Scientific accuracy and popular animal media

[creature386]

We are a scientific forum and science is important to us. Even in the media we consume. But while documentaries obviously must be accurate, how about works of fiction?
I’m having two types in mind, docufiction (aka speculative documentaries) and what I call animal fiction (stories that just so happen to center around animals). Walking With Dinosaurs is an example of the former, Planet Earth is not (as it shows us the known world). Jurassic Park and Jaws are examples of the latter.
Docufiction does not just list a bunch of facts, but tries to take us into an immersive world that feels like these wildlife documentaries everyone loves. But there is a problem. While Planet Earth shows us a full picture, Walking With Dinosaurs has a few blobs of ink whose empty spaces it fills and then acts like it has a full picture, too. Prehistoric animals are, by their nature, less well studied than contemporary animals. So, docufiction must make up details and present them as facts (unless it wants to risk breaking immersion). A bit misplaced wildlife here, animal behavior based on complete speculation there.
I think I already wrote in the Life Before Man thread where I think the limits to this are. The narration should justify speculative elements, so that we know how they got the idea, and present them as speculation if that is possible.
A related issue is that many documentaries (not just „docufiction“) dumb down complicated concepts (particularly related to how evolution works) and thus explain them slightly inaccurately. I have no general opinion on this, to be honest.

The more controversial part is probably going to be „animal fiction“ like Jurassic Park, The Meg, Kronos Rising and Jaws. For the most part though, it’s paleo-fiction like the former three where most of the controversy takes place.
Paleo-fiction is always science fiction and realism is a controversial topic in the science fiction community. Winchell Chung is a firm believer in the idea that science fiction should be realistic:

This silly opinion implies that the word "fiction" nullifies the word "science." Since it is "fiction", and fiction is by definition "not true", then we can make "not true" any and all science that gets in the way, right?

Hogwash. By the same logic, the term "detective fiction" gives the author license to totally ignore standard procedures and techniques used by detectives, the term "military fiction" allows the author to totally ignore military tactics and strategy, and the term "historical fiction" allows the author to totally ignore the relevant history.

Imagine a historical fiction novel where Napoleon at Waterloo defeated the knights of the Round Table by using the Enola Gay to drop an atom bomb. It's OK because it is "fiction", right?

www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/respectscience.php
Only that military and detective fiction take artistic licenses all the time, too. How often do courtroom sessions have a realistic length (several months) in a cop show episode? In these cases, realism is at odds with telling a good story.
A good story needs conflict after all and godzillifying animals provides that.

On the other hand, there is a trend in general science fiction (let’s call it „astronomy fiction“, due to taking place in space) to become more realistic. Whether it is in the movies (The Martian, Interstellar, Gravity) or in the books (The Martian, Trisolaris, Blindsight, The Expanse), there is a lot of demand for science fiction these days that is accurate and explores scientific questions. In other words, science fiction that respects science.
Do animal or paleo-fiction follow the same trend? It’s just the opposite. Jurassic Park had a scientific question (Is it OK to create life?) at its heart and its animals were (while inaccurate) ultimately still animals. Jurassic World with its killer hybrid Indominus rex feels different.

I’m not yet sure about why this is the case. Maybe mainstream science-fiction has a longer history and fans appreciate scientific accuracy because it’s something new.
Either way, movies and books like The Martian shows that a story can be fun and yet still super scientifically accurate (or at least respectful of science). I wish more paleo-fiction followed the same path. Thinking about The Martian was indeed what made me make this thread.

But this isn’t supposed to be a rant, more like an invitation to discussion.

[Infinity Blade]

I'm a bit confused by certain parts of your posts, particularly the part about the "fiction" label (were you trying to share a link?). There's also an attempt to post an image that didn't pan out.

[creature386]

You mean sharing a link as in seeing similarities between speculative documentaries like WWD and science fiction like Jurassic Park? The scientific accuracy of these is often discussed by the same people, so I had to lump them together in some way. Or do you mean sharing a link as in a website? There is only one projectrho link in my post.
Thanks for the part about the image, that was supposed to be a quote.

[Infinity Blade]

There's a part that says "link for sharing" at the beginning of the quoted part, that's all.

[creature386]

Sorry, I should have proof-read that.

[theropod]

I think scientific accuracy often benefits stories, greatly, but accuracy alone doesn’t make a good story, it’s about striking the right balance.

A world feels more real, and hence more immersive, if one feels like one understands the rules. E.g. when I watch or read the expanse, I can feel confident that no fancy artificial gravity or faster than light travel technologies will just turn up and be taken for granted when it is convenient, because it is firmly established humans don’t have those kinds of technology (yet). On the other hand, issues arising from this realism can actually benefit the plot and worldbuilding greatly, e.g. the issues around the gravity or lack thereof on the various inhabited colonies in the solar system are largely taken as a very creative, yet fairly realistic (with certain exceptions, like spinning up ceres to provide .33 g of centrifugal gravity, which of course wouldn’t work without it flying apart), replacement for any actual alien planets or alien lifeforms in the traditional sense, at least for the first few books.

Similarly, when watching the original Jurassic Park, or The Lost World, one could be confident that the movie would try to depict real animals, not just boring generic movie monsters. On the other hand the godzilla-mosasaur, The Meg, Kronosaurus imperator or the like all suffer from certain stereotypes that make them rather uninteresting imo. They are necessarily incredibly deadly. They are unrealistically large. They are hellbent on killing humans at all cost, making their motivations and actions unnecessarily one-dimensional and predictable (contrast this with the lost world’s T. rexes, which mostly wanted their baby back, or even JPIII’s raptors, which mostly just wanted their eggs back. Everyone was still afraid of them all the same, but they had more complex motivations than simply "human, must kill").

Such creatures are imo more of a tenet of fantasy than science fiction. If I want to be awed by incomprehensively large or powerful monsters, usually I will look to fantasy, and not science fiction, because it does it much better (and because something like a dragon the size of a mountain just isn’t convincing without magic). There are some exceptions, although they are usually not really my thing. For example Pacific Rim’s Kaiju were actually built as a bioweapon by an advanced alien civilization, so in that sense them being ridiculously large and hellbent on destruction makes more sense.

[creature386]

Interestingly, even fantasy these days tries to be realistic and to give its magic systems hard rules (Brandon Sanderson is an example here). This makes the opposite trend in animal/paleo-fiction even more embarrassing.

Disregarding comedy, the inexplicable and nonsensical IMO works best in horror which is, to be fair, what many of these animal monster movies try to be. It just doesn't work because animals are too familiar and mundane for that.

[theropod]

That is also true. I think I in some ways prefer this realism even in fantasy, but I think it’s less important. Fantasy can still be very good, even if it has a very soft magic system (e.g. Lord of the Rings, Asoiaf and Harry Potter all have very poorly defined rules to their magic systems, but manage to make up for that).

But in Science Fiction, it is far harder to make up for, because the whole concept of sci fi is based around the world having realistic, or at least comprehensible rules. And this goes with animal-fiction vs fiction about fantasy creatures as well. If you just want a movie monster, I find it a lot more entertaining if it is an original creation (e.g. Alien), where the bar for what’s believable lies much higher than with real animals about which we know stuff (e.g. we know that Velociraptor wasn’t 2 m tall).

[Infinity Blade]

If you want my opinion on whether or not I care about how scientifically accurate an animal (or animals) is depicted in pop culture, then here it is. I care about seeing scientific accuracy kept to a maximum about as much as I care about seeing historical accuracy/realism to a maximum in popular media that's (even loosely) based around the Middle Ages. That is to say, not a whole lot. I simply don't find anything inherently wrong with how pop culture perceptions/tropes turned out (even if they're baseless in reality or would not work the way they are portrayed). Hell, I might be wrong about this, but I speculate it might even make some people feel a little liberated in what they can portray.

Example:

^So, among other things, these are BOTH supposed to be Tyrannosaurus rex. Despite the fact that one has a big nasal horn (something a T. rex shouldn’t have) while the other doesn’t. Despite the fact that they’re radically different in color. Despite the fact that one has an (not pictured) enlarged fang in its lower jaw (something a T. rex shouldn’t have) and the other doesn’t. If we sprinkled reality onto this, there’s no way both could literally be the same species.

But...I don’t mind this. Hell, from a story/narrative standpoint, I like what's been done with them. The T. rex on the left is red and black all over, has red eyes, a horn, and even has a pack leader that's much bigger than any real life Tyrannosaurus. These are hardly never-before-seen tropes, but...those tropes work (at least for me), and are fitting for an antagonist that literally kills families to survive in a savage dog-eat-dog world.

This is probably not my best or most insightful post ever (I’m typing this post with a project and research paper due next week primarily in mind). But, here it is.

[creature386]

Since the topic of scientific accuracy in animated children's media came up here and in our discussion about The Good Dinosaur, here are my two cents.

Scientific realism serves two purposes. One, to create and immersive world and two, to show respect for science.

If everything is animated, it's harder for it to feel real. If the animals talk, you can forget about it.

The second point (respecting science) can still be achieved by doing some basic research and avoiding cliches that stem from a lack of research (e.g. naked raptors or pterosaurs and wrong hand positions/body postures), even if everything else is unrealistic. It's not super important, but I'm still glad when children's cartoons do this. I was in fact a little angry when everyone in that Gravity Falls episode kept calling the Pterodactyl a dinosaur (even Dipper, who was super insistent on the correct pronunciation did this). Everything else about it (even the fact that it was ridiculously oversized) was fine though.
(In all fairness, later material correctly referred to it as a pterosaur.)

[Infinity Blade]

Hmm, I never considered the respect for science point. I feel like the particular example I had above would mostly just be artistic license (I think everyone knows T. rex had no giant nasal horn or a big lower fang on one side of its lower jaw), although things like nakedness of the raptors (edit: I forgot; to be fair, Genndy said they wanted to have feathers on their raptors, but they found them difficult to animate) and incorrect hand postures in the show are obviously preconceptions of ancient fauna that are erroneous.

This isn't to say that this really decreases the extent to which I enjoy the show. I don't think it does.

[dinosauria101]

I am assuming this was posted because of my Good Dinosaur beef?

Honestly that movie was just too sappy. It wasn't so much inaccuracy as sappiness.

[creature386]

Nov 18, 2019 6:25:32 GMT 5 dinosauria101 said:

I am assuming this was posted because of my Good Dinosaur beef?

If you want to know what really gave me the idea, it was thinking about The Martian. Before I watched, I thought scientific accuracy was the enemy of entertainment (okay, I enjoyed Interstellar even before that, but hard science fiction mostly left me frustrated before that point). The discussion about The Good Dinosaur just reminded me of my idea.

As you can see, the thread was originally supposed to be just about speculative documentaries like WWD and Planet Dinosaur and science fiction like The Lost World or Jurassic Park. I completely forgot about animation (which very often features animals/dinosaurs).

Back to the topic, I've found another use for scientific accuracy besides immersion and respecting science. And that is sending a message. Science fiction very often wants to teach us something. It's in the very DNA of the genre (see Frankenstein and its message about how creating life is bad). Fantasy also does, but it uses allegory where accuracy is not so important. Science fiction, on the other hand, gives us forecasts. Whenever someone ridicules the message of a science fiction story, it's usually because the scenario is implausible.
Jurassic Park has a message, too. We shouldn't play God and leave animals extinct. It did not convince me, but the scenario in the first movie was at least somewhat plausible. An employee sabotaged everything and set the dinosaurs loose. Now they are a big danger. But with each installment, it became increasingly ridiculous. Instead of "We shouldn't bring back dinosaurs because something could go wrong", the message basically became "We shouldn't bring back dinosaurs because they are magical monsters that will break out no matter what we do".

I'm not saying science fiction must have a message, but a lot wants to have one, so this is something to consider.

[theropod]

creature386 slightly off-topic (but relevant in terms of realism/immersion/respect for science/messages) but have you watched/read The Expanse?

[creature386]

No, but I've heard enough about it to see why I should. If you want to make a point using it as an example that doesn't contain too many spoilers, you can go ahead (even if it does, we have a spoiler code for a reason, though such a post will then be more interesting for those who have either already seen it or don't plan to do so).