Sir

I am surprised at your response to my comments on science and pseudo-science in the Independent newspaper (“How not to respond to The X-Files ”, Nature 394, 815; 1998). Part of the point of my piece was to warn against the too easy condemnation of popular fantasies like The X-Files as anti-scientific. It is heavy-handed and patronizing to try to police such stuff too thoroughly on behalf of the ideal of scientific rigour.

But to suggest, as you do, that, because science proceeds from the known to the unknown by means of a series of hypotheses, it is therefore “more like The X-Files than some detractors recognize” is poppycock. Science does proceed from the known to the unknown by the testing of hypotheses; but Mulder and Scully do not; rather, they parody this process in scenes whose only apparent purpose (other than to entertain) is to obfuscate and to mystify.

Where science strives to illuminate, The X-Files strives to darken. Even this I don't much mind; if people enjoy obscurity, let them have obscurity. But what I do find rather irritating about the particular brand of obscurity presented in The X-Files is that it regularly evokes scientific concepts to help the plot, with absolutely no glimmer of understanding of what these concepts are supposed to mean. There is a scientific illiteracy in many of the scripts; and this is irritating, because there is no reason why even the wackiest and weirdest plots cannot exploit science cleverly and elegantly, rather than ignorantly and clumsily.

To complain about the clumsy use of science in drama is not, I think, to patronize anyone; but to suppose that the interaction of Mulder and Scully is “as scientific as you please”, and that its popularity suggests “that the public clearly has more of a feeling for the spirit of scientific enquiry than some give it credit for”, is fanciful in the extreme. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the public is fascinated by genuine science; but the popularity of The X-Files must, I fear, be put down to causes other than this.