But tinkers started with the end result. A moment of inspiration, glimpses of the major steps one would need to take to get there. It involved working backwards, up until that moment the means came into view. "
-Worm Interlude 19
I'll be the first to say that scientists are not perfect people, nor are they above pettiness and ego. There are countless examples of scientific infidelity or recklessness throughout history, with a particularly famous case being the Bone Wars of 1877-1892 (rather pertinent to this film, given how it helped induct paleontology into pop culture). With that said, I'm always confused by how scientist protagonists are depicted in film, with the characters often displaying an impulsiveness and narrow-mindedness which doesn't exactly mesh with a research-based career choice. The scientists see a specific creature or plant and don't ask any questions about where it came from or the role in plays in the environment. Their objectives are reduced to capture or kill, often employing a horde of assistants ("Red Shirts") whose only expertise seems to be dying.
This definitely isn't a universal problem in horror, and written horror in particular sometimes traps itself by making the characters overly cautious and analytical to the point of alienation (At the Mountains of Madness is the most infamous example, throwing around so much terminology that the audience has no idea what exactly is supposed to be scary). That said, the limited time frame of film and the general audience expectation of action-oriented heroes can make the cautious approach unfeasible for a silver-screen production. However, I think that there is a larger disconnect between the horror genre itself and science as a discipline, with that disconnect centering around the preservation of the unknown and unknowable.
Horror, as we've discussed at length by this point, centers around what we can't understand and oftentimes relies upon ambiguity to generate its impact. As soon as we figure out what makes something tick, it becomes significantly less scary because we can follow its action. The Reavers from Serenity lose some of their fear factor once we know how they came to be this way, Darth Vader is knocked down a peg or two once we've seen him whine about sand, and the ghosts from Ghostbusters become much more comedic once the characters find ways to capture them. Science is very good at stripping away uncertainty and mysticism, at shining a light on the alien and making sense of what is truly going on. Once that's done, there's less reason to be scared, and thus less reason for a horror-inclined audience to pay attention. When we want to be scared, taking control of the situation feels like a cop-out. This creates a dissonance with the world outside the horror film, where fear is generally considered unpleasant and anything that can give you certainty about your life, your future, or your world is generally considered a good thing.
In this way, the Horror Movie Scientist (and, to an extent, the Disaster Movie Scientist and Sci-Fi Scientist) is a completely different profession from the IRL Scientist. Their goals seem to be near-opposite, with the Movie Scientist seemingly taking every opportunity to increase uncertainty and fear while the IRL Scientist works to find patterns and assuage anxieties about the unknown. This isn't just a divergence in competence (CftBL's protagonists aren't the smartest bunch, but there are genuinely learned horror scientists every once and a while), but a complete reversal of ideology which (I suspect) informs the popular view of scientists a bit too much.
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