Blog do Angelo

I love TV, I love sci-fi and I am a medical scientist!! I do have a PhD on biophysics and I am an associated physiology professor at a real university. Watching “The Fringe” and comparing it to other pseudo-science shows like X-Files, an educated eye can see they have no real science consulting! There are many misguided scientific explanations, many medical and biological errors. I will list only some I remember by heart:

1. On the episode where a man mutates into a monster while inside a plane, the guy GAINS MASS out of nowhere! He could turn into a monster but he should stay the same size.
2. On the episode that shows a baby who develops and ages in an accelerated pace, the baby could never grow to the size of an adult, where did he took the nourish required for growth once outside her mother organism? The baby should grow old, like a very aggressive progeria case, but never keep growing.
3. On the episode “Midnight” the infected woman should be rendered tetraplegic after having a needle inserted into her cervical spine. The injection should have been on the lumbar region.
4. On the same episode, the scientist says he has taken too much cerebospinal fluid (CSF) from himself and could not take more to keep feeding his wife. Wrong: a person produces around 500mL per day of CSF.
5. On the episode the FBI agent is being examined through ultrasound imaging, one could never get a live 3D image of the maggots, specialy if the sensor was being moved rapidly on the subject’s belly! They could have used a “sci-fi special” ultrasound machine, with a fixed large sensor.

The list could go on forever, but I think I made my point. It is all right it is science FICTION, but stretching the lines so much makes it silly.

Bottom line: The Fringe’s science sucks, they need REAL science consulting that can get the innovations out of scientific journals and do understand them in order to transpose them to the show and not distort them or pollute them with basic scientific mistakes.