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Post Six: Fictionalizing Science (3/26/2020)

Expanding on the hypothesis that fictionalizing science can help non-scientists understand issues and change behavior. Do you agree? Can you back up your opinion?

I agree to an extent with this. In some cases, like with the film I chose to watch (Wall-E), people tend to sympathize with the characters in movies and TV being impacted by whatever scientific event is occurring. In the case of Wall-E, we find ourselves sympathizing with this tiny robot and his little shoe plant. His only job is to clean up the mess that humans had made on Earth. He’s alone in a world full of garbage, which people had left behind in trade for a huge spaceship that carries them through outer space, which is all discussed and shown in the first few bit of the movie. It’s easy to see that right now, this movie is more relevant than ever, as we edge closer and closer to the planet looking like it does in the movie, in real life. People sympathize with Wall-E and this living plant he finds, as it’s one of the last things alive on Earth. We realize from this movie that we need to take better care of the Earth so it doesn’t turn out that way. It’s easy for children to understand too considering it’s a movie for that age demographic. In other instances, it’s not ideal. With other movies such as “The Day After Tomorrow” or “Geostorm”, it’s more just for the show. These particular movies, and many more like it are not geared towards inducing behavior changes, but more for having the audience. Although the forementioned movies (including Wall-E) are extremities of what science could turn into, it’s easier to get lost in the action of movies like “The Day After Tomorrow”. People usually don’t watch those movies and think about how they need to change their behavior in order to stop a massive 700 foot wave from submerging an entire city. It’s hard to sympathize with the science and the characters when it’s all about the action.

It’s also easy to miss that some of the fictionalizations of science isn’t all based on fact either; not just in movies, but in other forms of media as well. Storytelling in science is difficult to navigate as it needs to be based on cold, hard facts that have been proven, which is most likely not the case for most media as science is still discovering new things every day. Science can be twisted into something that it’s not just based on media and every day things. The article from Nature Methods claims “Storytelling encourages the unrealistic view that scientific projects fit a singular narrative. Biological systems are difficult to measure and control, so nearly all experiments afford multiple interpretations—but storytelling actively denies this fact of science” (Katz). There’s always going to be misconstrued ideologies about science based on storytelling because factual information usually doesn’t appear as often in storytelling because it’s difficult to measure and report. Overall I do see the meaning behind some of the ideas presented to try to change people’s behaviors, but some instances of media and storytelling tend to not do as much for the scientific community or for the viewer’s benefit.

Katz, Y. Against storytelling of scientific results. Nat Methods 10, 1045 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2699