I'm not sure I like this idea

New Scientist has an article up describing an attempt to meld science and Hollywood. Initially I liked the idea. How could I really be against getting better science into mainstream media?!

And then I remembered: The majority of science is mundane, boring, tedious number crunching. It's not exciting. It doesn't fit in Hollywood. It's like putting a round peg in a square hole. So what can be done to try to make the science exciting enough for Hollywood?

As I see it, there's two options:

1) Skip all the boring bits and get straight to the "Whiz Bang" bits and "Eureka" moments.

OR

2) Find things that aren't really tested anyway and are crazy fringe science.

My problem with this is that either way, it's still misportraying science. The article gives a perfect example:

[MacFarlane] just finished making a Family Guy episode based on the possibility that there are multiple universes, prompted by a documentary he saw on the subject.

"I didn't really know that that was a real thing, that it was possible [and] being theorised about," he said. "So we did a story about it."

What's wrong with this? Where's the good science in multiple universe hypotheses? Where's the testing? Sure multiple universes sound good and sciencey, but when you get right down to it, it's not. It's a possible branch of science that's still in its infancy. It is a nice construct to start working from, and then develop ways to test it as we go, but chances are, like so many other things, it's quite likely that if/when we ever do test it, it will turn out to be bogus. And do we really want to be showing the public more bits of tenuous science that in all honesty, are pretty hollow?

While I see Hollywood's reasoning for doing it (it draws in the geeks), I also see the problem: It continues to confuse the picture of what science really is. We already have folks like the Discovery Institute hard at work doing that.

So while I appreciate the attempt from MacFarlane and Hollywood to put a bit more scientific rigor into their work, I just don't think it will work out too well for the simple reason that the two have very different intentions: One seeks to entertain, the other seeks to discover.

Meanwhile, I do like what the Zuckers said in the article about how science saved their daughter's life:

"They gave here a shot of insulin and this was like a miracle, because she was laying there on the examining table, and within a few hours she came alive again, her lustre came back," Janet Zucker said.

That's right. Science.Saves.Lives.