Re: testability and hypotheses (long) [and getting longer]

[larrys@zk3.dec.com]

>Somewhat tying into the thread on dinosaur toys and their effects on
>children, I think the thing that concerned me the most about "Jurassic
>Park" (the movie) was the descriptions of Tyrannosaurus' hunting
>strategy.  In the book, Alan Grant formulated the hypothesis that
>Tyrannosaurus couldn't see stationary objects *AFTER* it didn't eat
>him as he stood motionless against its nose.  In the movie, Alan Grant
>claimed that T. rex vision was "based on motion" while he was still at
>the dig site.

At the risk of re-igniting the Jurassic Park idiocies thread, one of
the nasty things that film did was forget to explain the importance
of amphibian DNA lousing up the dinosaurs - that the dinosaurs of
Jurassic Park were as much art and reconstruction as any plaster
model.  While I despise Crichton for many reasons, he _did_ make the
point that most of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were hobbled with
visual cortexes appropriate to frogs and not dinosaurs, because they
never found visual cortex DNA - even the herbivours had the problem,
a fairly major one for something whose food does not normally move
in the first place.  Spielberg picked up on the visual stuff without
the explanation and built it into the movie, and, as Mickey points
out, it has become a part of the public perception of t-rex, along
with the vast intellect of the velociraptor, whose historical counter-
part would probably _not_ have mastered the doorknob principle.  It
is, I think, a generic problem with science-fiction - science fiction
should stick to _science_ except for the absolute minimum breakage to
launch the plot - and the breakage should be obvious and localized.
Warp drive is pretty obviously fiction - t-rex vision problems is just
bad research and poor script writing.  The mere presence of the 'rex
was breakage enough.

But it was the _prettiest_ "B" movie ever made...     =)

regards,
Larry Smith