The title is gruesomely and torturously true of Big Science itself. No explanation needed.

Oddly, the correlation also applies to radio and TV shows about science.

Among discussion-type shows, the elite academic “roundtable” shows and elite quiz shows like Information Please generally spewed old worn-out cliches that had been disproved for many decades. The UFO discussers, distinctly non-elite, got the details of astronomy and physics exactly right. Their speculations may have been right or wrong, but they started from a correct baseline.

Among sci-fi adventure serials, the low-budget radio shows of the ’30s were careful to state all the known facts correctly, and their fantasies were plausible. The same is true of Space Patrol, the long-running cereal/serial in the ’50s. The sets and effects were super-cheap, crude wooden models and badly painted stage flats. The intro shows a rocket launching amid a cloud of smoke, which is obviously coming from a cigarette in an ashtray.

By contrast the higher-budget Rocket Man movie series, rebranded three or four ways, used real locations and real cars and real equipment, with well-done flying effects; but the basic science was wildly wrong and stupid.