I was wondering the same thing.
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Hey, I know it's been a few months, but leaving this here for anyone else who is trying to find it:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Sandbox/DanBrownedDanBrown
Here you can find the old Dan Brown examples for Dan Browned.
To save people a little trouble, there is a comment on the page indicating that the examples on that page can only be migrated over with some proof that Dan Brown claimed accuracy for the given book.
he/him | Image Pickin' regular
Per TRS, Dan Browned has been renamed Falsely Advertised Accuracy and moved to Trivia.
I don't know whether The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittmann belongs under Dan Browned. It's a novel and not an autobiography, but perhaps everyone caught on except me.
Sorcerer in training
You know what makes the Crichton example really bad? There were real "I'm not dead" devices, and stories about their use he could have used if he'd bothered to do some research. (More difficult in 1975, but not impossible.) The simplest device was a bell on the outside of the tomb, a bell pull by the person's hand as they lay in their coffin, and a system of cords and pulleys (for leverage) between them.
(I'm less than sympathetic, since Jim Bishop wrote the far more research heavy The Day Lincoln Was Shot (1955) in a similarly-netless era.)
Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. -Terry Pratchett Hide / Show Replies
Exactly, and his section in the examples is prefaced by "it may be blasphemy..." to include him. His entire book, State of Fear is based on bad research.
Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Misused, started by Albert3105 on Feb 11th 2019 at 4:57:38 AM
Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Complaining, started by GoosefromWikipedia on Aug 5th 2020 at 5:07:47 AM
Arrested Development:
- "They also state as fact that the British parliament has three houses, when in reality it has two. It wasn't the basis of a joke ..."
As I misremember it, Rita says three, and this is part of what tells Michael how stupid (or at least ignorant) she is.
Or, wait a minute — did Rita give some other number and Michael say it's really three? That's a subtle joke, showing that Michael isn't as wise as he may think he is. Or so I'd have understood it if indeed that's how it went.
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Doesn't the VO (Richie Cunningham) say it's three? The funny thing is that for a British person, this one is quite believable, as there could well be an arcane ancient law, seldom remembered but never repealed, that states that the Queen's summer residence must count as one of the houses, or that the speaker's privy is the third house, or some such.
(I made these up! But feel free to spread them as the Lord's gospel!)
Florins and Guilders: The Netherlands has been in the Euro zone for quite a while now, and those who remember the times you could pay with actual guilders are now slowly dying out. The original name of the guilder was the gilded florin, and the notation "fl" for guilder remained in use right until the end, when the E with two crossbars took over.
I thought that Scrubs was seen as more accurate in terms of hospital research than the likes of House.
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It's not as simple as "How accurate is it?" There has to be a claim (or strong implication) of accuracy. House did have that (when it started it followed the pattern of CSI and kept pointing out that they were hiring a "medical advisor"); Scrubs doesn't.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Especially hilarious given that House fails basic high school biology: he once deduced that a woman was cheating on her husband because both had brown eyes, but their children had blue eyes.
I would have written that story as two blue-eyed people seemingly having a brown-eyed kid, even if apparently that too is not entirely impossible.
What about shows that claim in their material or advertisement to be true? For instance Fargo both the movies and TV series would fit. Also the Blair Witch project?
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That's Based on a Great Big Lie.
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.
- Try watching The Fast and the Furious with your car-guy buddy sometime. Ask him what he thinks of the depiction of cars, car guys and racing.
- Not all car guys have massive epic street races. In fact, most keep their performance driving to the track. And those that do street race? Well, they certainly aren't too overt or flashy about it, for obvious reasons.
- The big street races alone are an example of Cars Do Not Work That Way.
Racing maybe not, but they pretend to be realistic about the car's features (if not performance... since the cars are magical boxes made of immortality). Seriously, a gearhead will flip his shit watching them go over their car porn and the errors in it.
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.
Still needs a rewrite. Original entry points out problems with street racing, not car features, and most importantly does not point out the most important aspect: author's claims. Written as it is it seems more like Artistic Licence.
I am Sinistar!
Snow Crash? really? In the entry's own words "Snow Crash, while it never actually claims to be a work of non-fiction" This alone should qualify it for deletion, no?
Neal Stephenson never ever presented any of the infodumps as factual anywhere outside the world-context of his story, not the real world.
So not sure how this works here, but I propose the Snow Crash entry be removed.
add pithy quote here. Hide / Show Replies
No response? Should I just go nuke the entry then?
add pithy quote here.
Hmm, I forget where you ask about this... Ask The Tropers will direct you to the right place if you aren't getting a response.
Don't make me destroy you. @ Castle Series
um...im a gobble you up?
The name of the trope. Why? Why is a trope name a take that?
Some things are meant to be eaten Hide / Show Replies
It's not necessarily a Take That, though it could be read that way; but it's a phenomenon that most people would associate with Dan Brown, given the highly-publicized way he promoted The Da Vinci Code as being "fact," and the equally-publicized way that his statement was proven untrue. While there are other examples of the trope, as seen on the page, few are likely to be as recognized as the ones involving Brown, especially considering the way in which historians emerged after his statements specifically to correct them.
You could also say that the Dan Brown examples are notable because of the wide-spread effect they had: A lot of people believed him when he said that his books were, no pun intended, the gospel truth, and the misinformation was part of the reason why actual fact-checkers and academics started coming forward to counter his claims.
Plus, he has an entire page of these things. If nothing else, that deserves some kind of recognition.
While I understand his association with this trope if he has his own page shouldn't we rename the main entry to avoid confusion?
Some things are meant to be eaten
Doesn't seem like there's a need, given that no-one seems to be thinking "Oh, we can only list examples from works by Dan Brown."
There may be some confusion, as mentioned earlier on this page, about the creator making false claims vs. the text itself making false claims, but that doesn't have anything to do with the trope name.
The porphyria entry is in serious error because the person who tried to explain porphyria got the facts completely wrong. The sensitivity to light is actually caused by the accumulation of porphyrins, or the precursors to hemoglobin, in the skin. These then react with the UV, causing the swelling. It is not caused by DNA damage. The disorder involving DNA damage is xeroderma pigmentosum. Would this count because it is clear that he or she tried to show research and implied accuracy but it was wrong? This may be stretching it because it is only an implied statement of yes, this is accurate. This is also a throw it in as a question.
Edited by Kevonni4
Just throwing this in here rather than making an edit. World War Z is here because the author said it was a "realistic look on a zombie outbreak." However I can't find a point where he's saying it's a scientifically accurate, only that he's making it less sensationlised.
Basically what I'm saying is that there is a difference between making something more realistic and making something accurate. In my opinion the former would not belong here (because the Author is not claiming their work is fact) while the latter is (because the Trope namer went on record as saying the work was accurate).
So am I onto something here or am I just getting too defensive about things?
There seems to be two tropes going on: the original one, in which the creator makes the false claims of veracity, and a second one, in which the text makes the false claims for veracity. These are actually two very different things. The first one is lying, the second is a false document.
21 Newton's Method
The complaint is made that a senior level math student would not be learning Newton's method because it is taught in first semester calculus. However, Newton's method is also taught in more detail in numerical methods (sometimes called numerical analysis) which is a junior or senior level class depending on the collage or university. I have not seen the source material. I cannot comment on the execution. Should that bullet in the examples section be removed?
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Yeah, move it over here to the discussion page. I don't recall whether they're getting the basic version or the detailed version. We'll wait for someone who knows to weigh in. Good catch.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Moved over here for discussion:
- The C.O.P.S. in Tell Tale Games's Sam And Max games do this once. Their spiel on Easter Island in "Moai Better Blues" includes factoids such as it being founded in 1914 by members of prog-rock band Asia and being located off the coast of "Your Mom", causing Sam to note he can tell they're still doing all their research on the Internet.
Bluster Blaster: INFORMATION WANTS TO BE WRONG!
Is there any representation that Sam And Max are factually accurate games? If so, please add it when you restore this example. If not, do not restore the example. Dan Browned isn't "oh, a character got something wrong," It's "the author or the marketing department banners the accuracy of the work, but there are major errors in it."
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Zzzzzzzzzz
Fringe is not marketed as factually accurate, nor does anyone involved with it make that claim unequivocably. In fact, even the quote that was used, "It's not sci-fi, it's more sci" doesn't amount to a claim of accuracy. Furthermore, saying that something "lies within the realm of possibility" when you're talking about science simply means "nobody has definitely proved it can't be done yet." Fringe fails on the "clearly states or very strongly indicates that it is factually accurate" part of the definition.
Edited by Madrugada ...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it. Hide / Show Replies
I would interpret that line to be a claim to accuracy, as it claims that's it's not sci-fi, (here meaning "made up stuff") and clearly based on accurate science with a bit of extrapolation like Re Genesis. I can't see any other way of reading it.
See, I take it as a denial of the sci-fi ghetto, rather than a statement about the factual accuracy of the science. And even if JJ thinks it's not science fiction, it's still being marketed as science fiction, it's publicly identified as science fiction, there's no claims that I know of that have been made about them having science advisors to make sure they get the science right. It's simply not being presented to the public as factually accurate. If you can point me at someplace where it is presented that way, I'd like to see it. "Within the realm of possibility" is not the same thing as "factually accurate".
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
"Within the realm of possibility" also means "not blatantly contradicting what we know about the world," so if there's instances of impossible things, it's still Dan Browned. The pituitary gland killer episode (1-2) had a baby age 80 years in minutes, the fourth episode of that season features telepathy and learning by osmosis, and the sixth episode had a woman take a drug that made her brain emit a microwave burst. In later episodes there was a teleporter, a pyrokinetic, and parallel universe travel on Earth. None of these things are remotely possible.
Right, they aren't. But for Fringe to be a case of Dan Browned, rather than simply "fiction", the show itself has to be presented to the public as factually accurate. Dan Browned isn't just "really, really wrong". It's "I tell you, it's true, TRUE!" when iut isn't. ''Fringe has the "it isn't" part, but it doesn't have the "It's True!" part. It is not being presented or marketed as anything but a science fiction show, no matter how badly JJ Abrams wants to keep it out of the sci-fi ghetto.
House is on the list because a big deal was made about how they were going to have medical advisors and actually listen to them, because (paraphrasing here,) 'it's a medical show. If the medicine is bad, the show can't be good.' CSI is on the list because of the same thing — back when it started there was a lot of hoorah about how they were gong to to be as accurate as possible. They quit making that claim, but they never repudiated it, so a lot of people still think that they're watching an accurate depiction of what a CSI does.
The characters in the show Fringe talk like what they're doing is true. But the show itself has never been presented as factually accurate science. Dan Browned is about how the work itself is presented to the public not whether the characters within the work say something is accurate.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
OK. So we should go through and purge all the Word of God based Dan Brown-ings as well.
Edited by MatthewTheRaven
That's not what I said.
Abrams didn't say "It's accurate science" He said "It's not sci-fi" which is a genre that may or may not include accurate science. He wasn't making a statement about its accuracy. The closest he came is making a waffly statement about its plausibility.
However the Dan Browns of this world like to claim that what they produce is accurate fact, ... That's a quote from the definition. He didn't say it was accurate fact. Because of that, it isn't Dan Browned.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
You and I are just going to have to disagree on how to interpret that quote then. I won't argue any further, it's not going to work because we can never know what Abrams really meant with his sci-fi bashing.
It seems there are some works which have their own page for this topic. Is there a list of them anywhere? It would be easier if there was.
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There's only one: DanBrowned.Dan Brown
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Zzzzzzzzzz
Sorry, Fast Eddie, I know you don't want ellipses, but that's a direct quote. Either that fragment needs to stay, with the trailing-off "let me start that sentence again" ellipsis, or there needs to be an ellipsis there to indicate that something has been edited out. Either way, they need to stay.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Would examples that claim to be actual science but are based on horrible or imaginary research be the wrong sort for this trope?
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No, those are exactly what this trope is for. When the work is said or strongly implied to be factually accurate, but is not.
If you're talking about Real Life examples, though, tread carefully. This isn't the place for Intelligent Design or Creationist vs Evolutionist stuff or things like that.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
What about Dianetics? Most Triumphant Example as far as I'm concerned. The book is horrible in this way.
Then again, there might be an unreasonable abundance of pseudoscientific examples to include them all, maybe I should write some blanket statement about them instead.
If we can't attack popular religions we should be able to attack unpopular ones. It's only fair.
No. Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgement. Learn it, love it, live it.
I'm sorry, VVK, I completely misunderstood your original question. I thought you were asking about things like misusing science in a work. This one is for works of fiction only. Not religions, not science or pseudoscience.
Edited by Madrugada ...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Zzzzzzzzzz
Moved from the main page: (regarding Balkan Vampires turning to stone or dust)
- This information is entirely new to this troper and contradicts to what he has read from various books on vampire mythology, and he sincerely wishes to learn the source of this claim.
I just returned to this page after I hadn't checked it in quite a long time, and I'm a bit confused about what happened to the examples specifically about Dan Brown? I understand why the page was renamed to no longer directly reference him, but surely he still provides many valid examples of the trope? He even used to have his own subpage if I recall, but now I can't seem to find it, nor can I find any explanation for why it no longer exists. Am I just blind or have all examples related to Dan Brown been removed?
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