Making movies is fun and we all love to watch a good movie now and again. Documentary films often involve lots of time and resources and can be very influential (remember Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth?”)
The disconnect between those who make movies and those who actually understand science was illustrated in the Albuquerque Journal on the front page article about an upcoming documentary about vaping that made some startling claims such as that vaping is “more detrimental than being addicted to cigarettes.”
That is a patently untrue statement left unchallenged by the reporter (who after all covers film, not science). While government agencies and many activist groups are reluctant to deem ANY new technology “safe,” the vast preponderance of evidence is that vaping is much safer than smoking cigarettes.
But, the message that new technology is improving human lives and safety isn’t nearly as compelling as making scare-videos…whether the topic is global warming or vaping.
