When FBI Agent Renee Walker attempted to revive a car accident victim on the popular television show 24 last season, the victim had no chance.  Agent Walker only pushed weakly a few times on the victim’s chest before giving up.  Her compressions were shallow, her timing too slow, and her demeanor glamorous—but distracted.  It’s no wonder the patient died.

24 CPR from Meredith Sorensen on Vimeo.

In real life, effective cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) looks brutal—and it should.  In order to keep blood moving and provide oxygen in patients whose hearts stop unexpectedly, chest compressions have to be forceful and fast.  Rescuers must assume a stiff-armed, dominating posture above the victim, who must be lying flat on a hard surface.  Rescuers must push on the patient’s chest hard enough to actually compress the heart, meaning the entire chest wall should be depressed by 2 inches—about the width of an 800-page paperback.  That’s a big distance for bones to move, and ribs often snap.  The compressions must be given at an exhausting pace—ideally 100 per minute—and continued until medical help arrives.  It may sound violent, but, as Agent Walker showed, gentle CPR does not save lives.

In fact, the CPR technique used by actors in television shows and movies rarely would be good enough to save a real patient.  That’s a problem because the entertainment industry reaches far more people than the American Heart Association or local emergency services, the organizations that offer formal training in CPR.  Indeed, 70-92% of the general public reports that they receive most of their information about CPR from television.  If they see it wrong, they will do it wrong.

Unlike most medical interventions that are based on the skill of specially-trained medical professionals, successful CPR depends on knowledgeable members of the public.  After a person’s heart stops, CPR must be started within 4 minutes—preferably sooner—in order to prevent serious damage to the brain, heart, and other vital organs.  Even the fastest emergency medical services rarely arrive that quickly.  So, the burden of initiating timely and effective resuscitation efforts falls to lay people—the same people who admit to learning about CPR primarily from television.

Although doing chest compressions is a kinetic experience, effective CPR also looks different from ineffective CPR.  Proper technique starts with positioning, which is easily observable.  Rescuers should kneel or stand over the victim, place the heel of one hand in the middle of the victim’s chest between the nipples, and overlap the other hand over the first for reinforcement.  With straight arms and locked elbows, rescuers push forcefully on the breastbone using the weight of their entire upper body to depress the chest by two inches—a distance big enough to see.  Any shallower and the compression won’t generate enough pressure in the heart to squeeze blood out to the rest of the body.  After every compression, the chest must be allowed to recoil, or bounce all the way back to its normal position.  This allows the heart to refill.  Uninterrupted compressions given at the rate of 100 per minute promote blood flowing forward.

It would be easy to show these essential components of CPR on film, and yet producers rarely do.  Actors often give weak chest compressions with bent elbows.  On an episode of Baywatch, David Hasselhoff teaches ten other lifeguards to give CPR.  Their arms are tanned and muscular, but none of them are appropriately straight.  In other episodes of Baywatch as well as in episodes of Lost, the actors correctly lock their elbows, but do not push nearly hard enough.  Their shoulders merely twitch or their heads bob rhythmically, but they do not actually use their upper body strength to compress the victims’ chests.  Close-up shots of the patients show no depression or recoil of the chest.  Timing of compressions on television also varies too widely.  In general, they are too slow.  Nowhere is this more pronounced than in Friday the 13^th: Jason Lives, in which the actress playing Megan gives Tommy one weak chest compression every four seconds.  Miraculously, Tommy recovers to sit up and embrace his savior.

On television, CPR often serves as an entrée to sensual scenes.  Rescue breathing frequently morphs into making out when the attractive victims simultaneously regain consciousness and lust for their rescuers.  Interestingly, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, which figures so prominently in fictional CPR scenes, actually matters much less than chest compressions in terms of physiology.  The official American Heart Association algorithm still teaches rescuers to give two breaths after every 30 chest compressions, but recent studies suggest that survival rates are similar when bystanders give compressions only.  If Hollywood portrayed CPR as mere rib crunching, they may have fewer excuses for unlikely pairings of characters to lock lips, but the survival of these characters would be far more believable.

CPR on television has come under fire before.   TV shows and movies depict survival rates that far exceed even the most optimistic rates in real life. At least 75% of fictional film characters survive CPR, whereas only about 40% of real patients do—and many of them suffer from serious complications.  A 1996 New England Journal of Medicine article criticized television shows for that very reason, claiming that inaccurate depiction of survival after CPR on TV leads to unrealistic expectations by patients and families.  While this may be true, the outcome of CPR on screen matters far less than how well the actors do it.  Perhaps if their technique were perfect, a 75% survival rate would not be quite so far-fetched.

Some producers and directors might think that depicting CPR correctly cramps creativity, but this is simply not the case.  In a scene from Season 5 of The Office, Michael Scott organizes a CPR class for his employees after one of them suffers a heart attack at work.  The roughly four-minute scene delivers plenty of laughs and pokes gentle fun at the American Red Cross and the stereotypically uptight instructor.  However, it also packs in several accurate and memorable facts—such as the initial assessment of unconscious patients (Airway, Breathing, and Circulation) and timing compressions to the tune of the Bee Gees’ song Stayin’ Alive (a recommendation published in a real study from the University of Illinois).  Not to mention, the actors’ techniques are reasonably good.

The Office CPR from Meredith Sorensen on Vimeo.

Despite this model example, there is no real incentive for the entertainment industry to change.  They include CPR in order to heighten drama, not to educate the lay public.  Hollywood has been criticized for other portrayals of behaviors that negatively affect public health, most notably for glamorizing smoking.  Proving the strength of this subliminal message, however, is impossible.  Similarly, proving that modeling effective CPR on film actually saves real lives cannot be done.  Consequently, Hollywood would have to modify their depiction of it based upon an altruistic assumption.

Granted, fictional television shows and movies are not training videos, but a few simple changes would drastically improve the accuracy of CPR on screen.  If actors consistently straightened their arms, locked their elbows, pushed harder, and pushed faster, it would provide a positive model for the public.  Then, in the event of a real emergency, people would be more likely to save lives by doing CPR “as seen on TV.”

Scrubs used to be the best medical show on television by far.  Past tense.  Season 9 premiered with two episodes that aired December 1 on ABC, and I want to sue the producers for malpractice.  The show has made too many changes to maintain its integrity, but too few changes to give it an entirely new identity.  Instead, this bastardized mish-mash demotes Scrubs to a mediocre medical drama on par with all the others.

I knew many original cast members had left.  I knew that the premise of this new season was to create a show about medical students based at Sacred Heart Hospital.  I still thought it had potential.  After all, Frasier was a pretty successful spin-off from Cheers.  And, in real life, medical school is a recipe for funny:  take a bunch of smart people, mix in a lot of stress and a little competition, and throw them into some awfully awkward situations.  Unfortunately, this new iteration of Scrubs completely misses the mark.

Not surprisingly, the best part about the new Scrubs is the old cast.  Dr. Cox is still hilarious.  As he has for the past eight years, John C. McGinley thrives in his role as a ranting, lovable jerk.  Kelso, played by Ken Jenkins, is still an amusingly cantankerous old man.  The bromance between J.D. (Zach Braff) and Turk (Donald Faison) continues to flourish.  However, even these familiar elements feel a bit empty without the supporting cast.  Brief cameos by Sarah Chalke (Elliot) and Neil Flynn (the Janitor) weren’t enough to infuse their personalities into the show, and without Judy Reyes (Carla), Turk’s character seems a little flat.

Still, my disappointment goes much deeper than a sentimental yearning for an original cast reunion.  I was willing to give this version of the show a chance to make it on its own merit.  It’s just that the new characters simply don’t cut it.  Whereas the old crew featured complex characters, each with annoying traits balanced by endearing ones, this group is a bunch of irritating caricatures.  The writers have gotten several of the med student stereotypes right: the overeager but insecure Lucy, the entitled Cole, and the slacker Drew.  (Even if they are going for one-dimensional generalizations, though, they’ve missed a few.  What about the bookworm who spends every second of her spare time in the library or the guy who is so socially awkward you wonder how he’ll ever interact with his classmates, let alone his patients, or the gunner who asks everyone else about their MCAT scores on the first day?)  The point is, every medical school class has its “types,” but as a Scrubs viewer, it’s no fun being able to categorize them already.  Undoubtedly, the characters will evolve on the show, but there’s nothing surprising about any of them at the start, and that’s just plain boring.

Photo Larry at http://www.photolarry.com/

Ironically, even though the show now has a female narrator in Kerry Bishe’s Lucy Bennett, the Scrubs women have taken a fall.  For the first eight seasons of Scrubs, Chalke’s Elliot (while admittedly insecure at times) showed that women do not have to give up their femininity to succeed in a professional career.  Reyes’ Carla was a strong positive role model—an intelligent advocate for her patients, a loyal girlfriend to Elliot, and a supportive wife, all while maintaining her own independence.  Lucy, at least so far, is a simpering sycophant.  Even in her attempts to stand up to Dr. Cox in the climax of the first episode, she appeared weak and annoying.  I was secretly rooting for Dr. Cox to crush her.  The other two developing female leads fall short as well.  The Australian medical student may eventually show some spunk, but for now she is simply a vapid butt of Dr. Cox’s jokes.  And, Denise, a holdover from Season 8, is occasionally funny, but generally an unlikable crude mannish hussy.

Speaking of which, the show’s degeneration into Gray’s Anatomy-like debauchery is also irksome.  Of course, the characters’ love lives were important sub-plots in the first eight seasons (and real-life hospital romances are common gossip fodder), but now undeveloped flings seem to be taking center stage on Scrubs.  Lucy sleeps with Cole before we really know either character.  Denise and Drew’s affair comes out of nowhere (and therefore Denise’s emotional attachment is unconvincing).  And, whereas “The Todd’s” sexual innuendo has been consistently funny for eight years, Cole’s sleaziness takes it a step too far.   Sex sells, and Scrubs has sold out.

The saddest thing about the new Scrubs is its divorce from the truth.  Once widely recognized among medical professionals as the most accurate medical show on television, the writers seem to have stopped doing the research for Season 9.  Especially for the first four seasons as the main characters progressed through residency, the show was spot-on in terms of the tasks they did, the types of patients they saw, and the fears they had.  Only two episodes in, Season 9’s script has lost that completely.  Granted the feeding frenzy over the “crappy pizza” during orientation and the juvenile “do-we-have-to-take-notes” scene are universal medical school experiences, but it’s pretty sad when those were the most truthful parts.

For one thing, residents never serve as teaching assistants or RAs, like Denise is doing in the show.  Residents take care of patients, and while they are expected to teach medical students during their clinical rotations, they absolutely do not help out in the classroom.  And, most medical schools don’t even have conventional dorms, so the idea of a resident acting as a dorm counselor is absurd.  If the writers felt compelled to create a college scene, maybe this should be a show about pre-meds.

Infinitely more disappointing is the lack of accuracy within the hospital itself.  Medical students do not see patients right away.  At most medical schools, students spend the first two years in the classroom and the anatomy lab.  When they do go on rounds or see people in clinics, the patient encounters are generally awkward contrivances rather than actual contributions to care.  They practice on “fake patients” (i.e. actors who are paid by medical schools to pose as patients at scheduled sessions) and shadow “real” doctors, but they do not actually participate in patient care until the third year of medical school.  Consequently, it is exceedingly unlikely that Dr. Cox would even see these students in a hospital-setting, and it is downright impossible that Lucy could have recognized her group’s cadaver as one of “her” former patients.  Not only is this frustrating for viewers who once admired the show for its authenticity, the writers have stupidly stolen their own built-in narrative.  These do-it-all med students have no room to grow.  If they’re already fully functioning members of the team in their first days of medical school, what on earth will they do for the next four years?

We can only hope this lame version of Scrubs won’t last that long. In the Season 9 premiere, Denise rounds on a comatose patient and says, “Man, I wish his family would just let him die.”  I wish producer Bill Lawrence had been graceful enough to do the same for his show.

When most of us hear “oil spill”, we think gooey black death on the surface of the ocean.  But Crude, a documentary directed by Joe Berlinger, focuses on a major oil spill on land—the great, wobbling black pits dumped by Chevron in the Ecuadorian Amazon.  The film, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and is only now getting limited screenings across the country, tells the story of the legal drama over those billion of gallons of oil.  But the real story of Crude isn’t the environmental catastrophe—it’s the lengths the poor villagers have to go to compete with the rich oil companies.  Along the way, the “good guys” learn to stretch a buck, grab some media attention and exploit the power of celebrity.  Perhaps Berlinger could have learned something from the plucky lawyers he follows.  Crude is a capable and important documentary, but without slick production values and a media juggernaut behind it, the film has been playing to a lot of empty theaters.

Which is not to say Crude is a bad film—far from it—and it tells a story that Americans haven’t heard nearly enough about.  From 1972 to 1993, Texaco, now owned by Chevron, dumped billions of gallons of oil in tributaries of the Amazon River in Ecuador.  Cancer rates among the local people soared.  Crude follows the class action lawsuit brought by 30,000 villagers against Chevron through two lawyers—Pablo Fajardo, a young Ecudorian lawyer who’s never tried a case before, and Steve Danzinger, a street-smart schmoozer from the U.S.  Berlinger is patient with the myriad details of the case, spooling out new information only as it comes up in the lawyers’ arguments.  While things feel a bit jumpy at times, Berlinger manages to fit a lot into this two hour documentary and still deftly maintain the tension of a legal drama.

The film is certainly compelling.  Where it falters—and, I suspect, why it hasn’t gotten wider release—is in making the movie entertaining rather than simply enlightening.  Crude is almost exclusively composed of jerky, grainy camera shots of people’s faces.  Music and humor, which have become a key component of many commercially successful docs like No Impact Man and pretty much all of Michael Moore’s ouvre, are absent in Crude.  Berlinger also missed a major opportunity by not taking more beautiful shots of the exotic landscape of the Amazon.  And save for one lovely song in the opening, the indigenous people the lawyers are fighting to save get next to no screen time, unless they’re talking about cancer.  As a filmmaker, Berlinger should know that it’s often images that truly capture heart and minds.  Iconic photos of oil-coated seagulls and grime-caked fish have made ocean oil spills household words in the U.S.  Berlinger should have visually captured the ecological destruction in Ecuador.  But except for some wisps of oil on the water and a couple dead chickens, we’re left taking the villagers’ subtitled word for it.

That leaves Crude a well-told story sorely lacking in pizzazz.  Without it, Crude can’t compete commercially with the gorgeous images of Planet Earth, the funny family drama of No Impact Man, or the extreme gonzo journalism that gave the independent doc The Cove a media boost.  No Impact Man, after all, has been playing at local theaters for months.  Crude, which grossed $80,000 in its first four weeks, is in Boston for just two weekends, at the Museum of Fine Arts—not exactly a big-time movie venue.

This is especially ironic because the film itself is practically a guide to how the little guy can get noticed.  Danzinger, the American lawyer, is well aware of the odds they’re up against, and he knows how to play the game.  He dictates lines to Amazonian villagers testifying in the US and yells until he gets the President of Ecuador to visit the oil pits.  “We still haven’t found a way to break through the consciousness of the American people,” he laments, even though the case had been going on for 13 years by then.  Danzinger’s coupe d’etat, and the climax of the movie, is when he gets Trudie Styler, the wife of Sting, to visit the afflicted villages.  This leads to the movie’s most nauseating moments, when Police sings “Message in a Bottle” over a montage of puffy-lipped and vacant-eyed Styler visiting oil pits and Amazon villages.  The scene is both a stomach-turning paean to celebrity and a reminder of how important notoriety and cold hard cash are for any cause.  No one, apparently, really cares about Amazon villagers dying of hydrocarbon-induced cancer unless Sting’s wife is there prancing around them with her immaculate white parasol.

Unfortunately, judging from the meager turn-out of seniors and a few students at the Museum of Fine Arts when I saw this movie, it seems that most people still don’t care.  It’s a shame Berlinger couldn’t have found a way to make this story punchy enough to get a wider release.  The tragic story of 30,000 poor villagers being poisoned by an American corporation is a bitter pill for American audiences to swallow, and Berlinger hasn’t done much to sweeten it.  And so the trial will probably go on for another 10 years, barely acknowledged by the American public, exactly as Danzinger feared.

Credit: Bo Zhang

The toxic effects of lead on both the environment and human health are no longer front-page news. Since the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) started to phase out leaded gasoline in automobiles 30 years ago, thousands of tons of lead have been kept out of the environment.

But while the situation has seemingly improved, few people are aware that most commercial airplanes, except for jets, are still using fuel containing lead. The fuel  is commonly known as 100LL (100 low lead), and it contains 2.2 grams of lead per gallon. The EPA’s National Emissions Inventory estimated that lead emissions from leaded aviation gasoline, or “avgas” – were 491 tons in 2002, and accounted for 29 percent, the largest emitting source of air pollution from lead. The use of leaded avgas not only affects the air, but also threatens the surrounding regions. “People living close to the airports have expressed concerns about possible adverse health effects from lead,” said Martin Rubin, director of the Concerned Residents Against Airport Pollution organization.

Lead has long been recognized as causing serious adverse health effects. It can damage the immune system, cardiovascular system, kidney, bones and teeth, it can even cause brain disorders (especially in young children). Symptoms of lead poisoning in humans include poor memory, irritability, insomnia and lowered IQ. More than 6,000 studies on lead’s health and environmental effects have been published since 1990, and all of them show there is no safe level of lead in the human body.

But there is much controversy surrounding whether or not leaded gas-using airplanes are actually affecting human health. According to Tom Kramer, an aviation technical specialist at Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), leaded fuel used in general aviation only accounts for a “miniscule fraction” of total fuel in this country. So the health effects are almost “negligible”. While the overall amount of lead emission is much smaller than it was 30 years ago, “for those people living around the airport it’s not negligible,” said Danielle Fugere, a regional program director of Friends of the Earth (FOE) – an environmental organization. Unfortunately, this issue has been minimally researched.  “We know that lead is a human health harm and has significant impacts,” Fugere said. “If you don’t need to introduce lead to the environment, you should not.”

A Swissport employee fuels a Southwest Airlines plane at the Oakland International Airport October 16, 2008 in Oakland, California. Credit: PicApp.com

The U.S. military first began using leaded fuel in aircrafts in the 1930’s. The use of a leaded fuel protects airplane engines from detonation, or “knock,” which causes an engine to tear itself apart during flight. Lead also protects engine components from long-term damage caused by high pressure. It is able to do this by increasing octane, which allows the use of higher compression engines that produce more horsepower. Because of these advantages, even today’s new airplanes are designed around engines relying on 100LL.

But despite the benefits, concern over lead’s impact on the environment and human health has led dozens of organizations, including the Federal Aviation Association (FAA), to try to develop an alternative fuel to phase out lead from the current avgas. According to a 2008 report by Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), 70 percent of the general aviation fleet could run on a lower octane gas that has no added lead. They’ve been working on a lead free avgas solution since the 1990s.

However, the fuel replacement plan is undertaking an arduous journey. “The challenge is finding a fuel with the same properties that will not require substantial modifications to existing engines,” said Tom Kramer, an aviation technical specialist at AOPA. Unlike the auto industry that can implement engine design changes very quickly, the aviation industry has to change engine combustion system and ignition units to adjust to unleaded fuel.

Besides seeking an alternative fuel, officials are also working on new regulations for emissions. Friends of the Earth (FOE) petitioned the EPA in 2006 to study the impact of leaded fuel in aviation. “Since most of these planes can fly on non-leaded gasoline, there should be a standard going forward,” Fugere said.

On October 15, 2008, the EPA strengthened the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for lead substantially. “The revised standards are 10 times tighter than the previous standards,” said Justin Cohen, an official from EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, “it will improve health protection for at-risk groups, especially children.”

Air Atlanta L.1011 Tristar TF-ABT. Credit: FreeFoto.com

Moreover, the EPA has been taking air and soil samples at Santa Monica Airport and in surrounding neighborhoods to test for ambient lead levels. “We certainly would want to know how much lead is coming from that airport,” said Rubin from Concerned Residents Against Airport Pollution. The study is intended to create a model for evaluating lead levels at airports. And the results could help the EPA respond to the FOE petition and also help federal officials formulate new regulations for lead emissions.

A radioactive spider bites Peter Parker’s arm, imparting the teenager with wall-crawling abilities, enormous strength and agility, and a precognitive “spider sense”. In 1965, that was all the scientific explanation Stan Lee needed to explain the origin of Spider-Man’s superpowers. It doesn’t take a PhD to come up with questions about this breezy explanation, not to mention the similarly simple explanation for how Superman flies, or why gamma radiation makes the Hulk a muscle-bound behemoth.

© DC Comics

In The Science of Superheroes, published in 2002 by Wiley, authors Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg attempt to deduce the plausibility of these crusaders—caped or no– in light of modern science. Each chapter examines a different superhero and tries to rationalize the extraordinary feats they perform, combining explorations of sciences with comic book history. The book dissects the often absurd premises of a host of superheroes, starting with the likelihood of intelligent aliens like Superman (depending on the numbers either quite possible or completely impossible). Even if Krypton existed it couldn’t have the high-gravity described in comics, the authors explain. “According to the basic laws of physics, Krypton is impossible.”

No spandex-clad vigilante is spared. Gresh is a novelist who has written over a dozen popular science books related to pop culture, several with Weinberg, a fellow novelist with a master’s degree in mathematics.

© Marvel Comics

Unsurprisingly, radiation as a cause of superpowers gets a lot of pages, with its central role in the origin of superheroes like the Hulk (created by gamma radiation from a bomb) and the Fantastic Four (bombarded by cosmic radiation in space). In the real world, radiation does not bestow extraordinary abilities. “Hard radiation in large doses does only one thing and it does it well, it kills.” A sobering insight for superhero fans.

© Marvel Comics

Most superheroes rely on pseudoscience that does not stand up well to examination. “Comic books, particularly superhero comics, have always been a friendly technobabble environment,” Gresh and Weinberg write. Even accepting the idea that a spider-bite could impart superpowers doesn’t make Spider-Man more realistic, as his new strength and agility don’t correspond to actual spider talents. ”The problem with Spider-Man isn’t that he’s improbable but that he’s inaccurate.”

Gresh and Weinberg’s discussions of real science are much more coherent than the speculative sections. This is more of a science textbook illustrated with comics than a definitive guide to how superpowers work. Explanations about why superheroes like Ant-man and the Flash are firmly in the realm of fantasy (the law of conservation of mass and the limits of biology, respectively) are far stronger than musings on how Batman could really exist (assuming a man of unlimited wealth and unparalleled physical and mental ability wanted to dress like a flying rodent and beat up criminals).

Readers looking for hope that cosmic rays or radioactive animals will give them powers beyond those of mortal men may be disappointed by The Science of Superheroes. “In science, laws aren’t made to be broken.” But the book works quite well as a basic introduction to diverse scientific topics like the evolution of stars and the anatomy of spiders. In the end, the aspiring superhero will have to settle for dazzling friends with scientific knowledge, not heat vision.

Poster art provided by www.harrypotterexhibition.com

An exhibit full of Harry Potter™ movie props does not belong at Boston’s Museum of Science. Don’t get me wrong; I love Harry Potter™. I began reading the books before they were popular, long before the screaming legions of tween fans lined up at midnight, in costume, for the later books in the series and then the movies. I even partook of some of the midnight movie and book premieres myself (although not in costume.) But the Museum of Science has welcomed Harry Potter™: The Exhibition for the next four months, and it’s an exhibit completely devoid of science. The museum is missing a wonderful opportunity to educate the squealing fans that will flock to the exhibit.

Despite the inappropriate location, the exhibit is worth seeing if you’re a fan of the movies. It features a multitude of recognizable props and costumes – everything from Buckbeak, a horse-sized replica of Hagrid’s Hippogriff, to Oliver Wood’s Quidditch robes, to Snape’s wand. The props are all carefully arranged in rooms that were painstakingly designed to look just like the movie sets. (Haven’t you always wanted to visit Hogwarts?)

The frustrating thing is that it would be so easy for the Museum of Science to add science to the Harry Potter™ exhibit. Near the Quidditch broomsticks and costumes, a placard could briefly describe the aerodynamics of flight. Near the shrieking mandrakes – plants that look like horrifying babies and emit a high-pitched squeal when you uproot them from their flowerpots – a sign about botany could fit right in. But there is none of this.

Even if it would be a tight squeeze to fit additional signage within the meticulously designed exhibit, there is plenty of space throughout the rest of the museum to add a temporary “Science of Harry Potter™” mini-exhibit to supplement the hall of props. In fact, on a recent preview night (for “Very Important Muggles”), there were “Science Entertainment Stations” set up elsewhere in the museum. One explored basic chemistry in the form of a “potions” lesson. Another explored flight, allowing museum visitors to design a hovercraft broom from recycled materials and test its aerodynamic properties. I asked one of the “potions masters” if these tables would be set up for the duration of the Harry Potter™ exhibit. No, she told me. Just for that one night. What a wasted opportunity.

Neville Longbottom (played by actor Matthew Lewis) adds his wand to the exhibit at the Museum of Science. Photo provided by http://www.harrypotterexhibition.com.

On the plus side, perhaps it will draw children to the museum who otherwise might have whined about museums being boring. Perhaps it will breathe new life into a museum that hasn’t changed very much over the last few years. But it cheapens the museum’s stated mission, “to play a leading role in transforming the nation’s relationship with science and technology.” The Museum of Science is devoting four months to the display and upkeep of a major collection of movie props in an apparent attempt to attract younger visitors, but the mission is being ignored. Yet hopefully, after experiencing the magic of the exhibit, many children will want to run around the rest of the museum to see “real” magic – science. If even just a few do, then I suppose the exhibit isn’t a waste of space after all. But wouldn’t it be more appropriate at the Children’s Museum?

So go see the exhibit – bring your imagination, your children, your friends – but make the trip worthwhile and wander around the rest of the museum as well. Science is the closest thing to magic that we can experience.

Harry Potter™: The Exhibition shows at the Museum of Science (1 Science Park, Boston) until February 21. For more information about the exhibit, go here: http://www.harrypotterexhibition.com/.

illustration by Roxanne Palmer

After undergoing a programming shift in 2008, Animal Planet has become little more than a cable hub for unscientific, sensationalist fare.

Last year, Animal Planet—the 11-year-old cable channel owned by Discovery Communications—underwent a dramatic programming shift. After a slip in ratings, the popular cable channel decided to overhaul its gentle, educational image and, instead, give ‘em a little razzle-dazzle. No longer was the channel going to imitate the stuffy, narrator-driven style of classic nature documentary. Rather, as Animal Planet general manager Marjorie Kaplan said in a 2008 New York Times article, the channel was determined to “be an entertainment destination.”

The programming shift was part of a larger public image makeover aimed at promoting an edgier, less scholarly Animal Planet that Kaplan hoped would draw in more adult viewers. To achieve this, the channel focuses less on wild animals and more on humans and our domestic companions: nearly 60 percent of the shows listed on Animal Planet’s online programming guide deal directly or heavily with humans or cats and dogs.

According to their online mission statement, “Discovery Communications is committed to supporting the extension of science, environmental and other educational programs in the U.S…. and promoting the value of nonfiction content and documentary filmmaking across all genres.” Unfortunately, Discovery’s new Animal Planet programming sensationalizes and humanizes nature at the expense of education, science and the environment. It’s a trend that hurts both animals and the planet.

Ironically, most Animal Planet shows are about humans. Maybe this is because, at the end of the day, we are all just animals. I don’t buy it. Granted, the channel has the right to broadcast as it chooses, but to call itself “Animal Planet” seems misleading considering that more than half its shows concern humans and their pets. “Domestic Animal Planet” might be a more appropriate appellation.

Programs like “Living with the Wolfman”, “Jockeys”, and “Groomer Has It” (think Project Runway but with pet stylists) have little to do with animals and even less to do with science. These shows are Animal Planet’s take on reality T.V.—the human-drama darling of modern network programming. And they conform perfectly to Kaplan’s seeming mission to de-animalize Animal Planet; because reality T.V. without humans and their histrionical nonsense is, really, just classic nature documentary, which Kaplan seems determined to avoid.

In its quest for edgy, hard-core programming, Animal Planet also tends to exploit common phobias and demonize the animals that inspire those phobias. Indeed, snakes, spiders, and sharks—many species of which are in desperate need of conservation and general public sympathy—are often cast as the “bad guys” on Animal Planet: their arrival on screen is accompanied by sinister musical clips and hammy voice-overs that refer to the animals as “killing machines” and “monsters.” Not only is this cinematic device clichéd and predictable, it stupidly suggests that spiders and other “creepy crawlers” are motivated by malice rather than biology. Spiders and sharks need to eat too.

The show “River Monsters” is perfect example of this trend. Host Jeremy Wade travels the globe in search of the world’s “deadliest freshwater monsters,” which usually turn out to be catfish. Wade bases his quests on various legends and local superstitions about “man-eating” river fish, which he then tries to catch. Wade uses these anecdotes to justify his repeated references to the fish as “monsters” and “man-eaters.”

In one episode, Wade goes searching for the giant Goonch catfish in India’s Kali River. The episode was mostly a collection of cheesy reenactments showing Indian boys being dragged dramatically underwater by some enigmatic, aquatic enemy. When Wade and his team finally spot some Goonch in underwater caves, just hanging out, the men are quick to refer to the fish, which are highly endangered and little studied, as “a horror.” These fish, Wade rather disappointedly admits, are not nearly big enough to eat a person.

The show ends with Wade catching a 150-pound-Goonch that he capriciously blames for an Indian boy’s death, to which there was only one witness. Three cheers for the scientific method! Imprecise “infotainment” fits well with Kaplan’s vision for the channel. In a Broadcasting and Cable article by Anne Becker, Kaplan says, “At Animal Planet, we want you to feel first before you start thinking.” Seriously?

In addition, the rampant animal anthropomorphism featured on Animal Planet promotes an unrealistic view of nature. For example, in programs like “Meerkat Manor” and “Orangutan Island”, animals are ridiculously imbued with human characteristics, and given human names and storylines, all under the banner of accessibility. In a recent episode of “Meerkat Manor”, narrator Sean Aston describes a female meerkat as “overbearing,” and another as being in “an uncompromising mood.” Maybe they should think about a spin-off. “Meerkat Mothers-in-Law,” perhaps?

This kind of reckless anthropomorphism is especially confusing to young or naïve viewers. When they encounter animals in the wild, they may expect the animals to display the human reactions and behaviors implied on television. This could, and has, lead to dangerous encounters in which deluded people try to approach or handle wild creatures. As a result, when a shark attacks a swimmer or a raccoon wanders into a garbage can, people are shocked—“a human wouldn’t do that”—and nature falls from the pretty, anthropomorphized pedestal on which we placed it: the shark is demonized and the raccoon branded a pest.

Some argue that attributing uniquely human notions like “evil”, “compassion”, and “mercy” to animals or sensationalizing their behavior helps humans connect with nature. But you don’t have to dress nature up in human clothes to make it exciting or accessible, as British naturalist Sir David Attenborough, marine explorer Jacques Cousteau, and documentarian Jacques Perrin have proved through their work. The elements that make nature and wildlife fascinating—death, struggle, adaptation, renewal—happen without (and often despite) humanity. It’s an ecological insight that gives nature value outside of our relationship with it and one that Animal Planet is too quick to dismiss.

These days, kids’ opportunities to learn about natural history and ecology are few and far between. Video games and Television compete with the outdoors for kids’ attention. Indeed, kids’ opportunities to explore nature seem limited to a few enlightened summer camps or the Scouts. Instead of learning about the world by exploring it, most kids, and adults for that matter, turn to their television to tell them what they need to know. It’s a shame then, that, with so many people watching, Animal Planet has nothing important to say.

Chintzy knick-knacks, spoiled food, unopened boxes, and rotting trash litter the homes of compulsive hoarders—people who cannot throw anything away.  These pathological packrats star in the new series Hoarders, the disturbingly delicious blend between documentary and reality show that airs Mondays at 10 pm ET on A&E. (http://www.aetv.com/hoarders/)

This is not a show about Grandma’s cluttered attic.  Each episode features two compulsive hoarders, whose abnormal proclivity for accumulating stuff has rendered their homes unlivable—even unsafe.  Viewers meet people like Jake, a young man who cannot dispose of his shedding dog’s hair (“I feel like if I throw it away, I’m going to speed up my dog’s aging,” he says); Jill, a middle-aged woman who keeps food years past its expiration date (“Well, it’s not puffy yet,” she explains about why she is keeping a box of organic chicken broth that expired in 2008); and Shirley, an elderly woman who doesn’t even know how many cats she has (for the record, there were more than 70—both living and dead—in her home.)  As the camera pans around these disgustingly disorderly dwellings, viewers can’t help but utter uncomfortable giggles, gasps of horror, and bemused yelps of disbelief.

Not only is the gross-out factor captivating, the stakes are high.  In order to qualify for the show, according to the A&E website, participants must be “on the verge of personal crisis.”  The spotlighted hoarders face eviction, divorce, foreclosure, and even jail time.  Viewers feel the urgency—not only do these folks need help, they need it immediately.

A&E to the rescue—sort of.  The premise of the show is that a team of experts provided by the network will help the participants recover.  Each hoarder is paired with a “professional organizer,” a person who makes his/her living helping others decide what to throw away.  A clean-up crew (shameless free advertising for 1-800-GOT-JUNK) spends two days clearing out the houses based on the hoarders’ decisions.  The show documents the entire painful process—one woman agonizes over whether to throw away a broken vacuum cleaner, another literally fishes through a liquefied rotten pumpkin to retrieve its seeds.  Ultimately, viewers sense that merely cleaning up these homes will not cure these people.

A similar show, TLC’s Clean Sweep, with its perky narrator and team of enthusiastic interior designers, documents self-deprecating messy people while they clear out their stuff, have a yard sale, and redecorate their junk rooms.  Something darker is at play in Hoarders.  Only minutes into the first episode, it becomes obvious that compulsive hoarding behavior is a serious mental illness.  Apparently, A&E offers formal counseling to everyone who appears on the show, but many of them decline.  Unfortunately, the network misses their opportunity to truly expand public awareness.  Although text narration does inform viewers that three million Americans suffer from compulsive hoarding behavior, there is a dearth of additional substantive information about the condition, which is thought to be related to obsessive-compulsive disorder.  Occasional interviews with Dr. David Tolin, a clinical psychologist and a national hoarding expert, are fascinating but few and far between.

Even though Hoarders misses the mark educationally, it is voyeuristically irresistible.  Like rubbernecking on the freeway, there is something slightly embarrassing about delighting in the show—you know you should probably stop watching, but you can’t tear your eyes away.