Open access peer review–What does this phrase mean?
Nowadays, with relative ease, citizens can become scientists, and scientists can become artists; all thanks to the ever-changing context of the Internet. We can crowd-source scientific research, meaning that scientists can use the web to gather data in unprecedented ways. This exchange of information between scientist and citizen—via blogs, social media, etc.—is helping scientists all over the world.
Andy Weir, novelist and software engineer, perfectly embodies this current trend: scientists using “open access peer review”. His intentions were experimental. He wanted to solve a problem regarding martian exploration. But this type of research resulted in the emergence of a best-seller book and a block buster film:
“I was sitting around thinking about how to do a human mission to Mars, not for a story but just for the heck of it,” says Weir. “I started thinking about how I would do it and all the things that could go wrong, and I realized it would make a great story. So I made up a protagonist and subjected him to all of it.”–Via
In other words, as far as science fiction films go, The Martian is a very accurate scientific narrative of survival. Many things go wrong during the never-ending battle for survival in our planet, imagine all the things that will not go our way in a place like Mars. And that’s precisely what Weir did: he imagined—as a software engineer, with all the tools that a scientifically literate mind has—all the scenarios that made The Martian so successful.
The Hypertextual Lounge 
My father has talked to me often about the movie. He says he has heard that people are raving over it. But I have lost much of my faith in scientific movies because they almost always aim to please the audience and not the scientific truth. However, I have yet to see “The Martian,” and when I do so I will follow up on the topic.
Now, as mentioned above, open access pier review is a major tool the internet presents us. However, we cannot take everything we read in the web as the truth. We cannot forget that many websites open to public editing suffer “trolling” and other forms of mischief, such as “revenge editing” (inserting false data based on biased views). Ironically, an article on this very subject was posted on the site that may suffer the most from these instances: Wikipedia.
The link to the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia
The information we discuss regarding the cell may be as new as yesterday or as old as when Robert Hooke first saw cork cells. Yet all of the data gathered has undergone rigorous processes of peer review, mostly by fellow scientists, to ensure that what is being taught is the sole scientific truth. Nevertheless, instances of manipulation have reached our current area of study as well. This very month, various scientific publishers had to remove reviews from their papers after they were discovered to be manipulated. The article on the subject is short yet it provides links to the publishers mentioned in it.
The link to the article: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/44228/title/More-Peer-Review-Manipulation/
However, reliable peer reviews do exist. The method used for the gathering of data for “The Martian” shows this exact phenomenon. It is safer to gather well-known people who are willing to look at your scientific paper or provide information without bias. This way, there will always be room for improvement. Another article on the topic was posted on nature.com and even prompted the readers to share their reviews and improve it.
The link to the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia
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Reliability is a pretty big deal in science. But we can rely on Wikipedia, if we use it properly—and by «properly» I mean in a «scholarly» manner. The following passage was taken form this link http://m.livescience.com/32950-how-accurate-is-wikipedia.html:
“In 2005, the peer-reviewed journal Nature asked scientists to compare Wikipedia’s scientific articles to those in Encyclopaedia Britannica—”the most scholarly of encyclopedias,” according to its own Wiki page. The comparison resulted in a tie; both references contained four serious errors among the 42 articles analyzed by experts.
And last year, a study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found that Wikipedia had the same level of accuracy and depth in its articles about 10 types of cancer as the Physician Data Query, a professionally edited database maintained by the National Cancer Institute.Peer review manipulation is a problem.”
——
Your comment reminds me of mayor oil companies denying climate change, and the corrupt scientists helping. I suggest you do research on the Marshall Islands–see how much damage bad science can do.
The “Reliability of Wikipedia” article in Wikipedia is like 3D printers printing 3D printers—very meta.
Great contribution, Arnaldo.
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It took me a while to get to see the movie when it came out, im not a huge fan of scientific movies cause it is all make believe but this really caught my attention. It is the first movie that attempts to be realistic and that is actually about human beings grappling with the problems of exploring Mars. There were things that I recognized from the movie that we talked about in class, one of them was how he took hydrazine from the rocket fuel and dissociated it into nitrogen and hydrogen, which you can do, and he burned the hydrogen with oxygen to make water. That’ll certainly work, but if it was me who were stranded on Mars I would just make water out of the soil. Water is available in its natural state on Mars as ice, soaked into the soil.
The only thing I noticed that was completely impossible was that in “The Martian” the atmosphere is only 1% as thick as Earth’s, a Mars wind of 100mph, which is possible although quite rare on the surface, would only have the same dynamic force as a 10mph wind on Earth. One of the things that I consider it the most important thing was the message it contained “we can do it. If we use our minds, we can take on all these challenges”.
I read that the US space program today is frozen in its tracks. Nasa talks about sending humans to Mars in 2043, but that would be postponing it for another generation. I had a question which is, if its true that we are much closer today to being able to send people to Mars than we were to sending people to the Moon in 1961? This link below gave me a certainty that it can be possible but I still have my doubts.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-05/nasa-is-launching-a-spacecraft-that-will-take-humans-to-mars-correct
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I will not be surprised if the map of Mars appears on future textbooks, considering all that has been happening recently. Yesterday NASA announced a major finding regarding the martian atmosphere; more clues that point to a planet that was very much like our own: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-announce-new-findings-on-fate-of-mars-atmosphere
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This post began with the phrase “citizens can become scientists, and scientists can become artists; all thanks to the ever-changing context of the internet. This phrase was interesting so I decided to look at Google to find some things related to that phrase. I found that Julia King (1989) wrote in The Scientist Magazine that the first time palaeontologist Robert Bakker examined a small one-of-a-kind dinosaur skull at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. He said that skull had something weird that he didn’t knew what it was. The dinosaur was labeled as a “gorgosaur” but for Bakker it was wrong. He decided at the University of Colorado to draw the skull and compare with other skulls. After drawing, he compared and he found out that his feeling was correct. The skull was another type of dinosaur not what it was labeled at the beginning. The point is that Bakker used art skills to use as observations on paper. Also, Andy Weir wrote “The Martian” to try to explain martian exploration and it’s success made it into a great film. Today scientists can use the basics like drawing, writing (book), and technology to create models and explanations to the scientific world.
Link for website: https://www.the.scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/10356
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During the Renaissance, artists and scientists were interchangeable roles. I’m a firm believer in this way of approaching science. Excellent comment, Pablo. You did exactly what I expect from students in this exercise.
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The Internet is an amazing tool for communication, research, and entertainment. The ability for a person to be able to share their ideas with ease is outstanding. In the scientific world, this ability to be able to communicate with common people to gather information is very helpful to the scientist, since this makes scientists have helpers that are also making observations and gathering knowledge, like them. I am sure that this new, constant exchange of information between scientist and citizen will help the scientific community by breaking the boundaries of communication; leading scientists to new things or ideas, and creating a peer review system never seen in mankind. In the link below, there is more information of how the Internet benefits scientists is present.
http://www.unesco.org/most/brochur3.htm
Because of the lack of trading of knowledge in the past, scientists’ ideas were misinterpreted or ignored. If a form of communication, like the Internet, existed at the time when Robert Hooke discovered and named the cell, his research would have probably been discussed earlier than a century later after his discoveries. Also, if the Internet would have existed when Matthias Schleiden, Theodor Schwann, and Rudolf Virchow all contributed to the cell theory, the cell theory would have been formulated earlier than 1838, since all three scientists would have probably interacted which each other’s research and ideas. For more information about the cell theory, click on the link below.
http://edtech2.boisestate.edu/pattymcginnis/506/Cell_Site/506_cell_theory.html
One of my favorite movie genres is science fiction. Thanks to open peer review and the exchange of information, I can ask questions of the movie and get reliable answers. It is astonishing how easy it is, compared to the past, how media and forums explain ideas, gather thoughts, and educate.
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It’s important to use technology for the benefit of human culture. Values that we treasure, such as democracy & freedom, depend on proper use of very powerful tools—such as the printing press, the atom bomb, and during the 21st century, the Internet. A lot of good science fiction has been written with this in mind; cautionary tales that make us think about ethical responsibilities of human beings as stewards—not lords—of this weird and unique planet we call home. If you like science fiction and reading; I recommend you read Kurt Vonnegut’s novels.
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I wanted to watch this movie ever since the trailer came out, but when I found out that most of it was scientifically accurate, I definitely had to watch it. Historical, science fiction, and “based on true events” films tend to alter information for art and storytelling’s sake, which is understandable to an extent. The Martian manages to do what very few movies have done: tell a very good story in which its events could happen in the near future, while still being entertaining, informative, and beautiful.
I loved how the scientific conversations and scenarios were complex yet understandable and easy to follow, they made me feel involved with the plot. The technology in the film was very believable; the set designers and art directors even created replicas of the Mars Pathfinder and Sojourner rover, both playing important roles in the movie, proving that older technology can be just as helpful as modern technology.
The following article compares the technology seen in The Martian vs. the technology NASA is developing for future Mars exploration: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nine-real-nasa-technologies-in-the-martian
I believe most things are art when looked at from a certain perspective, and The Martian in a near perfect example of “scientific art”.
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In the movie The Martian you can see how science can help a human survive in another planet. This movie has many scenes in which you can see how science and technology helped him survive. An example of this is when he takes parts of an old rover, puts them in a new one, and can communicate with Earth. You can also see how he made potatoes in a place where nothing grows. Also, he put solar panels to absorb light energy from the sun.
Nowadays thanks to the internet, you can research about anything you want. Technology has played a very important role in our advancement in science, as well as other fields. Today scientist can use models to represent their ideas, just like ordinary citizens can conduct experiments; all thanks to the internet.
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The Martian—Matt Damon—took an interdisciplinary approach: botany, engineering, math. A true epic hero.
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I believe this movie is a great way to expose and present science (botany, astronomy, physics, etc.) to the world. Most people do not share the love that we have, for these types of sciences and creating a plot that is appealing to everyone is a great and ingenious way of presenting science to everyone. Social media is another clever way of presenting science to a society that sadly and slowly loses interest for this things. Although not 100% accurate, the movie is completely believable. Some accuracy had to be given up in order to create a plot that would sell tickets, because in the end, unfortunately, the movie industry is a business.
This types of movies, documentaries, short film, etc. not only appeal to a main audience but it also promotes critical thinking within the scientific world. It opens a door to creativity, which is the basis for science. Like American psychologist once said “Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of the imagination.” I consider this movie to also promote audacity of the imagination, quality which many people lack in the present.
Although I greatly respect and admire the creators and cast of this movie, I have to be objective. It seems incomprehensible for me that we are trying to find a way of surviving of on Mars while we can barely survive and co-exist with each other here on Earth. I believe that, like said in the short video presented in the post, we should do like the great astronauts. “Pick the most important problem, solve it first, and then solve each other problem in turns.”
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When we consider the history of cinema—which happened parallel to many events in the history of science—, the portrayal of science has come a long way. Many of the scientists that are working all around the world right now, owe much of their enthusiasm to sci-fi films like these. I’m sure that the next generation of astronauts will cite The Martian as an inspiration, the same way astronauts in the XXth century mentioned Star Trek.
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I had the privilege to go see “The Martian” a few weeks ago, and it was an extraordinary film. One of the things that I loved about the film was Mark’s humor and his ability to keep his wit and humor, given his incredibly harsh circumstances. Another thing I loved about the film was that it didn’t sugarcoat any of the scientific elements of the plot. In most science fiction films, the science is sort of glossed over and not really explained, for the sake of some viewers who don’t really like the scientific aspect of science fiction, but merely for the action of the movie.
Even though some of the scientific aspects couldn’t actually happen, as shown in the video above, they tried to stick to hardcore facts and things that could actually happen. Because of this, “The Martian” is one of the best science fiction movies I have ever seen, and hope to see it again in the future.
As it is mentioned in the article above, the Internet is a new way for a scientist to share information with his or her peers. The Internet is a vast computer network linking smaller computer networks worldwide. It includes commercial, educational, governmental, and other networks. The vast fact that the Internet is worldwide, it immediately serves as an amazing platform for scientists to share their work, as it can be viewed by anyone anywhere. That is one of the many reasons why the Internet is one of the best tools of the century.
Definition of the Internet: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/internet
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The Martian is one of the most interesting movies I have seen in a while. I might nitpick the film, especially when it comes to the dust storms, but I praise the film on almost every other aspect presented. It also pleases me that The Martian has been so successful, despite the fact that I will admit that the film is long and will confuse or bore people who are not scientifically literate or don’t watch a lot of science fiction. I’ve noticed this trend of space films recently that are promoting science literacy through science fiction and are getting praised by the public and critics alike. This proves that the general public enjoys hardcore science fiction like Star Trek as much as the space operas like Star Wars, even if the Star Trek reboot films have had more action than the previous movies. Star Wars: The Force Awakens is guaranteed to be more successful than The Martian, but I appreciate that these past few years we have been given all sorts of films from Ex Machina to Pacific Rim, and The Martian to eventually Star Wars.
http://io9.com/were-living-in-a-new-golden-age-of-space-movies-1737870779
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/nasa-martian-movie/408844/
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This movie is one of the best films I have seen in a while. Not only is it for the most part scientifically accurate but it was coincidentally released in cinemas on the same week that liquid water was discovered in Mars. I say mostly because as is explained in the video the dust storms were extremely exaggerated but I can forgive the movie for that hiccup because they needed to get Mark stuck there somehow. The Martian is also a great way to introduce the general audience to the world of science as it is very accessible and people are normally too lazy to look anything up on the internet and as I said earlier it is mostly accurate when it comes to the facts. I recommend this movie to any fan of science or of movies in general because of its interesting plot, like-able characters, and how it takes actual science and makes it interesting to the public.
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When I first saw the trailer for The Martian I thought it was going to be the Hollywood version of science fiction that is action without the actual science. When I saw the movie at the theater I was surprised to see that the science aspect was not taken out and many of the things that were shown could happen in real life. Like always some things are exaggerated for viewers to enjoy like for example the violent winds that came rushing at the beginning of the movie aren’t that strong in real life as we saw in the comparison video in class. But other things such as when Matt grown potatoes on Mars which was unimaginable back then shows us that we are advancing intellectualy as human beings and we could find a way to live on Mars.
The Internet is a wonderful place to dicover and learn new things about anything you can think of right at your fingertips but we need to know how to use it wisely.
http://apecsec.org/pros-and-cons-of-internet/
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In the movie, “The Martian” you can see how life can be started in a planet with such harsh conditions with the use of technology and resources. Matt Damon has created an amazing character, a botanist strayed in a planet where nothing ever grows. He was able to make water and grow potatoes from nothing. By using this character, botany might be revealed to many and become to grow more due to its publicity in the movie. I was surprised at how much true science is involved in the film, even though it has its fictional science, like the sandstorm which is impossible for it to be that strong, but apart from that, the movie was fascinating, the combination of science and humor kept me entertained during the whole film. I appreciate a movie that not only is smart, but makes me want to watch over and over again.
Check out this link: http://www.ibtimes.com/pulse/science-martian-how-accurate-matt-damons-dilemma-red-planet-2123087
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Science Fiction films, although not necessarily true always, do provide an introduction to topics that can inspire people to, at the very least, do research. Many careers have been possible because of the inspiration that scifi provides.
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The Martian is an excelent representation of how the advancement of technology can benefit humans and our discoveries. The movie makes us see or serves as a model of how Mars can be, at times it exaggerated, like the storm, but it is another motivation or inspiration for people to study and learn more about the unknown.
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The Martian is one of the best movies of science fiction Hollywood has developed. It may has some elements of Hollywood but many of them have been examined by the NASA itself. This movie opens now to many hypothesis and studies about the planet. In The Martian it can be seen how technology is developing and how humans are open to the posssibility that one day we can travel to Mars.
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As stated before, “Nowadays, citizens can become scientists and scientists can become artists; all thanks to the ever-changing context of the Internet.” This serves as an example of peer review. Peer review is basically when scientists post their recent discoveries on the Internet, in blogs, websites or scientific journals. It exists with the purpose that other scientists or non-scientists can look at the latest results and share their thoughts, ideas, or disapprovals about the scientist’s experiment and data recollected.
If this type of communication had existed back then, I believe many breakthroughs would have been made faster and/or earlier in time since scientists would have had the ability to communicate with one another and share their thoughts and experiments and maybe combine ideas that everyone thought were ludicrous at the time.
It also means that nowadays you don’t have to be a scientist in order to make breakthroughs in science. Some people accidentally make scientific breakthroughs every day but it doesn’t mean those people were scientists.
As the phrase also says, scientists can become artists. As the Scientific American Blog states: “scientists and artists are similar in many ways, in fact they are more alike than different. They are both dedicated to asking the big questions and searching deeply for these answers. They both fail at some point but learn from their mistakes, and there is always continuous feedback for learning and doing.”
The Martian is a film about a group of astronauts that go on an expedition to Mars and when they get hit by a storm they leave. One of their crew had been hit by debris and was left behind since everyone assumed he was dead. This film is about Mark, the one left behind, and all the challenges he has to face while living on Mars. It shows all the things that can go wrong and all the things he has to do to survive in this planet. An example he has to challenge is when he realizes he will run out of food and decides to grow potatoes in Martian soil using the wastes of his crewmates. This shows how far a person will go in order to survive and the limits he will reach. At the end he was able to communicate with NASA and his crewmates, which were the ones that brought him home.
Link from website: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/artists-and-scientists-
more-alike-than-different/
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The Martian is about this botanist, Mark Watney, that is left for dead on the red planet following a scientifically unnatural but narratively necessary windstorm, Mark must hunker down for the long haul, knowing that any rescue mission is years away. Since he is quite literally “the best botanist on the planet”, and after declaring that he’ll have to apply science in the complicated situation he finds himself in, he soon discovers that it is indeed possible to grow potatoes in his feces, and this is one of the many things he does in the film. The movie continues to show his journey and struggle. This film is very rich in scientific value because many of the scientific elements in this movie were reviewed by NASA itself. I would highly recommend this film to any who is interested in watching a good science fiction movie.
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This movie is no doubt awesome, i think it might be most realistic space exploration movies ever made. Whenever a new science fiction movie comes out, there’s often a lot of reviews about how “accurate” it is. But a science-fiction film’s “accuracy” shouldn’t depend only on the science and technology, but also on the presentation of scientists and their culture. Thinking this way “The Martian” might be the most realistic space movie of all time.
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The Martian is definitely one of the best Science Fiction movies with surprising accurate scientific facts and investigations. It is not only a good way of learning more the planet that could sustain human life in the near future but it also helps us imagine and help us learn what could really happen if someone went to live in Mars. The movie does not only portray the situations and solutions that could happen with any problems that arise while being there but it also portrays it in a fun way making us learn of this new planet and its wonderful aspects in a new and entertaining way. It also helps us learn how scientist that would eventually travel to Mars have to take in account all these different situations when preparing to go. In this link is a group of scientist that have been in Hawaii isolated to learn a little more how being isolated in Mars would be.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/expeditions/to-mars-via-hawaii/
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This movie is a great example of how science can be fun and interesting at the same time. When I first saw the trailer for this movie, I believed that it was going to be one of those movies that really only focused on the action over the science. I later realized that the movie, although action packed, focused considerably more on actual science and facts rather than relying on only action. For me, it was interesting to see how the protagonist used potatoes to survive long enough until he was rescued. I wasn’t really sure if a man could actually survive by only eating potatoes. This got me curious, and I did some research and found that a man wouldn’t be able to live that long only eating potatoes because they lack most of the vitamins necessary for survival. This link provides a better explanation on why a man couldn’t survive on potatoes and also provides other food sources that would have probably been better for him to bring on his expedition.
http://www.livescience.com/52438-the-martian-potatoes-health-effects.html?li_source=LI&li_medium=most-popular
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I saw the movie recently and I thought it was amazing. There were many interesting facts that made me question the resemblance that this film had with real science. I thought that the importance in this movie, is not because of the the acting or the setting, but the machinery and the development of the crops. To actually grow food in another planet, where it is said to be impossible, and to actually find out that in NASA they announced that it is possible. The facts from the film are not all true, but it does have resemblance to true science. Makes us wonder and think that in a matter of time we will see an astronaut in Mars and accomplish things beyond our imagination and how sci-fi films are just getting ahead of what will happen in the future.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nine-real-nasa-technologies-in-the-martian
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Another great story related to ‘The Martian’ is ‘Interstellar’ where a father leaves his daughter in a dusted and dying Earth to go to outer space and find a better world out there to save the human kind, little did everyone know, he found it. It’s a science fiction story of course but it reflects so much truth about the universe we live in.
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I like how this movie actually shows the role of Biology and how you can apply it to worst case scenerios in space particularly since that’s what the movie is about. But most people would not have known that biology knowledge would be needed in space and thanks to this movie people can see how it can even save your life.
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I think it’s amazing how a man can become a scientist by just thinking. All Andy Weir did was think of a human mission to Mars and he ended up writing a best-selling novel. I think “The Martian” was so successful because Weir used accurate scientific facts and used them in an interesting setting and situation. I was at the edge of my seat watching a movie, but I was also learning about biology and astronomy, and that is a hard thing to accomplish. The movie is so scientifically accurate that NASA has been using it as marketing campaign for their manned missions to Mars. This proves how anyone can become a scientist and an artist like Andy Weir did. He was a very smart man because he used a recurring, interesting, scientific theme and wrote a novel about it.
The following article shows scientific facts and the science-fiction present in “The Martian”:
http://www.iflscience.com/space/how-accurate-martian-9-things-movie-got-right-and-wrong
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I think that as a writer you are entitled to write whatever you want and come up with whatever idea. However, if you use an existing idea such as scientific facts or to be more specific, the mysterious planet called Mars, you have to reach certain points in order to make the people understand it. With science, you have to be precise in not only the facts but also in everything because you have to keep in mind that you wanna attract scientists to watch this movie. For a sci-fi movie writer, the movie or the creation itself is their experiment and they would want scientists to evaluate, peer review in other words.
Scientists, at one point, demanded directors to make a accurate movie and I personally think they did achieve the goal. Obviously we can’t expect everything to be by the book because it’s Hollywood as they would say. The video above satisfies many to the point where the movie is nominated for three Golden Globes.
Articles used for comment
http://time.com/4055413/martian-movie-review-science-accuracy-matt-damon/
http://www.space.com/31342-the-martian-movie-golden-globes.html
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The movie “The Martian” presents a very modern aspect of how science and technology help us interpret life in the Mars. This movie is very scientifically accurate, but shows some flaws. In the movie they exaggerates the reality of a dust storm in Mars and they failed on the portrait of the gravity in Mars. They were very accurate in the rovers, the portrait of space travel, and the trail of NASA and the astronauts. In my opinion, “The Martian” is a great way to attract the curiosity of the young generation into science.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/olympia-lepoint/the-martian-movie-review-_2_b_8344242.html
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Reference: http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-martian
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I have not seen the Martian, but now that I now that it is pretty scientifically accurate I will probably see it. I, generally, do not like movies that are not scientifically accurate since every time I see one I have to endure my mother or father’s comments on how wrong it is and how many mistakes it made. This is one of the reasons I liked Interstellar so much. My mother was just as mind blown as I was with it and I could finally watch a movie in peace.
At first I thought that there was no way that Interstellar was scientifically accurate, but then I read Neil deGrasse Tyson’s comments on it. He said that it is pretty scientific accurate. He says that in this movies we can see a few of Einstein’s theories like the Relativity of Time. I did not think that time could pass faster or slower somewhere else before I saw this movie, but now I know better. I also really like movies that are scientifically accurate because it gives me a more entertaining perspective on something I would ordinarily consider boring.
http://www.slashfilm.com/neil-degrasse-tyson-interstellar-comments/
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The Martian is an excelent representation of how the advancement of technology can benefit humans and our discoveries. The movie makes us see or serves as a model of how Mars can be, at times it exaggerated, like the storm, but it is another motivation or inspiration for people to study and learn more about the unknown.
http://m.space.com/30831-the-martian-most-realistic-space-movie-ever.html
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It’s hard to imagine that Ridley Scott, creator of such far-off ideas as the Xenomorphs, actually directed a movie as accurate as this. This movie, in more ways than one, reminds me of the hit Sci-Fi movie from last year, “Interstellar”. Both movies are set in outer space, follow similar protagonists, and feature bonchilling and mystical soundtracks. However, Interstellar focused on several concepts based on Quantum Physics, a field that often leans on the inaccurate side of things. The Martian, however, is based on technological advances that are much closer to home. It does take some liberty to drive the story, but every nut and bolt of the martian machines is explained in logical ways, that make these advances feel like they could show up in a couple of years.
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As mentioned many times in the above comments, I too am not a huge fan of scientific movies because of the fact that many times they introduce the element of fiction and they pass on to be very unrealistic. After hearing my grandfather, who has a Ph.D and is very well versed in the scientific field, say that he thought the movie was great and very realistic, I just had to go and watch it for myself.
I have to say that the movie was fantastic and I thought that everything portrayed was excellent. I can now see how open access peer review is so successful and does so well in the scientific spectrum of the internet. By relying on a vast amount of knowledgable people, the author was able to portray, with scientific accuracy, how the theme and events in the movie were to actually take place on Mars.
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I think the martian is an extrordinary scientific movie as it shows an scenario that could happen in real life. It also shows the possibilities of our technology and the advances we could make to populate a desolate planet, like Mars. The only thing i found weird was that the movie contradicted itself. First we start of with a massive sandstorm but later he is able to leave the planet without a roof. In the movie they said this was possible because of Mars thin atmosphere, but if that the case, then how was a storm of that magnitude possible. Even with this i consider the Martian a great film.
http://www.popsci.com/why-martians-deadly-sandstorm-was-impossible
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While I watched The Martian I asked myself if everything that occurred could really happen in real life. Watching the video that you put plus the link below, I got my answer and it explains all the science behind the movie. In the link, it shows examples similar to those in the videos and it describes how likely it would happen in real life and all the differences between real life and fantasy. I was amazed as I saw the movie observing how the protagonist was left behind in Mars for years and he got around with the little amount of tools he had and found a way to form life and look for a way to survive in a planet where there is no life, people, or enough oxygen. It was very impressive and a very good movie where it is based on real science and teaches information about the planet Mars.
http://space.gizmodo.com/science-of-the-martian-the-good-the-bad-and-the-fasc-1734726471
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Science fiction based on science facts is usually a good idea. In the case of The Martian, the science fiction used was perfect to drive the narrative of the film–and this film is about, more than anything, survival–which is the never-ending story of life. So, it makes perfect sense that our hero was a biologist.
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