There are some noble TV shows that hit the nail on the head when it comes to scientific accuracy—but for every one one of those, there are at least ten that are more “science” than science. Honestly, it was hard to narrow down this list to the worst offenders, but these are quite possibly the most scientifically inaccurate shows that exist.
For all you superfans—don't take it too personally if your favorite show is on here. Just because something is totally awesome doesn't mean it's not totally ridiculous at the same time.
The Flash
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The long and short of The Flash: this guy can run at the speed of light. And what's wrong with that?
He’d die. He would just straight-up die.
Warning—things are about to get gross, but no one said science was pretty.
It turns out there is a practical limit to how fast the human body can accelerate, and this spells trouble for our fast friend and anyone he might carry to safety.
“To be able to carry people and move at a very fast speed, you need to accelerate, and there is a limit to the acceleration that the human body can withstand (this also poses a danger to all warp-speed engine designs). This is because our body is not entirely solid. Our brain would be smashed into our skull and our inward fluids would condense to the direction opposite of our direction of motion.”
So brain mush and solidified blood. And that's assuming that the Flash doesn't ignite from the friction created by moving at light speed.
Things in the comic book world can get gruesome pretty quick when real-life physics get involved.
Limitless
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Limitless was a TV show inspired by the hit movie of the same name. In the series, musician Brian Finch discovers the drug NZT-48, which basically amounts to a magic pill that allows him to use 100% of his brain—resulting in abilities like a perfect memory and heightened deductive skills.
The scientific idea behind Limitless isn’t unique—most people have heard the saying that we only use 10% of our brains. But just because the concept is popular doesn't mean it's true.
Granted, it is partially true that we don’t use all of our brain all the time—but over the course of a day, it’s very likely you’ve used 100% of it at some point in time. As Scientific American explains:
“In walking toward the coffeepot, reaching for it, pouring the brew into the mug, even leaving extra room for cream, the occipital and parietal lobes, motor sensory and sensory-motor cortices, basal ganglia, cerebellum and frontal lobes all activate. A lightning storm of neuronal activity occurs almost across the entire brain in the time span of a few seconds.”
Stranger Things
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Stranger Things was the breakout star of summer 2016 shows, but it blurs the distinction physicists make between “dimension” and “universe.”
In the series, character Will Byers finds himself in the Upside Down—which is described a dimension parallel to our own. When his friends attempt to rescue him from this topsy-turvy place, they seek the help of their science teacher who explains the Upside Down with a tightrope analogy:
“Imagine an acrobat is standing on a tightrope, he explains. The tightrope represents our dimension. Our dimension has rules: The acrobat (us) can only move forward or backward on the tightrope. But imagine there's a flea right next to the acrobat. The flea can also travel back and forth on the rope just like the acrobat. But the flea can also travel along the side of the rope, and can even go under the rope, upside-down. The flea is able to access other dimensions, but the acrobat isn't.”
Unfortunately, this analogy (like most) isn't perfect. According to cosmologist Ranga Ram Chary:
“‘Upside-down is the same as walking on top of the tightrope,' Chary said. ‘Negative X is the same as positive X.'
In other words, walking backward and forward on top of the rope is still in the same dimension as walking backward and forward beneath the rope.“
So, it's a perfectly fine explanation for kids in a TV show, but heaven help the poor soul who asks a physicist about it.
Oh, and there's also the small matter of traveling into this parallel “dimension.” No biggie, though—a space/time rip would only require the energy roughly equivalent to that of the universe shortly after the Big Bang. And something tells me that our precocious protagonists don't have access to that kind of power.
Fear the Walking Dead
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Fear the Walking Dead is AMC's prequel series to the original Walking Dead, and it provides viewers with a glimpse into the world shortly before everything went to hell. While we will never know for sure what got the zombie ball rolling (at least according to showrunner Dave Erickson), Fear has dropped subtle hints about two things that could have created zombies: drugs and water:
“Dr. Jenner mentioned in Season 1, episode of The Walking Dead, the zombie virus is in all of us, meaning all humans will turn to zombies once they die, but the question still remains – how did it get there?”
Unfortunately, neither of these possibilities hold up to scientific scrutiny.
With the drug hypothesis, you run into funky logistics about access:
“Gloria was a junkie, and so it could be entirely possible that she contracted the virus through a bad batch of drugs, or if not illegal drugs, then possibly through vaccines such as the ‘flu shot…However, as much as the anti-vaccers might love this theory, it doesn't really hold up due to the fact that not every person in the world has access to drugs and/or vaccines, and every person in the world is supposedly infected.”
Well, maybe there was something in the water?
Wrong again!
“…it's not as likely as you may think due to water supplies being closed systems. With each city having different water supplies, it would make it incredibly unlikely that the virus spread that way.”
CSI, NCIS, and Basically Every Other Forensics Show Out There
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Forensic science shows like CSI and NCIS are incredibly guilty of stretching the truth. First of all, the turnaround times for solving cases are too fast—DNA testing alone can take forever. Not including breaks, it can take up to 54 hours to process a single sample. And that doesn’t factor in the reality that that most forensic scientists are working several cases at the same time, leading to an even slower pace.
Dusting for fingerprints or finding blood are other areas where shows like these slip into the ridiculous . For one thing, you can’t find blood under a black or blue light:
“If you watch many of the TV “Cop” shows, you will see at some point those working a crime scene using a blue light in search of invisible blood (blood stains that were cleaned up). Shazam! Blue-white stains appear all over the floors, walls and objects sitting around the crime scene! But in reality—this cannot happen. You see, blood does not fluoresce by applying UV or visible blue light.
Blood, even minute quantities that remain after clean-up, can be made to “luminesce;” that is, by spraying certain chemicals such as Luminol, BlueStar or Fluorescene on the various surfaces, blood will luminesce, or simply “glow in the dark”—and adding blue light is not necessary.”
These shows have also led to the phenomenon known as the CSI effect—meaning they've become influential in the public perception of forensic science and what it can provide in criminal cases.