Basic Trope: Science is dangerous/Always Chaotic Evil.
- Straight: Megacorp has been experimenting with technology Powered by a Forsaken Child.
- Exaggerated:
- Every scientifically-minded individual enjoys shooting people and stabbing kittens For the Evulz.
- The world goes from an Utopia to a Crapsack World the moment scientific method is invented. All the wars, diseases and natural disasters are caused by scientists working in the name of evil.
- Downplayed: Most scientists tend to be Morally Ambiguous Doctorates, or just really rude.
- Science is portrayed as fundamentally incapable of being good or evil, just amoral, but the morally relevant parts are due only to the power which may be used for good or evil. ("Not much to say morally about cataloging rocks and their formation.")
- Justified:
- Science is viewed as heretical in-setting, and is pursued in defiance of the local Crystal Dragon Jesus.
- The story focuses on the times when terrible things are done in the name of science.
- Inverted:
- Science Hero
- Science Is Good
- Knight Templar Luddites go about killing people, often for no go reason, and the only people who stand against them are scientists.
- Subverted: As straight, but their main competitor, Trope Co., has been experimenting ethically for decades...
- Double Subverted: ...As far as the public knows.
- Parodied:
- Satan lobbies strongly for increased science education.
- The scientist are all required to dress in an Obviously Evil way and must swear their souls to the devil upon graduating from an university.
- Zig Zagged: TropeCo invents a ray that fires pure joy...which it then uses to brainwash the world...and then Megacorp scientists disable the ray...by nuking the city it's contained in. But the nuke turned everything into ice cream, and people still died from it. And irradiated ice cream can't be safe to eat...
- Averted:
- Scientists never appear.
- Scientists are pretty evenly spread across the good/evil axis.
- Enforced: The producer's girlfriend was taken by a hot scientist guy, so he made the writers change the story into an anti-science Producer Tract.
- Lampshaded: "Oh, come on!! Could we have at least one non-Mad Scientist? Huh?"
- Invoked: Dr. McLennan's jealous colleague, Dr. Barton, gives both of them a drug that makes them stupid.
- Exploited:
- Emperor Evulz turns the crowd against the local Science Hero, making the think his science is evil. He then sits back and watches them tear him limb from limb.
- Emperor Evulz keeps his citizens from using technology against him by convincing his subjects that any science more advanced than the wheel is evil.
- Implied: Men in lab coats and their apparatuses are often seen in menacing sillohoutes.
- Defied: Behold! THE ENLIGHTENED CARL SAGAN-MAN!! Educating the world in the wonders of SCIENCE!!!
- Bob mercilessly points out how nonsensical and incoherent the whole concept is given it conflates the process of discovery, the knowledge, its applications, and changes made using it as one entity. He snarks that wouldn't mean the concept of eating is also evil because it includes baby eating by definition.
- Discussed: "These newcomers know how to use chemicals. Are they trustworthy?"
- Conversed: "Oh, here we go. The bad guy's a scientist. Did the writers never watch Mythbusters? 'Cuz those guys are friggin' awesome."
- Deconstructed:
- Anti-science fanatics destroy the scientific community, leading to a dark age where medicine and technology come to a halt.
- Scientific research is repressed because of its potential for misuse - only for those in power to control society by abusing something else, such as religion or ideology.
- Fears that advanced weaponry, bioengineered creatures, pollution etc could bring about The End of the World as We Know It lead to the rejection of modern science in favour of Medieval Stasis. Which means that when an asteroid heads towards Earth, nobody has the technology to do anything about it.
- Reconstructed: ...But magic is just as good.
- Played For Laughs: Mad Scientist as Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain.
- Played For Drama: Dr. McLennan has to go on the run when the people get the idea to Burn All the Scientists, and eventually gets caught and killed because he's an Absent-Minded Professor.
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