Question: do scientists have an obligation to expose and explain bad science? Or just the right to make fun of it? I'm not talking reasonable discourse among disagreeing scientists (as what happens here all the time), or the need to expose bad research;but, exposing really, really, really bad science in the name of entertainment.

Okay, I'm a fan of crappy science fiction (print or projected) as much as the next person. Most of it is innocuous. But I'm so much more a fan of well written science fiction. While I'll laugh my a** off at bad sci-fi, it is, to some extent, a nervous laughter when the subject matter is of great importance.

I suspect that this upcoming climate change movie, The Day After Tommorrow and the "10.5" earthquake television program will be neither good fiction nor good science. Ten point five? On a vertical strike-slip fault? Please. And for the Nth time, California is not going to "drop into the Pacific!" The entire edge of the West coast of North America is an accreted melange of chunks of crust -- sheared, smeared, metamorphosed ... this is an oblique convergent zone, not a stinking extensional rift! (sorry, bit o' a geologist type outburst...got nothing against rifts, per se.) There are already seismologists rolling their eyes at the previews...some will watch and surely shoot beer through their noses laughing.

Of course I've not seen it, but I'll not be surprised to find this other movie contains equally ridiculous climatic manifestations.

I believe, as a scientist, that the seeds of both these movies are correct. California will experience the Big One, and in our lifetimes, possibly <a href="http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20040412/earthquake.html>soon (?). It'll be an 8, maybe an 8.5, but no bigger. It'll be plenty big enough. Same thing could happen in the middle of the US, for that matter. Plus, I believe that global climate change is occurring. Climate change happens, naturally. An aspect of warming might be cooling at high latitudes as oceanic circulation responds to changes in salinity or by a feedback process of cloud albedo and increased precipitation (ideas first told to me more than a decade ago by a highly respected glaciology professor). And there are hints of this already. And I believe we are partially responsible. Terraform Mars? Ha! We are doing it to this planet, right now.

I realize that most of the people that are going to watch these movies are not always discerning enough to recognize good from bad science (much less good from bad acting) and might actually form opinions (as Tom points out) based upon what they respond to emotionally in a film. Furthermore, they may use these opinions as the guide towards their political action.

Even if I agree with the most basic ideas of a film, do I as a scientist support the use of bad science to convey to Mr. and Ms. Public the basic message? Does fear teach better than rationality? Does exaggeration of fact via powerful visual imagery, surround sound audio, and Hollywood emotive manipulation serve to teach the non-science public better than rational discourse?

Sadly, of course it does. Humans respond to stress, not always to the threat of stress - unless phrased with the vocabulary of fear. Emotions are powerful. All media types of both sides, if they are smart, know this. But it hurts to see science so distorted. Maybe that's why I laugh at these movies. 'Cause it bothers me that the simple truth doesn't work as well to educate as does the spin. Or sell as many products, either, alas.

Back to the thread. I'm not sure why this current administration doesn't want scientists to talk out loud about their informed opinions. As a scientist (one that is often wrong) I don't like a muzzle. Science succeeds best when there is discourse and the free exchange of ideas and data.