True and False

From an essay by Jeremy Hsu of LiveScience for U.S. News & World Report:

 An antimatter explosion threatens to level the Vatican in the movie adaptation of the thriller "Angels and Demons," but real-world physicists are unfazed by this plot.

The story features "Da Vinci Code" hero Robert Langdon racing to recover an antimatter capsule stolen from the CERN particle physics facility in Switzerland. Researchers first figured out how to create and trap antimatter particles at CERN, which gave author Dan Brown the inspiration for his story.
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One physicist doesn't find CERN's unexpected publicity from the story upsetting. On the contrary, he's rather pleased.

"I always say that what Dan Brown did for the Roman Catholic Church in 'The Da Vinci Code,' he did for me and my research with 'Angels and Demons,'" said Gerald Gabrielse, a Harvard physicist who currently leads an international research team at CERN.

Gabrelse's comment is accurate to some degree in this sense: Angels & Demons has sparked a bit of interest in physics, antimatter, and CERN. Never mind that Brown got everything wrong—that, of course, is another similarity.

But Gabrelse's remark is quite false in this sense: while Angels & Demons presents science (in general) and CERN (specifically) in a positive light, The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons both are almost unremmittingly negative and damning in their portrayals of the Catholic Church.

What would Gabrelse or other scientists think, I wonder, if Brown had written a novel that portrayed modern science as backwards, bloody, narrowminded, repressive, and morally bankrupt? Or had penned a best-selling story that implied science was based on lies, superstition, falsehoods, and massive conspiracies? Which had the hero claiming science was the enemy of truth and progress? Or had portrayed leading scientists as liars, charlatans, or mythological figures without much real basis in historical fact? And then, to top it off, what if Brown had insisted in interviews and on his website that this novel was accurate, well-researched, and rooted in a deep respect and love for the truth?

Then again, The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons are just novels, so I have no idea why a scientist would commenting on them, or why a news magazine would be writing a science-related article about them...

Comments

[Cecilia]

On the other hand, the sheer implausibility of the claims in AAD and DVC might prompt some people to investigate Catholicism more seriously, perhaps even drawing them closer to the Church. That's how it was for me with Opus Dei. I was absolutely flabbergasted by what I heard about the Work from people talking about the DaVinci Code, so I decided to explore it for myself just to see what the fuss was about. I'm now a cooperator with Opus Dei and am very thankful for the formation and spiritual help it has given me. So in a way, Dan Brown has inadvertently helped me become deeper in my faith. Talk about unintended consequences!

[Ed Peters]

A&D is getting absolutely trashed by some major secular reviewers. Also, they seem to be revising their earlier gushing over TDVC. Interesting.

[Charles E Flynn]

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/reviews/2009-05-13-angels-and-demons_N.htm

[Charles E Flynn]

A wittier review:

http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/movies/15ange.html?ref=movies

[Ed Peters]

I wonder, is some of the honesty we see in ripping A&D the result of the fact that so many SCIENCE blunders were committed in the plot, such that the press knows that scientists could and would laugh out loud at the film. TDVC, well, thems just clerics, what do they know? But scientists, well, careful boys what you say, they can hit back.

[Charles E Flynn]

Oops, a "D" from Greydanus:

http://www.decentfilms.com/sections/reviews/angelsanddemons.html

[Howard Richards]

Don't worry: There are plenty of books, movies, television shows, etc. that show scientists as corrupt, self-centered, or basically stupid. Even H.G. Wells was guilty of that bias. Just read The First Men in the Moon, where the scientist was blissfully unaware of any use his work might have until a writer(!) clued him in.

Even then, Wells got it wrong. A gravity shield would be much more useful for building a perpetual motion machine. (That is also why it can't work the way Wells wanted it to.)