Monday 17 September 2007

Science-fictional

Ok, I have a confession to make. I'm the kind of person you really don't want to be sitting next to when watching sci-fi. I mean, I'm the annoying girl who sits there getting stressed because that's just not how science/evolution/the human body works. I do it a lot. The latest thing is Heroes. They ran a catch up session of the first 9 eppisodes this weekend and, like the diligent student I am, I sat up late watching them all. They just get almost everything wrong. They abuse evolution, they misuse things like the human genome project (really, how hard can it be to check wikipedia and find out what it is before you start tossing a term like that around). It annoys me beyond all measure and, as far as I can tell, there are two main reasons for that.

1. We all know that the science is wrong. We can watch that and know we're suspending disbeliefe about it and evolution won't really make me control space and time. But there are SO MANY people who watch this and just don't know that. Another of my bad habbits is that I hang around on a debate forum for American teenagers, and the number of them who do believe this kind of shit is amazing. These shows just don't help becasue for the people who don't take time to understand evolution, it seems plausable to them.
2. It shows a disrespect for biology. Just throwaway comments like the human genome project. The thing is, everyone and their grandma thinks they know evolution (hence the masses of American teens who insist science is wrong and they've spotted some key flaw that all those highly trained and very intelligent scientists missed). Can't they accept that this isn't an easy, throwaway topic? Maybe consult a biologist occasionally?

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