Science Is Wrong

For scientists this can be the hardest thing about dreams.

"Do not believe what the scientists tell you. The natural history we know is a lie, a falsehood sold to us by wicked old men who would make the world a dull gray prison and protect us from the dangers inherent to freedom. They would have you believe our planet to be a lonely starship, hurtling through the void of space, barren of magic and in need of a stern hand upon the rudder."

— Exalted 1st edition rulebook

The extreme end and/or reason for Science Is Bad. May overlap by also presenting scientists as bad and wrong. Science is badong.

In this trope, science is simply wrong: it lacks objectivity and does not describe anything "real". There are a number of general forms in which the error of science is considered:

• As culturally constructed rather than objective, and thereby does not describe any "facts."
• As a system of beliefs and processes crafted by Dead White European Men (DWEM) and thus irrelevant and destructive to groups X, Y, Z...
• As simply ineffectual in providing an adequate understanding of the world. Science is missing important information.
• Much more rarely, the natural laws (or at least some of them) are such that attempts to analyze them scientifically are doomed to failure. Like quantum mechanics without probability models.

This is not the same kind of wrong as that in the Scale of Scientific Sins: there it's ethically wrong.

Strongly associated with the Romanticist side of Romanticism Versus Enlightenment, along with Science Is Bad. See also Mother Nature, Father Science, Aesoptinum, Science Marches On and What We Now Know to Be True. A common feature of The Masquerade. When overlapping with Science Is Bad, can be associated with Dumb Is Good. If Science Is Useless, this may be because it's wrong. May be presented through a Straw Vulcan.

This can be hard to reconcile with violations of Magic A Is Magic A. There really shouldn't be any reason a system of observation can't find a pattern with magic unless that magic is specifically changing its behavior upon being examined. Even when this is the case; it often seems the only time magic changes its rules is to invoke this trope.

This can also contradict one of the most prevalent sub-tropes of Science Is Bad, namely, New Technology Is Evil. After all, evil technology presumably works, which means that at least that science wasn't (empirically) wrong. One possible way to have both tropes is Aesoptinium; because science is wrong, the technology became evil in a way the scientists didn't intend, though we can still say Science Is Bad because the scientists should have known better than to make something with Potential Applications.

Often any Agent Scully questioning the magic isn't really using science but rather a belief in machines. A good scientist wouldn't only complain that something isn't possible upon discovering something that contradicts previous knowledge. They'd explore the implications, test why the result is happening, see if it can be replicated, and list the various causes and effects that can be observed related to the event — although, admittedly, many would be quick to dismiss any claims of the supernatural out of hand, because the supernatural is kind of by definition stuff that shouldn't work under the laws of nature. TL;DR: If Science is Wrong is proven, it becomes a scientific worldview.

Obviously, good scientists are rare where this trope is invoked.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• Subtly played with in The Books of Magic, wherein it is explained that the magical explanation for a supernatural event is always correct... but so is the scientific explanation, depending on who is observing the supernatural. People who truly do not believe in magic will never, ever encounter it in the DC Universe because of this effect.
• This strip◊ by Quino illustrates God's opinion on the Laws of Physics.
• Chick Tracts:
  • The tracts frequently carry this message, along with Science Is Bad - belief in evolution makes people not just misguided, but evil!
  • Also, evolution is a religion.
  • Oh, and it doesn't stop at evolution either. Why do planets keep orbiting the sun? What, Gravity? You heathen! It's obviously because Jesus is so awesome.

Eastern Animation

• 38 Parrots has a short where the protagonists want to cancel the law of gravity... because it's immoral to hit you on the head with a coconut.

Fan Fiction

• This comes up in the Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality outtake dealing with The Matrix, at the bottom of this page.
  Morpheus: The machines tell elegant lies.
  (Pause.)
  Neo (in a small voice): Could I please have a real physics textbook?
  Morpheus: There is no such thing, Neo. The universe doesn't run on math.
• In Shinji and Warhammer40k Ritsuko becomes increasingly aggravated with the Evangelion pilots, Shinji especially, due to their wanton disregard for the laws of physics. She eventually decides to share the misery, publishing scientific papers on the latest proof-by-Evangelion that Science Is Wrong. Reading the hate-mail from other scientists keeps her going.

Films — Live-Action

• In The Exorcist, all medical treatments of Regan fail, and the doctors treating her are at a loss to explain her demonic possession with science, despite their seeming confidence.
• At the beginning of M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, the lead says that we might never understand why bees seem to be dying off because anything science says is "just theory."

Literature

• The Discovery Of Heaven has, as its central plot, science being a trick by the Devil to lead man away from God by seeking truth elsewhere. As a result, mankind has failed and the angels are trying to get the Commandments back.
• Averted in the Incarnations of Immortality series. The series is set in a world in which both magic and science are useful. For example, magic carpet manufacturers compete with car manufacturers. Both have unique strengths and weaknesses.
• H.F., the narrator of Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year, eventually concludes that all the proposed scientific explanations for plague are incorrect, including the microbial theory which we understand today as true
• In Milton's Paradise Lost, Raphael tells Adam that God would laugh at astronomers who try to understand the motions of His heavens, implying that the universe was too enormous for a mortal mind to fathom.
• The Dresden Files:
  • Early in the first book has Harry mentioning that Science as "the great religion of the 20th Century" has been treated as the source of all the answers and those answers don't include monsters or magic, which means people are left without a clue when they encounter the supernatural. One character's confrontation with this — Butters —is something of a subplot in Dead Beat.
  • That said the series actually treats science with a fair amount of respect. Harry is often shown using (abusing really) various laws of physics, usually mass and/or momentum, to assist his spells in order to enhance their effects or impact. And there was that thing with the dinosaur. Late in the series Butters combines his scientific mind and training with Bob's exhaustive knowledge and is able to develop several new and powerful applications of magic.
  • On balance while science is wrong this stems from important facts being missing from its models due to society having decided the supernatural does not exist, not that any particular portion of its views are individually wrong.
• Aristophanes and Jonathan Swift, both of whom portray scientists as busybodies with way too much time on their hands, coming up with complex solutions to simple problems or silly answers to things that don't need answering. Aristophanes' Socrates in The Clouds explains that thunder is not caused by Zeus, but (as science has proven) clouds farting. Swift's Laputans attempt to replace language with a system of tapping sticks and visual signs, but "the masses rebelled, demanding to speak in the manner of their ancestors; such irrevocable enemies of science are the common people."
• Good Omens fits this pretty nicely (albeit in parody), since within the book the universe really is about 6000 years old (having been created in 4004 BC), The Bible is pretty literally correct, etc. Scientists aren't exactly portrayed as bad, just kind of pointless. ("The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur skeletons was a joke the palaeontologists haven't seen yet.") Let's not forget that by the end it's been proven that even the immortal creatures who have existed more or less since the dawn of time (the angels and demons) don't really have any idea what's going on either; they're just better at pretending they do. As the book puts it,
  "God does not play dice with the universe. He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players ^note i.e., everybody, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time."
• In American Gods one character comments on the pity he feels for confused scientists when they find a skull or skeleton which doesn't quite fit the established patterns in the area. This is because the scientists are completely ignorant of the real reasons these objects are there: Egyptians landed in America thousands of years ago. He insinuates that they will always be incorrect because their scientific reasoning will not allow them to reach this conclusion.
• Aversion (and possibly deconstruction): Distress by Greg Egan has characters attempting all three originally mentioned attacks on science, and corresponding defenses of science. His repudiation of the notion of science "only being valid for white men in Europe" is given in a speech by a black South African physicist, who points out that what she and all her colleagues have discovered applies equally to every cubic Planck in the observable universe and that logic doesn't care what gonads you have.
  • Of course, anybody who actually believes that science is only valid for white men would interpret that response as evidence of the West's domination of other cultures, so it wouldn't actually convince anybody who isn't already sympathetic to his views.
• Scott Adams loves this trope in his written work. See his statements on the paranormal and evolution.
• In Black Easter, a black magician sends a demon to drive a physicist mad by revealing to him that science is ultimately a meaningless concept.
• Artemis Fowl:
  • Surprisingly averted. Our current understanding of scientific concepts are wrong, yes, but that's only because we're basing it on our observations, and the Fairies go out of their way to keep us from noticing magic. There's nothing wrong with the scientific method in general.
  • And Artemis mentions that the laws of physics make significantly more sense once you incorporate magic in as one of the fundamental forces, but being the boy genius he is doesn't go into details.
  • Lots of the magic tends to have pseudo-scientific justifications as well. It's a weird example.
• In the Left Behind books, science isn't in itself wrong, but it can be (mis)used by the Devil to make people believe that it isn't God behind any of the judgments that were being poured out on mankind during the Tribulation. In the book Apollyon, when Chaim Rosenzweig is asked to appear on TV to give his opinion about the sun giving only one-third of its sunlight due to one of God's Trumpet Judgments (though he isn't convinced that it is the hand of God at work), he is given a script by the Global Community that has him parrot the party line about some scientific cosmic disturbance causing the phenomenon that even Chaim as a botanist can see through. To emphasize the Propaganda Machine misuse of science, one of the speakers in the so-called live roundtable "discussion" about the said phenomenon isn't even a scientist, but rather an entertainment celebrity. If anything in this series, science ultimately proves to be useless, particularly against the Bowl Judgments when medical science couldn't figure out how to deal with the outbreak of sores upon those who took the Mark of the Beast and worshiped his image.
• One Rogue Angel has this as belief of a group of extreme Nature Lovers who feel even the most basic advances like farming are evil and wish to return humanity to its hunter-gatherer roots.
• Wizardology of the Ology Series has Merlin himself make this claim, saying that science has no objectivity or basis in fact—and even if it did follow actual laws of the world, the information it has is basically useless. Of course, living in the medieval era, you can't really expect much from the sciences of alchemy and astrology.
• Discussed but ultimately (probably) averted in There Will Be Time by Poul Anderson. The protagonist has the power to travel through time, both backwards and forwards, and one of the first things he did once the novelty wore off was try to work out exactly how that was possible. According to everything the world's scientists thought they knew up until civilisation destroyed itself, it wasn't; apparently there are some pretty big loopholes in the Law of Conservation of Energy that we don't fully understand, but which natural time-travellers can exploit somehow or other.
• The Three-Body Problem: The world's foremost physicists are being Driven to Suicide because of evidence that there are no unified laws of physics and that, at a subatomic scale, everything degenerates into random chance. Ultimately Subverted when it's revealed that hostile Sufficiently Advanced Aliens are interfering with the particle-accelerator experiments to prevent humanity from reaching their level of technological advancement.
• Unsong: Everything we know about the universe is proven wrong when the Apollo 8 mission, en route to the Moon, instead crashes into the divine crystal sphere that encases the Earth and cracks it. This flaw destroys the logic of the world and causes the original order of God's creation to reassert itself: Hell becomes (and always was) real, angels float among the clouds, and speaking the names of God alters reality. Partway through the book, a paragraph is spent describing, in ironic tones, how the concept of "non-overlapping magisteria" ended up conceived in reverse:
  ...that while religion might have access to certain factual truths, like that angels existed or that the souls of the damned spent eternity writhing in a land of fire thousands of miles beneath the Earth, it was powerless to discuss human values and age-old questions like “what is the Good?” or “what is the purpose of my existence?” [...] When a scientist says “space is infinite and full of stars”, she does not literally mean that the crystal sphere surrounding the Earth doesn’t exist. She is metaphorically referring to the infinitude of the human spirit, the limitless possibilities it offers, and the brightness and enlightenment waiting to be discovered. Or when a scientist says “humankind evolved from apes”, she is not literally doubting the word of the archangel Uriel that humankind was created ex nihilo on October 13, 3761 BC and evolution added only as part of a later retconning – she is saying that humankind has an animal nature that it has barely transcended and to which it is always at risk of returning.

Live-Action TV

• Arrested Development has this wonderful scene
  Gob: So, a young neighborhood tough by the name of Steve Holt's gonna be here any minute...
  Michael: Your son.
  Gob: According to him...
  Michael: And a DNA test.
  Gob: I heard the jury's still out on science.
• Krzysztof Kieślowski's Decalogue I: professor father and genius son think everything can be understood in mathematics and solved through their computer. The computer is able to calculate what the mother is doing, but comes up blank when the son asks what she is dreaming of (a religious aunt is able to provide the answer: she is dreaming of her son of course). The son goes skating on a frozen lake, because the computer says the ice will hold three times his weight. The ice breaks and the son is frozen to death.
• QI: Joked about when David Mitchell goes on a rant upon being informed that the Principia Mathematica, published in 1910, takes around 500 pages to prove that "1 + 1 = 2".
  Mitchell: That's a bit late for the 20th century, I say. You have a lot riding on 1 + 1 = 2. Quite a lot of building going on, an international economy... what happens if you find out 1 + 1 doesn't equal 2? What do we do? Just burn everything! God knows anything can fall on your head. Money? You might as well eat it. Just forget civilisation.
• Mocked in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia when Mac makes an argument for creationism by saying that "science is a liar sometimes." He notes that famous scientists have had their theories disproven by later scientists, so therefore theories like evolution can't be trusted as true. In summation, he states that Dennis and Dee are simply taking it on faith that current scientists are correct, which is no more valid than Mac's faith in the Bible. Flummoxed, Dennis states that he knows Mac is wrong, but he doesn't know enough about the topic to say why.

Stand-Up Comedy

• Deconstructed by Dara Ó Briain in one of his live shows, where he discusses homeopathy and his irritation with it. He points out that the real-life accusation leveled at science that "it doesn't know everything" is inherently flawed because the whole point of science is that scientists are fully aware that they don't know everything, and if they did "it'd stop" — there would be no point in continuing. Enjoy! Don't drink while he's talking.
• Tim Minchin really hates this trope and will often go on rants about homeopathy but perhaps the best example of this would be his beat poem Storm.

Tabletop Games

• New World of Darkness:
  • In the sourcebook Second Sight, science is presented not only as being wrong about Psychic Powers, but actively damaging to their activation - scientific scrutiny makes them harder to use. Which is, of course, why no use of psychic ability ever passed the Randi Challenge (aside from the fact that everyone who entered was a charlatan; actual psychics were too busy conning casinos or playing the stock market). To be even more specific, it's not science itself but skepticism which weakens psychic powers, it just unhappily coincides that scientists are the best equipped and inclined to be skeptical. As presented, psychic powers are strengthened in the presence of true believers, but a group of skeptics (or just one who has bought the Merit "Doubting Thomas") will alter probability to the point where the likelihood of success becomes equal to the likelihood of achieving a Critical Failure. This is an explanation many self-described psychics have used for why they can't do things while skeptics are watching too. The skeptics feel this is more likely just an excuse however.
  • In Hunter: The Vigil, there ARE scientific approaches to fighting the supernatural that are highly effective. Task Force VALKYRIE and The Cheiron Group both rely on scientific understanding of the supernatural in order to produce high-tech weaponry or magical surgery. The Null Mysteriis have even invented Fantastic Science.
  • The compact Null Mysteriis consists of rationalists who apply the scientific method to supernatural phenomena. A small subgroup of Null Mysteriis is devoted to finding answers to supernatural phenomena that fit already established scientific law; they're presented as being horribly misguided and are often given disproportionate screen time. Other members of Null Mysteriis are really on-the-nose on some topics, comparatively speaking (such as slashers): in Witch Finders a unified theory of magic is presented as something of a holy grail, while in Spirit Slayers they're excited to have proven that spirits and werewolves violate conventional physics.
  • Mage: The Awakening actually subverts it on some level; while science may be far from the whole Supernal truth, honest discovery and research into the laws of the Fallen World provides a good chance for the researcher to Awaken as a mage. The Seers of the Throne hate this, and thus try to make all institutions they infiltrate (not just science, but politics, religion, etc.) as stifling and dogmatic as possible to ensure none of the "wrong" people Awaken.
  • More generally, where Mage: The Ascension told us that science was a vicious lie by the man to keep the mages down, Mage: The Awakening tells us that science is a true but incomplete way of describing the universe, and that there are uncountable wonders it simply hasn't the tools to find yet— basically what a real-life scientist will tell you. For bonus points, as mundane humans learn the secrets of the world, they can actually pass out of the purview of mages — in the middle ages a master of forces could summon up atomic fire to eradicate cities, but since 1945 it's gone from being unwise but possible to being something only the archmages can do, if even they can do it. So science actually has a better record of breaking Seer power than the traditions themselves.
• In Genius: The Transgression, Wonders are inherently non-repeatable phenomena, which causes a problem for anyone trying to scientifically test then verify with additional tests. This might be because mad science is inherently unexplainable but it could just as easily be because Mad Scientists are explicitly not any good at proper science. On the other hand, sane scientists are assumed to be right but simply haven't come across mad science. However, it's just as explicitly mentioned that Wonders must at least be nominally possible and follow basic logic: for example a Cool Car still needs proper wheels and a proper engine, and they will work on principles similar to normal engines and wheels but they will be much more effective than they "should" be. On the other hand, stuff like telekinesis rays do not work on any real life principles. The proportion of real science to mad science also gets smaller as the Genius gains greater Inspiration, eventually culminating in wonders that will only appear scientific anymore at first glance and run mostly on Mania.
• An Old World of Darkness example: Mage: The Ascension (usually) posits that all Science is Wrong — except when enough people believe that it's not. The Technocracy convinced humanity that science is right during the Enlightenment, though, so mundane reality works on observable principle as long as people believe it does. The whole point of the game is that Awakening allows the True Mage(tm) to flip mundane reality and the collected observers the bird and do things through "discredited" systems of magic/faith/pseudo-science. The mere presence of mundanes who believe in conventional science also tends to make True Magic go awry in non-repeatable and/or fatal ways, making it basically impossible to objectively observe magic.
• Ironically, while Exalted exemplifies the trope in the page quote (which appears on the back cover of both the first and second edition core rulebooks), the setting itself generally subverts it through heavy use of Magitek and Functional Magic. It's not that the setting is unscientific, it's just that it takes place in a world where the Rule of Cool is encoded into the laws of physics. Most of the setting's most powerful artificers, spellcasters, and thaumaturges are described as having approached their trades with a decidedly scientific mindset; powerful artificers are even called 'Sorcerer-Engineers'.
• Similarly, the Planescape setting. Science can't really cope with stuff like a spire of infinite length with a city at the top. Since the entire setting runs on Clap Your Hands If You Believe and Your Mind Makes It Real, well... The Guvners are trying to find the laws of the Planes, only there is an opposite faction that believes there aren't any. This complicates matters.
• In Unknown Armies, science and magic and reality have a very complicated relationship. For the most part, science is completely accurate until it butts up against magic, which is run by Your Mind Makes It Real — magic users are literally so obsessed with their worldview that they impose themselves upon reality. It's also implied that science is only accurate because of Clap Your Hands If You Believe. That is to say, as civilizations rose and people began thinking in more orderly terms, the world settled down into something that can be defined by science, and magic significantly weakened. Modern scientific positivism was basically the death knell for "easy" magic, meaning you now have to be quite insane to actually pull off magic of any real power anymore.
• Science was wrong in CthulhuTech; emphasis on the past tense, there. The discovery of arcanotechnology and the associated theory merely expanded what science knew, to include things like sorcery and the thermodynamics-breaking D-Engine. Of course, these new developments tend to drive researchers crazy, but that's a problem with the human mind, not science.
• The premise behind the occult RPG Nephilim is "History is a lie. Science is a delusion"; pretty much everything you learned in school is a deliberate falsehood by a race of immortal supernatural beings to keep humans as passive prey. Scientists either intentionally falsify data, or are members of the Grand Conspiracy.
• 7th Sea averts this: Until recently, the church was the biggest sponsor of scientific studies, believing that by understanding their deity's creation, they'd become closer to it. Then, the head of the church died and with no successor in sight, the inquisition ran amok, declaring the end of the world nigh and pressuring universities to close so that man could focus on preparing their souls for the next world instead of wasting time trying to understand the present one...
• Nobilis justifies and subverts this-the world literally hides it's nature from Muggles, so science is wrong by virtue of the fact that it is based on a model where some critical information is always unknown-the Spirit World, for instance. The scientific method however, is a perfectly valid form of understanding reality, and there's nothing that prevents a non-Muggle Science Hero from being right once he's been clued in to how the universe really works. On the other hand, if the Excrucians were to destroy the domain called "scientific method", it would, in fact, stop working. Creation would probably suffer pretty badly afterwards...
• In Shadowrun, this is both played straight and subverted. Science can be used to explain magic, sure. Scientists and Hermetic mages use complex formulae and theories as to how magic works the way it does. They're right, but the shaman who thinks magic comes from the Loa is just as right, as is the adept who believes magic works just because he wants it to. The nature of magic is such that everyone is right, and no one is sure how this is even possible. There is True Magic, but that is magic super powered because it's how it's supposed to be used, explaining nothing about how it works.
• Zig-Zagged in Warhammer 40,000: On the one hand, the Imperium's scientific and mechanical equipment does work thanks to the tireless devotion of the Adeptus Mechanicus (aka the Machine Cult). On the other hand, scientific knowledge only survived by being turned into a series of rigid religious rituals and the belief that all knowledge was once held in the digital blueprints called Standard Template Constructs (how important are they to the Mechanicus? A pair of IG scouts once found an STC for a slightly improved combat knife and handed it over, receiving a planet in thanks. Each.), so any experimentation that doesn't involve said STCs is deemed heretical (and so the Dark Mechanicus are the only one turning out new designs, usually involving daemon-possessed machines). Also, they very likely worship an Eldritch Abomination that hates humanity.

Theatre

• Beetlejuice depicts Delia as clinging to pseudoscience, with a line that aptly spells out this trope in the song "No Reason".
  Delia: Science makes no sense, who needs evidence?
  Go with your feels!

Video Games

• Captain Bible in Dome of Darkness strongly implies this. It's a Christian game, and it involves finding bible quotes to combat evil Hollywood Atheist robots. But some of the lessons it teaches are rather anti-science or at least contrary to mainstream scientific opinion... Remember kids, rainbows are divine and not simply light reflecting off of water particles, and evolution is wrong and incompatible with Christianity!
• Princess Maker 2 (Refine) considers science to be an incomplete view of things, if not completely wrong. Aside from the fact that this game has deities, an actual God of War to meet in the Northern Mountains, who guards the literal stairway to heaven itself, and Lucifon had attacked the humans based on God's orders just a few years ago, the higher levels of the Science class decreases Faith. And that is a parameter required for many high-scoring endings, if not for random events that are really beneficial to the player.

Webcomics

• One xkcd "Tesla Coil": The world doesn't actually make sense. Science doesn't work. No one told you because you're cute when you get into something. Still, neat toy. Subverted in the Alt Text though. "For scientists, this can be the hardest thing about dreams." The comic in general averts this trope. "Science: It works, bitches."
• Gunnerkrigg Court:
  • Gillitie Wood holds to Ethereal Tenet, which seems to boil down to belief that magic and the universe can't (and shouldn't) be explained.
    Tom Siddell: Etherial Tenet can be summarised as "It just does, okay?"
  • The court itself is quite keen on "ethereal science" whether they can come up with a working theory of magic is yet to be seen.
  • However, there are a few examples of Functional Magic being used by secularists. Combined with a supercomputer, no less.
  • Zimmy's perspective is that the Court and etheric beings are wrong. According to her, the idea of magic is nonsense, and science only broadens your perspective into an increasingly vast universe of hidden processes, driving people out of their minds when they unceasingly come up with endless questions.

Web Original

• The SCP Foundation features SCP-033 ("The Missing Number"), an equation which adds up to an integer which non-paranormal mathematics has somehow missed. Since we missed it, none of our mathematical formulas work with it. In fact, it causes anything related to mathematics to completely break down: Calculators, machine-printed paper, and the entire internet if it ever got online.
• Played for laughs in lonelygirl15, in which Bree's catchphrase is "Proving science wrong!" She creates a series of videos which purport to disprove scientific theories (but don't).
• The episodic erotic web-novel Tales of MU has this as part of its premise. It essentially inverts the usual order of things, where the students are in college to study magic but a few of the loners and outsiders dabble in "science" and are made fun of for actually believing the rubbish. The protagonist delivers a long Author Filibuster on this topic... the very same protagonist who attends a college devoted to the study of magic, and expounds at great length in an earlier chapter on her interest in the Magitek that their civilization runs on. Erin is many things, but "consistent" is not one of them.
• This trope is zigzagged all over the place in Funny Business. The main character, Jeanette, despite being completely human, is a nigh-omnipotent Reality Warper for whom the laws of physics have no meaning. However, she has nothing to do with the fact that atoms do not exist in-universe. That's because the characters live in a simulation of the real world, which is also the source of Jeanette's powers. There is nothing wrong with science regarding the real world. In fact, Jeanette can only defy science because science is valid.

Western Animation

• This is the basis of The Simpsons episode "Lisa the Skeptic." When Lisa tries to prove that the angel skeleton isn't real using scientific means, much of the Springfieldian community decides to dismiss science altogether, epitomized by Moe's line of, "What has science ever done for us?" It turns out Lisa was right. The angel skeleton was planted in the ground as a viral marketing ploy. The scientist's tests had been "inconclusive" because he was too lazy or cheap to run them.

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