CriticalResearchFailure; simply a more extreme DidNotDoTheResearch?

I have no idea. I think it should be cut, to be honest.

actually, Did Not Do The Research is an index. There are no "examples" on the trope page, persay

Critical Research Failure is supposed to be general knowledge of a subject, or at least reading the introduction of the wikipedia page level of research.

For example, claiming TV Tropes only covers television is Did Not Do The Research. Claiming tvtropes.org is actually a newspaper is Critical Research Failure.

If a factual inaccuracy takes place, it's Did Not Do The Research. If something that should be obvious from a cursory glance was gotten wrong, it's Critical Research Failure. For example, if someone said cows only had one stomach, that would be Did Not Do The Research, since that inaccuracy wouldn't necessarily be obvious right away. If someone claimed that cows were reptiles, however, that would be a Critical Research Failure, since one glance at a cow would tell you that this isn't true.

We could restrict it to In-Universe. If somebody says something and some other guy corrects him, without giving a reason to justify such knowledge, it would count.

That still does not specify as to just how cursory it has to be at minimum.

I guess we could let mild examples slide, but that would, as I pointed out in Wiki Talk, diminish mentions of the trope through overuse.

edited 5th Sep '11 1:04:26 PM by HiddenFacedMatt

Well, if you want a concrete definition; if you get a fact wrong which would be obvious by percieving something with no information other than your five senses (or with whatever sense the fact is concerned with), that is a Critical Research Failure. Did Not Do The Research is just more general factual inaccuracies; if you get something wrong, but it would take some amount of fact-finding (could be the absolute minimum), it would be that trope.

edited 5th Sep '11 1:58:48 PM by tropetown

Granted, there's a couple examples in Critical Research Failure that are less what the page is actually about (like what tropetown says) and are just general nitpicking or aren't "Critical Research Failures"

edited 5th Sep '11 7:59:40 PM by DocStrange

That's people taking shots at works they don't like.

I think both tropes are poorly defined, because knowledge of various ideas is totally subjective. Someone might think calling the Scooby Doo Cartoons a classic 70s show Did Not Do Research, while others will take such offense to their obvious idiocy that it suddenly becomes Critical Research Failure.

I don't meddle with these tropes. It can be someone else's mess. But my rule of thumb is that, Did Not Do Research is for minor issues that most people would overlook themselves and correcting the mistake wouldn't totally break the plot, where Critical Research Failure is when the knowledge is fairly well known, and trying to correct the error would lead to a totally different structure of the plot because that "error" was such a vital point.

There is a clear difference, but it's one that's easy to ignore: Critical Research Failure is a purely in-universe occurance — it's when "the resident Mr. Exposition, whose Techno Babble has been extremely convincing (and perhaps even accurate) thus far, suddenly makes some comment that is so egregiously off-the-scale of inaccuracy that anyone with a cursory knowledge of the subject realizes the writers made the whole thing up.".

It's

• a glaring Did Not Do the Research
• that is committed within the work
• by a character who is ostensibly an expert in the subject.

edited 8th Sep '11 7:30:50 AM by Madrugada

Maybe not expert but someone who has good reason to know it. The image is of someone who was supposed to have done research, but it's not quite "expert" level.

So it is In-Universe only, then?

If so, we may have a problem.

It's supposed to be, yes.

If so, the description could stand to make that clearer. Perhaps it could start by saying "an in-universe variety of Did Not Do The Research" or something like that?