Critical Research Failure cleanup

I trimmed a bit more but your sandbox idea might be better.

As for cutting the entire thing, I think at the very least the entries on food allergies going away if you become vegan or that you can feed cats an all-plant diet need to stay. Or maybe that Britain made India eat meat.

The rest seem to walk a fine line around ignoring basic facts or just flat-out propaganda.

Edited by Stage7-4 on Jan 16th 2020 at 4:33:46 AM

I'm unsure about many of the remaining examples, but I at least agree that the "veganism cures food allergies" example should stay.

I think it counts as CRF either way. It's likely that the author found some other sources that spread misinformation, believed it and repeated it. In this case, the CRF is "trusting the wrong sources" instead of "not doing research at all".

I don't know if deliberate misinformation is CRF, but it's highly unlikely that the author will admit to putting deliberate misinformation in the comic, so that's not really a relevant problem right now. Even if she comes to regret ever making it, she's more likely to say, "I got duped by sites spreading misinformation" than, "I intentionally put misleading claims in the comic" — the former merely makes her look careless, while the latter makes her look malicious (or like someone pulling a blatant Parody Retcon if she claims that the intention was to mock fanatical vegan).

Also, is it still CRF if a claim is technically true, but misleading (like when she says meat decays as soon as the animal dies, but doesn't mention that this is also true for plants)? How about partially true claims (blaming deadzones on land-based animal agriculture)?

Regarding the Nostalgia Critic examples, there used to be a Cowboy BeBop at His Computer page for such entries, but it was cut for unclear reasons.

Although, would the Flubber entry count as CRF, since he could have looked up "the other writer" and found that, no, he didn't write it?

YMMV.Watch Mojo has quite a few entries. Are there any that are valid?

Looking at them, they all seem to fail to meet the "must be about real life, not another work", so no. An argument could be made for those where the research failure is about a work's production, but those aren't what I'd expect any given layperson to know anyway.

Examples about works instead of basic real life facts might go under Cowboy BeBop at His Computer. My stance on Critical Research Failure, which I'm pretty sure I brought up in the now-closed TRS thread, is that pop culture facts don't count as basic knowledge, and assuming it does falls under Fan Myopia.

I'm guessing Critical Research Failure's name just makes it more attractive to complainers, and thus more likely to have complaining shoehorned into it.

Edit: I did post what I said in the first paragraph of this post (along with a comment on CRF's Trope Decay) in the TRS thread about two years ago, not long after I started using TRS.

I scrolled down from that post and saw that Sandbox.Critical Research Failure was posted in that thread (not by me). Should it replace the current description, or is the current description fine as-is? When the thread was still ongoing, I already tweaked a bit of text that claimed Cowboy BeBop at His Computer was a subtrope of Critical Research Failure (the rest of this post covers my reasoning for this), with a link to the TRS thread.

I checked the page history for Critical Research Failure and found the change in question:

Original text:

What I changed it to:

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 6th 2020 at 5:01:51 AM

Feel free to swap it out.

From YMMV.Family Guy S 8 E 1 Road To The Multiverse:

• In the Japanese universe, the Griffins live in a Japanese-style house. Never mind the fact that Japan had Westernized during the Meiji Restoration.
• The first universe shows what the world would look like if Christianity never existed, in which the dark ages never happened and science was able to progress by 1000 years. There are multiple problems with this speculation:
  • Firstly, the dark ages weren't caused by Christianity, but rather the fall of The Roman Empire.
  • The real cause of scientific regression during this period was West European scholars' inability to decipher Greek texts. Christian monasteries actually helped preserve education and research within this region.
  • Many important scientific discoveries had been made worldwide during this period, including enhanced agricultural techniques, algebra, and the scientific method. Modern society as we know it would not exist without these discoveries.
• The Disney universe appears to be based on "golden age" Disney. However, Disney Meg is based on Ursula from The Little Mermaid, and Disney Joe on a teapot from Beauty and the Beast. Both movies are from the Darker and Edgier "renaissance" era.

Meesa thinks this is misuse.

Those are so nitpicky, holy shit.

Seems textbook Artistic License – History to me. They could be moved to that trope and expanded upon.

Could the Christianity one be Dated History as I seem to remember the theory that it was Christianity that held up scientific progress was popular in the 80s and 90s (this is of course assuming that it wasn't done intentionally for comedy)?

Edited by SebastianGray on Feb 10th 2020 at 9:23:02 AM

I found this pothole on YMMV.Sonic The Hedgehog 2020:

• Fandom Rivalry: With Birds of Prey (2020). After that film's less-than-impressive opening weekend, DC Comics fans took to Twitter alleging that Sonic was full of homophobic and racist jokes, and encouraged audiences to take their kids to watch Birds of Prey instead. Not only are the two movies worlds apart in terms of family-friendly content, but the few who had seen Sonic before its wide release quickly debunked those claims as Malicious Slander.

When a claim is as outlandish as Sonic not being as family-friendly as Birds of Prey, it's safe to say that the claim is not made carelessly or in good faith, right?

Thought so. Just wanted to have something to cite.

Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Feb 14th 2020 at 2:01:29 PM

That seems to be a trolling campaign then anything else. Cut it.

Bringing up these examples from Christmas with a Capital C:

• Critical Research Failure:
  • Greg mentioning how Christmas is the only time of the year in which the whole world comes together in a message of peace. A cursory knowledge of other cultures quickly disproves this.
  • The claim of the Title Drop that "It's 'Christmas with a Capital C' because it belongs to Christ the Lord". No, Christmas is capitalized because it's a proper noun, just like every other holiday.

Both of these look OK to me, is there a reason in particular why you want us to look at them?

I agree.

I assumed they looked complainy to him. I think they're fine, unless the first example should be clarified.

Edited by Brainulator9 on Feb 21st 2020 at 9:05:07 AM

From So... You're a Cartoonist?.

• Critical Research Failure:
  • The Nintendo Localization comic, which asserted that there were tons of traits Nintendo forced all their characters in the 90s to conform to their American designs. Most of those "traits", though, weren't actually real; they tended to be memetic programming glitches or just Preston's own perception. For instance, Link has never acted effeminately, just had a Bishōnen face, and Samus never canonically had green hair, since it was from a programming gag from the Varia Suit in Metroid.
  • His strip about Power Girl uses the Urban Legend that the artist of the time, Wally Wood, drew her breasts bigger every issue without the editors noticing. As pointed out on this very page, this has been long debunked.

Edited by Tomodachi on Feb 22nd 2020 at 5:59:35 AM

None of that's obvious to the layman, and it's about fiction, not the real world. Not CRF.

It is still desinformation from the author. With which trope can I replace this?

Can Based on a Great Big Lie work?

Cowboy BeBop at His Computer is an item for when facts about works of fiction are wrong, though it would be Trivia instead of CRF’s YMMV.

How about Dan Browned?

Best I can tell, that trope also requires the think that the inaccuracy was about to be real, so probably not.

Cowboy BeBop at His Computer is about the news media.

I'm not convinced that "fictional work gets minor details about other fictional work wrong" is particularly noteworthy.

Dan Browned requires the creator to claim the work is accurate, with the work itself not actually being accurate.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 23rd 2020 at 3:50:33 AM

Then Dan Browned could work as a substitute for the two entries on So Are You A Cartoonist?