disappearance of matter which the books describe.
428* In the foreword to ''[[Literature/SkylarkSeries The Skylark of Space]]'', also by Smith, he states that he is aware of this new theory of relativity, but that it's unproven and he doesn't personally agree with it. The book had been started in 1915, before general relativity had been published in its finished form (Einstein's seminal paper being published November of that year), and special relativity was still not universally accepted among physicists at the time. On the other hand, the series provides a surprisingly accurate view of antimatter, with the AppliedPhlebotinum at the heart of its science being an alien substance that annihilates with copper to provide huge quantities of power.
429
430[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
431* In one episode of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', a clue to a bizarre phenomenon turns out to be the spin direction of the neutrinos on the station, working from the premise that "Given the laws of probability, from any point of view, about half of them should be spinning clockwise and the other half counterclockwise." It was later discovered that all neutrinos actually spin in the same direction, which cannot be accurately described as either (though that last bit would have already been known at the time).
432
433[[AC:Magazines]]
434* ''{{Magazine/Analog}}'': [[InvokedTrope Invoked]]. In the [[Recap/Analog1940 September 1940]] editorial, "Full Cycle", Chief Editor Creator/JohnWCampbell describes how he worried that the events of "Literature/BlowupsHappen" would have been proven impossible (and it was), but then ''even more recent knowledge'' had been published in scientific journals that make Creator/RobertAHeinlein's idea that reactors can have runaway explosions a valid concern again.
435
436[[AC:VideoGames]]
437* The ''VideoGame/{{XCOM}}'' series makes much use of a MineralMacGuffin called Elerium, an element that forms in yellow crystals and has an atomic number of 115, and among other interesting properties is vitally important for the construction of anti-gravity drives. This was probably based on [[http://www.beyondweird.com/element115.html claims]] made about element-115 in the 1980s by a UFO enthusiast with the splendidly appropriate name of Bob Lazar. These claims were considered exceedingly dubious even at the time, but it wasn't until element-115 was successfully synthesised that they were fully debunked.
438
439[[AC:WesternAnimation]]
440* The resolution of the ''WesternAnimation/SecretSquirrel'' episode "Quark" relies on Secret reading a dictionary and informing the eponymous villainous particle that quarks are only hypothetical, causing him to vanish in a PuffOfLogic. The existence of quarks is no longer even vaguely controversial nowadays.
441[[/folder]]
442
443[[folder:Other/Multiple]]
444[[AC:ComicBooks]]
445* One ''ComicBook/BuckDanny'' story set in the Korean war has a major antagonist codenamed "Ivan", an AcePilot so skilled he shoots down planes ''without the pilot seeing him coming or going''. The big reveal is the enemy's use of guided missiles. Considering that the first Soviet missiles were straight copies of an AIM-9B Sidewinder that was captured after embedding itself in a PRC fighter instead of detonating, this seems questionable.
446
447[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
448* ''Literature/TwentyThousandLeaguesUnderTheSea'':
449** A great deal of biology is now known to be erroneous ([[MonsterWhale evil sperm whales]] and the bottom of the sea being lifeless, for starters), but one of the more bizarre ideas to a modern reader is that the main characters find electricity so amazing, noting that their rooms wouldn't be out of place in a grand hotel if it weren't for the electric lights or that the Nautilus is powered by electricity instead of steam. It's likely for this reason that the Disney film has the Nautilus run on nuclear power instead. It is worth mentioning that the "evil sperm whales" is an idea actually held by Captain Nemo, prof. Arronnax doesn't necessarily agree with him on it, and is taken aback by Nemo's brutal and unprovoked slaughter of the animals in question. It was probably included more as a sign of Nemo [[SanitySlippage becoming progressively unhinged with time]] than an actual scientific tidbit.
450** [[Literature/MobyDick Moby Dick]] himself was based on the sinking of the whaleship Essex, which is the first recorded history of a deliberate attack by a sperm whale on a whaling ship. The whale repeatedly rammed the ship causing it to sink and stranding the crew, who [[NoPartyLikeADonnerParty had to resort to cannibalism]] before finding rescue, which made the press worldwide. So it was a novel idea to throw about at the time.
451** Aside from the biology, there's also some very big geography/geology weirdness in how the Nautilus can sail straight to the South Pole under the ice when we now know the South Pole is over land. Exploration of the Antarctic continent was just beginning when Verne wrote the book, so it was plausible at the time, but now it just looks weird (even if the South Pole happens to be almost on a part of the ice that bottoms out below sea level). (The NORTH Pole is over water, and submarines regularly have and do travel to it under the ice -- and the first to do so also happened to be named "Nautilus".)
452* Creator/HPLovecraft's ''Literature/AtTheMountainsOfMadness'' and "Literature/TheWhispererInDarkness" feature aliens who could travel between planets by flying through æther. Later Cthulhu Mythos stories by other hands typically retcon the Elder Things' space flight as their wings being biological {{solar sail}}s.
453* ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'':
454** In Purgatorio, we learn that the island of Purgatory is the only piece of land in antipodes (a.k.a. the Southern Hemisphere), surrounded by a huge ocean that covers one full hemisphere. To his credit, Dante always remembers that the sun would be to the north in the antipodes. (And remarkably enough, he describes a constellation of four bright stars that sounds suspiciously like the Southern Cross, even though [[AccidentallyCorrectWriting he couldn't possibly have seen it, or even spoken to anyone who had]]. Critics generally think it's a metaphor for the Four Cardinal Virtues (fortitude, temperance, justice, and prudence) illuminating the life of the penitent sinner.
455** Paradiso features a geocentric universe...sort of.
456** Averted in one case: Inferno and Purgatorio clearly features a round Earth (proving that the idea that people once believed, especially during the Middle Ages, that the Earth was flat is completely wrong. The fact that the Earth is round is quite obvious to the senses and easily proven through basic geometry known since the days of Ancient Greece).
457* In April 1953, Creator/IsaacAsimov wrote the short story "Literature/{{Everest}}", which got obsoleted the very next month, before it could be published. The story assumed that Mount Everest would be so hard to climb that the first explorer to reach the summit would have to be air-dropped in.
458* Creator/IsaacAsimov cited this (in the foreword to the book) as one of the reasons why he decided to write ''[[FantasticVoyagePlot Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain]]'' (despite the name, it is a remake) -- the novelization to [[Film/FantasticVoyage the movie]] had been as scientifically accurate as he could make it within the confines of the movie's plot, but that had been in 1966, and by 1987 some of the biology and physics were dated (the ''other'' reason was that he could veer farther from the movie's plot and therefore fix ''even more'' problems).
459* In the late 18th century, Italian scientist Luigi Galvani used electricity to make a dead frog twitch. We now know that he had accidentally invented the battery, but some scientists of the time (including Galvani himself, by the way) thought that he had unlocked some sort of mysterious life force. In the following years, the "galvanists" used electricity to perform various macabre experiments on dead animals and human corpses. It should come as no surprise that it was around this time that Creator/MaryShelley wrote ''{{Literature/Frankenstein}}''.
460* A plot point in several ''Literature/IRobot'' stories is that the positronic brain and humanoid robots were developed years before speaking robots. The first "speaking robot" is a room-sized supercomputer which can answer simple trivia questions and do basic math, and is first unveiled to the public when human-shaped robots capable of following complex orders are available for mass consumption. In short, it is easier to make robots think, reason, and perfectly replicate bipedal locomotion, than it is to make them talk. Nowadays, simple text-to-speech programs (and products like Amazon Alexa) are available for anyone, while scientists are still struggling with bipedal robots, let alone anything close to ArtificialIntelligence.
461* ''Literature/LucifersHammer'' has a scene where someone attempts to escape a monster tsunami by surfing the wave. [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome It is epic]]. It is also, unfortunately, impossible. Prior to the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake_and_tsunami 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami]], tsunamis were only known through eyewitness accounts of survivors, who were generally more concerned with getting away than studying the nature of the phenomenon. The proliferation of digital cameras changed that: we now know that the old name of "tidal wave" is actually quite accurate, as a tsunami is akin to a rising tide, only much faster and higher, rather than the monster breaking wave that most people envisioned.
462* John Varley's novel ''Literature/Millennium1983'' was about time travelers who go back to the past to rescue people who are about to die in accidents. If they have to, they take people off of a vehicle before its destruction but it's much easier to just bring the vehicle itself forward in time if it was historically never found after its destruction. Varley uses the Titanic as an example of a ship that the time travelers were able to bring to the future because it was never found. The novel was published in 1983, just two years before the wreckage of the Titanic was discovered.
463* Creator/IsaacAsimov's ''Literature/Opus100'': The author grumbles about the tendency of scientists to get things wrong and updating their understanding. His problem is that it makes his well-researched stories appear to be ArtisticLicense.
464* Another Creator/IsaacAsimov work, ''Literature/PebbleInTheSky'', cites this in the afterword in later editions: "''Pebble In The Sky'' was written in 1949 and first published in 1950. At that time, only four years after Hiroshima, I (and the world, generally, I believe) underestimated the effects on living tissue of low-level radioactivity. I thought it, at the time, to be a legitimate speculation that Earth might be generally radioactive and that human life could nevertheless survive. I no longer think so, but it is impossible to change the book since the radioactivity of Earth is essential to the plot. I can only ask you to continue to suspend your disbelief in that respect and enjoy the book (assuming you do) on your own terms." -- Isaac Asimov
465* A few decades after it was written, in ''Literature/SpeakerForTheDead'' the very bright and well-educated xenologists seem terribly narrow-minded in what might be possible in alien cultures. In some ways, this is actually Science Fiction Marches On, as writers explore more ideas that might be used in the future.
466* Creator/HGWells ''Literature/TheTimeMachine'' shows the sun age into a red giant in less than 30 million years and somehow do so without turning the Earth molten.
467** By 802,701 AD, all diseases, pest animals, predators, insects, and decay-inducing bacteria and fungi have gone extinct. Not only would this be a horrifying ecological catastrophe, but it would be practically impossible given the nature of microbial adaptability.
468** Likewise, the novel seems to suggest that {{global warming}} would only make England a tropical paradise.
469* Fellow H.G. Wells book ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds1898'' has a lot of this going on, being the very first {{alien invasion}} story and all. Like most alien invasion stories, it centers on an attack by creatures that are a massive step above the human military, whom the humans can battle and eke out a few small victories against, but who still outclass humanity by a wide margin. The thing is, his aliens were scaling to be stronger than the military of Victorian England, and as a result, the fearsome tripods in the original novel can look a bit silly now, with their pulley-driven mechanisms and habit of being taken down by old-school artillery cannons, making them look more like {{Insufficiently Advanced Alien}}s. As a result, many adaptations set in later eras tend to give them more advanced technology [[AdaptationalBadass so they can still be a credible threat]].
470* This was the downfall of ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Urantia_Book The Urantia Book]]'', a book whose publishers purported that it had been channeled from alien EnergyBeings. It combined the basic events of Literature/TheGospels with an elaborate history of the universe, in an attempt to bring Literature/TheBible more in line with scientific principles as they were then understood. Problem is, "then" was the 1930s, and the book's science included the now-discredited [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamberlin-Moulton_planetesimal_hypothesis Chamberlin-Moulton planetesimal hypothesis]], Mercury being tidally locked to the Sun (which it isn't), and an endorsement of eugenics (a pseudoscientific discipline that largely fell out of favor after World War II).
471* In ''Literature/TheWindFromNowhere'', the descriptions of the damage from the constantly-rising wind are based on the same speed estimates as the original [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujita_scale Fujita scale of tornado intensity]]. We now know that those estimates were hopelessly optimistic about the wind resistance of ordinary structures -- even the strongest masonry or wood-framed building will lose its roof in a 150-mph wind, and will be flattened at 220 mph, rendering the timeline of the story somewhat shorter.
472* Creator/IsaacAsimov's ''Literature/WordsOfScienceAndTheHistoryBehindThem'': Some words changed over time as part of a [[InvokedTrope deliberate effort]] by scientists to [[MeaningfulName ensure accuracy]] as they investigated deeper and understood chemical makeup better. Cholesterol, for example, started with the name ''cholesterine'', [[{{Portmanteau}} from "chole" meaning gall, "stear" meaning a type of hard fat, and "-ine" meaning an organic compound]]. However, once it was determined that the cholesterine molecules did not contain nitrogen, but did contain a hydroxyl, it was renamed ''cholesterol'' (around 1900). Derivatives were initially named ''sterols'', but since they lacked the hydroxyl group, they were renamed ''steroids''.
473
474[[AC:{{Radio}}]]
475* The radio series ''Tom Corbett: Space Cadet'' went to some trouble to get the science right as it was meant to educate as well as entertain children. This leads to odd moments such as when a rocketship runs out of reaction mass (as opposed to “fuel”) only to ''land'' on Jupiter (which we now know is a gas planet).
476
477[[AC:TabletopGames]]
478* This trope is a major setting element in ''TabletopGame/GeniusTheTransgression''.
479** A Genius's inventions may very well work on outmoded principles, but that's because [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve it's their inner madness fueling the devices, not any sort of consistent physical principle]]. Also, there are realms of existence where outmoded models of the Universe are the predominant mode, such as a Ptolemaic universe where the planets really ''are'' crystal spheres pushed through seas of phlogiston by humongous archangels, or a version of Mars that's a lot like [[Literature/JohnCarterOfMars Barsoom]].
480** The main antagonists, the Baramins of Lemuria, have a tendency to believe in outdated scientific, philosophical and/or political theories (ranging from Luminiferous aether to still being upset that Aristotle’s organon replaced Platonic philosophy!). They don't realize their inventions are powered by their own madness; they just think something went wrong with human development, and work constantly to "fix" it. Which is a problem if you're one of the people that needs fixing...
481** If a popular scientific theory held by a large enough proportion of the world is disproven, the universe will go ahead and create a version of that theory anyway in an event known as a Maniac Storm. This was how the alternative realms of existence mentioned in the first bullet point above came into being. It's also how a number of antagonistic factions were founded; the Viking lander reaching Mars in 1971 and proving there was no intelligent alien life on the planet was followed seconds later by a Martian invasion, and the first Lemurians came about when it was proven that there was absolutely wasn't a mystical island full of serpent-people with advanced technology who wanted to destroy humanity. Notably, while the "disproven" part is key to the effect, it ''can'' work at smaller, but cumulative scales, too, as demonstrated by the fact Santa Claus needs to be reigned in every year before he dispenses gifts that don't play well with mortals.
482
483[[AC:Other]]
484* "Literature/WhatMayHappenInTheNextHundredYears": A widely-publicized set of predictions for the 20th century as seen from the year 1900 included the hope that all these annoying flies and mosquitoes, along with their breeding grounds in the swamps, marshes, and other wetlands, would finally be completely eradicated. Now scientists are fighting tooth and nail to preserve these areas in order to combat the loss of biodiversity and the protection these areas provide against flooding and coastal erosion. Meanwhile, wetlands and swamps are still being drained, paved over and polluted with alarming speed; and mosquitoes are killed en masse to this day. The loss of mosquitoes would kill off many animals that eat them and without wetlands serious pollution problems would occur to a lot of water supplies.
485* Various megaprojects:
486** USSR planned the change of the courses of the Russia's large rivers (Ob, Yenisei, Lena) which flow to the Arctic to flow to the Southern Russia. This would have caused an eco-catastrophe.
487*** Which is a Science Marches On in itself, the science being history. Back in the time the project was mired in the huge political debate of which barely a couple of percents of its participants understood what it was about. Nowadays, however, the picture has became much more clear, and nowhere in the project the rerouting of the rivers were mentioned -- it was all the invention of journalists seeking the flashy titles. Instead, barely a percent of the river flow was to be turned down south, incidentally ''saving the very Aral sea'' mentioned below: the great Siberian rivers dwarf the Central Asian ones, and a small percentage of their flow equals both the Amu-Darya and Syr-Darya.
488** Drying up the Aral Sea was accepted as inevitable by the Soviet planners.
489*** [[GoneHorriblyRight It went as proceeded]] but produced some unexpected results. This overlaps with TechnologyMarchesOn; had the same irrigation projects used modern (or even high-quality) concrete and canals, the sea would still exist today. This means there is some hope for it to return in the future.
490*** Although Kazakhstan is doing a decent job on their side,[[note]]Kazakhstan has worked feverishly in the 21st century to restore the North Aral Sea, which has recovered quite nicely according to The Other Wiki, restoring up to three-quarters of the distance it once receded from its port city of Aralsk.[[/note]] the other former Soviet republics around Aral (especially Uzbekistan) just don't seem to care.
491*** Uzbekistan has nothing to export except cotton, oil and gas, all of which all but require the death of Aral -- cotton requires water for irrigation (thus ensuring no inflow to the sea), and the former seabed just happen to contain some lucrative fuel deposits.
492* Eugenics. 100 years ago, it was accepted as scientific truth that some races/phenotypes were inherently inferior/superior. Although there is no technical reason the human gene pool couldn't be altered through selective breeding just like is done all the time with domestic plants and animals, the concept of "race" itself is now considered biologically meaningless.[[note]]"Race" does exist as a collection of physical and genetic characteristics being predominant among humans originating from specific areas, e.g. hair color, thickness, and curl, eye shapes, nose shapes, skin color, prevalence of sickle cell anemia in certain populations, etc. But it's generally accepted that these have absolutely no effect on humans beyond this superficial level, while drawing specific lines between people as "races" is ultimately arbitrary.[[/note]]
493** Eugenics is the concept of trying to encourage breeding to develop desirable traits, the concept of race was never a mandatory or intrinsic aspect of eugenics. What was found is that while the ''concept'' of eugenics is still theoretically possible, in practice it almost always gets tied to race or some other arbitrary concept of what constitutes a 'desirable' trait, and often gets implemented in horrible ways. The science has not undergone any significant changes, though. In short, this is more of a case of society changing, specifically society not trusting anyone to define what constitutes a positive trait to strive for, or to implement it in a way that doesn't become a human rights disaster.
494** To the extent that it was still useful or viable, eugenics died its final death with the advent of [[GeneticEngineeringIsTheNewNuke genetic engineering]], at least in theory. [[PragmaticVillainy Why would anyone go to the trouble]] of hooking up the "right" couples in hopes that their kids would be better, when gene therapy could improve the ''current'' generation, or at least ensure that their kids would be better off no matter who the parents were?
495** Many of the "traits" that supporters of eugenics wanted to eradicate alongside genetic disorders were things like alcoholism, homosexuality, poverty, prostitution, restlessness, criminality, and antisocial behavior. The concept predates the discovery of DNA by over half a century, so its supporters naturally assumed that all traits in a person were controlled by their genes, none of which the listed traits are, at least not in a simple enough way that preventing alcoholics and criminals from breeding would have them disappear from the gene pool.
496* Any work that uses psychology that [[AllPsychologyIsFreudian references Sigmund Freud]]. Though influential on early psychology and still well known in media, Freud's theories have long since been discredited by serious psychological research. Jungian psychology has similarly suffered the march of time, albeit not to the same extent.
497* In the mid-20th century, it was believed that tornadoes destroyed buildings by exploding them due to differences in air pressure. Survival instructions in the '50s and '60s advised people in the path of a tornado to open windows to equalize air pressure. It was later discovered that it was the winds themselves that damaged buildings and that opening windows wasted valuable time better spent seeking shelter.
498* The Tomb of the Unknowns, the United States' monument to service members killed in action whose remains were never found or identified. Whereas most countries with similar monuments inter a single soldier, usually from World War 1, to represent all their Unknowns, the American monument has Unknowns from both World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam. But by the 90's, advances in DNA testing made it theoretically possible to identify all unknown remains from the Vietnam War, and sure enough, the Vietnam Unknown was revealed to be Air Force pilot Michael Blassie. Blassie's remains were reinterred in his hometown of St. Louis, and the tomb previously representing the Vietnam Unknown was replaced with a plaque that reads, "Honoring and Keeping Faith with America's Missing Servicemen".
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