# Are skeptics ever right in popular entertainment? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 7, 2013, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-skeptics-ever-right-in-popular-entertainment/649630 "2013-02-07T20:26:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2013, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-skeptics-ever-right-in-popular-entertainment/649630/81 "2013-02-18T04:21:09Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > She had Finn go over the events leading up to his three “miracles” and helped him see that these were ordinary things that happened for totally explicable reasons. If you’re as dim as Finn, at least. This is the guy who thought he got his girlfriend pregnant by ejaculating into the hot tub they were sharing… ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2013, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-skeptics-ever-right-in-popular-entertainment/649630/82 "2013-02-18T04:52:14Z")
> [@shiftless](#): > > I think this is a good thing, sort of. We (almost) all know psychics are fake so it’s humorus when one or two of their predictions sort of come true. In the Modern Family episode I think they did a fine job of showing that the psychic was full of it. It would hardly be funny to then leave it at “yep, psychics are fake.” The episode also shows in a funny way how we can become convinced that a psychic prediction has come true. You really have to stretch your imagination to believe a “knight on a horse” equals a kid with a knight on his shirt. I was left with the feeling there was a pun in there somewhere that I missed. > [@SenorBeef](#): > > I can’t agree with that. “We almost all know psychics are fake” is definitely not true. It’s true, all right. I’m pretty sure the people who _pretend_ to not know it are just trying to piss me off. Yes, even the ones who’ve never heard of me and who I will never meet. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2013, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-skeptics-ever-right-in-popular-entertainment/649630/83 "2013-02-18T05:54:14Z")
In various Mercedes Lackey stories the skeptics are on occasion right despite magic being real in the setting; just because magic is real doesn’t mean someone can’t fake it. In fact more often than not the skeptics in question are genuine mages/psychics/whatever. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2013, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-skeptics-ever-right-in-popular-entertainment/649630/84 "2013-02-18T06:44:09Z")
In comic books, Atlas/Marvel’s _ **Kid Colt, Outlaw** _ between 1949 and 1962, featured several “weird” tales with ghosts and monsters and curses and space aliens all of which turned out to be hoaxes. In '62 the series finally jumped the shark with issue #107 in which Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had Kid Colt come to the rescue of an honest-to-goodness ET. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2013, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-skeptics-ever-right-in-popular-entertainment/649630/85 "2013-02-18T13:56:19Z")
What about the famous Hawaii story from _The Brady Bunch_? The little tiki created havoc for whoever possessed it (including making Greg swim a bit — never understood what the big deal was with that) — until it was returned. ---
**Author:** ![Dave\_Hartwick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@Dave\_Hartwick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dave_Hartwick)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2013, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-skeptics-ever-right-in-popular-entertainment/649630/86 "2013-02-18T14:22:10Z")
> [@Osiris\_the\_1st](#): > > And this is despite the fact that Conan Doyle was heavily involved in spiritualism. Sort of like how Lovecraft was a skeptic. The show that came to mind for me while reading the thread was a short runner called _Project U.F.O._. Two Air Force investigators check out reports of UFOs and, as I remember it, usually said they were weather balloons or some kid’s vivid imagination. The Wikipedia article says they often left it unexplained and encountered an alien in the second season, so not a 100% skeptic’s show. “In an odd reversal of the Scooby-Doo dynamic, the series eventually settled into a pattern in which the investigators would spend most of the hour uncovering some conventional explanation for a UFO sighting, only for the last five minutes to reveal that UFOs (or some similarly unexplained phenomena) were involved after all.” I guess I only saw or remember episodes from early in the series. Do _Penn and Teller’s Bullshit_ or _Mythbusters_ count? ---
**Author:** ![Dave\_Hartwick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@Dave\_Hartwick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dave_Hartwick)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2013, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-skeptics-ever-right-in-popular-entertainment/649630/87 "2013-02-18T14:28:26Z")
Sorry for repeating your example, CalMeacham, I thought I was replying to the end of the thread, not the end of the first page. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2013, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-skeptics-ever-right-in-popular-entertainment/649630/88 "2013-02-18T14:50:50Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > What about the famous Hawaii story from _The Brady Bunch_? The little tiki created havoc for whoever possessed it (including making Greg swim a bit — never understood what the big deal was with that) — until it was returned. In the LAST scene of the final episode, though, their Dad rightly pointed out that the “bad luck” brought by the “curse” was really just a matter of perception and interpretation. Did the tiki put that tarantula in Jan’s bag? Maybe- but she never got bitten and it wasn’t poisonous anyway. So, where was the bad luck? Did the tiki give Greg bad luck and make him wipe out on his surfboard? Maybe- but Greg wasn’t hurt, so maybe that was GOOD luck! Mr. Brady finally convinces Bobby that good luck and bad luck are often in the eye of the beholder. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2013, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-skeptics-ever-right-in-popular-entertainment/649630/89 "2013-02-18T16:54:15Z")
> [@Dave\_Hartwick](#): > > Sorry for repeating your example, CalMeacham, I thought I was replying to the end of the thread, not the end of the first page. No es problema. I do it all the time. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2013, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-skeptics-ever-right-in-popular-entertainment/649630/90 "2013-02-18T17:00:23Z")
> [@Osiris\_the\_1st](#): > > And this is despite the fact that Conan Doyle was heavily involved in spiritualism. Doyle was really good about keeping his character’s sensibilities different from his own. Holmes is similarely skeptical about vampires in _The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire_ (“This agency keeps flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply.” His Progfessor Challenger was pretty skeptical, too, in his earlier stories. But in _The Land of Mist_ he has him encounter spiritualism, and Diyle harangues those who don’t believe. Another time Doyle did let his spiritualist leanings get hold of the story was in _The Maracot Deep_, where he created a quasi-Challenger. The story is appallingly bad. ---
**Author:** ![Loopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loopus/32/15343_2.png) [@Loopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopus)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2013, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-skeptics-ever-right-in-popular-entertainment/649630/91 "2013-02-18T17:10:29Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > There was an episode of _Glee_ where Finn, a good-natured but dumb jock, saw the face of Jesus in his grilled cheese sandwich and believed it had the power to grant his wishes. He wished that his team would win the big game, that he’d get to second base with his girlfriend, and that he’d be restored to his former position as quarterback. > > All of these wishes came true, but he had a crisis of faith after the third one. The current quarterback was seriously injured during a game, so Finn had to replace him. Finn feared this was his fault for wishing to be quarterback and went to the guidance counselor to talk about it. She told him that while she believed in God and that he cared about Finn, she didn’t think God interfered in football games or teenage petting sessions. She had Finn go over the events leading up to his three “miracles” and helped him see that these were ordinary things that happened for totally explicable reasons. In that same episode (season two’s “Grilled Cheesus”), Kurt tries acupuncture treatment on his comatose dad, but by his own admission there is zero evidence that it had any effect. And in Sue’s speech about being an atheist, she says something like “It’s cruel to ask someone to believe a fantasy,” which struck me as being somewhat similar to James Randi’s “It’s a dangerous thing to believe in nonsense” mantra. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2013, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-skeptics-ever-right-in-popular-entertainment/649630/92 "2013-02-22T19:39:35Z")
Stephen Fry’s novel _The Hippopotamus_ has a woo-debunking end. It’s a very funny novel, but very NSFW. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2013, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-skeptics-ever-right-in-popular-entertainment/649630/93 "2013-02-22T20:08:50Z")
> [@Dendarii\_Dame](#): > > Stephen Fry’s novel _The Hippopotamus_ has a woo-debunking end. > > It’s a very funny novel, but very NSFW. I got a chuckle at the idea that a _novel_ might be unsafe for work. I mean, unless you were reading it aloud. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2013, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-skeptics-ever-right-in-popular-entertainment/649630/94 "2013-02-22T20:37:32Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > I got a chuckle at the idea that a _novel_ might be unsafe for work. I mean, unless you were reading it aloud. YMMV, but I thought it was one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. If you laugh as hard as I did, somebody may ask why. And it has very “mature” content which may offend others. Anyway, I was kind of using NSFW as a way of saying if strong language, “adult situations”, etc., bothers you, so will this book. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2013, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-skeptics-ever-right-in-popular-entertainment/649630/95 "2013-02-23T03:44:35Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > She had Finn go over the events leading up to his three “miracles” and helped him see that these were ordinary things that happened for totally explicable reasons. > [@jayjay](#): > > If you’re as dim as Finn, at least. This is the guy who thought he got his girlfriend pregnant by ejaculating into the hot tub they were sharing… I don’t know if maybe you misread my post, but the “miraculous” events in the episode in question were explicable to someone who _wasn’t_ stupid, e.g. the football team won the big game because they had a new, better coach. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2013, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-skeptics-ever-right-in-popular-entertainment/649630/96 "2013-02-23T07:31:15Z")
It has really bugged me that recently “Bones” has turned to woo. Originally the main character was so scientific and she was right all the time. Now she has NDEs and other stupid shit on the show. ---
**Author:** ![jrepka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ee59a6/32.png) [@jrepka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jrepka)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-skeptics-ever-right-in-popular-entertainment/649630/97 "2013-02-24T05:04:22Z")
A lot of examples of “anti-woo” seem to be from pre 1980s pop-culture – not that “pro-woo” didn’t exist back then, just that it wasn’t dominant in all entertainment. I believe that the last popular show with a consistently “anti-woo” theme was the original version of Scooby-Doo. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-skeptics-ever-right-in-popular-entertainment/649630/98 "2013-02-24T08:33:41Z")
Although I despised Scooby Doo I do have to give it respect. Just like [Tim Minchin.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-skeptics-ever-right-in-popular-entertainment/649630.md?page=4)