Monday, November 23, 2009

Lie To Me

So I’m typically well behind the curve when it comes to television I simply don’t watch enough to stay up to date. I typically prefer reading over TV hands down. On the rare occasion that I get some free time that I want to blow in front of the tube I am reminded of the Bruce Springsteen song “57 Channels and Nothing On.” Being so colossally underwhelmed by what I’ve found on TV hasn’t really inspired me to give it much of a second chance.
At my lovely bride’s behest I sat down and watched a couple episodes of Lie To Me. I have always been a fan of the work of Dr. Paul Ekman. I think his analysis of facial expressions and human emotion is absolutely amazing. Years ago I read his book Emotions Revealed. I found the universal nature of human expression to be highly fascinating. I didn’t realize it at the time but the lead character in Lie To Me was deliberately modeled after Ekman. In fact, the entire premise of the show revolves around Ekman’s research.
The characters and story are, of course, fictionalized but I think this is a very effective way to put real science out in front of a popular audience. In the few episodes I’ve seen I’ve found the characters to be very deep and relatable. Without this any story would get boring quickly no matter how accurate the science. I’ve blogged before about how real science is truly marketable and how irritated I get when bad science is used as a lazy excuse to tell a story. I’ve truly been impressed with how this series has stuck to real science to tell their story in a very entertaining way.

5 comments:

  1. Sounds great. I'm glad to see better science in the TV shows--now if only the movies would listen as well. I think it's in no small part to the growing influence of SEE (the Science and Entertainment Exchange) which farms out experts for script reading. They help with Fringe, Big Bang Theory, Numbers, BSG, etc. Great idea, and not a moment too soon!

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  2. Jennifer Ouellette's talk at TAM was amazing. I too wish more movies would relaize that real science based programing is not only profitable, but ultimately more interesting.

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  3. I watched the first few episodes of "Lie to Me" but found the stories to be a bit too repetitive and started to sound like a broken record when it came to explaining the scientific underpinnings of the story. I thought that it wouldn't last very long because of it and was surprised to find it had been picked up for another season. I'll have to check it out again to see if they've toned things down a bit.

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  4. Ulimately this is a fictional story and it's the fiction that'll keep people interested. I just find the science behind the fiction to be very intriguing. Ekman's work has so many different facets they'd have to really get lazy to not keep the science interesting. The most teen episode actually dealt with a fair amount of Zimbardo's work on situational evil. I've only seen a few episodes so far but I've been impressed.

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  5. I know you can read my facial expressions...many times to my dismay. I found the science intriguing. I'm glad you enjoyed the show.

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