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Anyone who’s a fan of Saturday Night Live and is old enough knows well the 1986 episode with host William Shatner.

In a sketch mocking Star Trek conventions, Shatner fields questions involving ridiculous minutiae associated with the classic TV series. This is when he tells those assembled to “get a life,” and reminds them that Trek is “just a TV show”:

It seems some paleontologists need to heed Bill’s advice:

“Jurassic World” is poised to make monster money at the box office this weekend. And while that’s certainly good for Universal Studios, it’s a pain in the neck for another group: paleontologists.

They say while it’s good the movie series has renewed interest in dinosaurs, audiences come away with skewed ideas about how dinosaurs really lived.

“You deal with these inaccuracies over and over every time you give a talk,” James Kirkland, who has been involved in the discovery of 20 dinosaurs, including the Utahraptor, told CBS News.

“It gets really old after a while,” Kirkland added. “If they wouldn’t do that, we wouldn’t have to deal with this. We could step to the more interesting issues like what we are discovering next.”

Ohio University’s Lawrence M. Witmer said while he understands it’s just a movie, he finds it “a little bit lazy to not make the animals be scientifically accurate when they can.”

“I understand that the plot may dictate some departures from what science knows to be true, but otherwise, they could really try to enhance the scientific accuracy,” Witmer told CBS News. “In fact, they could have enhanced the reception of the movie by doing so, just as the comic-book movies will drop Easter eggs in scenes that show that the filmmakers indeed respected the canon of the source material.”

At least Witmer knows “it’s just a movie,” but …

“Trying to enhance scientific accuracy” didn’t seem to be of much concern a decade ago. Remember how scientists reacted to, for example, The Day After Tomorrow? Though many did note that the science in the film was implausible, “… most applaud[ed] the film for bringing the global warming debate into a forum that could grab Americans’ attention.”

Of course.

Al Gore and MoveOn.org used the flick to spread their global warming propa, er, message. And just this year, Slate headlined that The Day After Tomorrow “Might Kinda, Sorta Come True.”

Yes, well, with ever-increasing advances in genetics, I suppose Jurassic World “might kinda, sorta come true” as well.

“It’s just a movie.”

I wonder how not only scientists, but particularly those in the social sciences, would react if asked about some other (well-known classic) science and science fiction films. Just imagine the headlines (because these days they shouldn’t surprise us):

• Feminists Upset at ‘Facehugger’ Nickname for Alien Parasite
  ‘Patriarchy’ at work again; willful dismissal of the ‘vajayjay’

• African-American Studies Professor: ‘Replicants’ Would Include Blacks, Too
  Tyrell Corp. called ‘racist’ for ‘poor’ ethnic distribution of Nexus-6 models

• Professor: Disney’s ‘Black Hole’ Denotes Negative Racial Image
  Sucked in, never to return — paradigm for American racial society?

• Biologist: ‘Highly Unlikely’ Crabs Could Evolve Into ‘Predators’
  ‘They’re scavengers, they wouldn’t be hunting down Arnold Schwarzenegger’

• Activists: ‘Men In Black’ Deals In Racial Stereotypes
  Alien-killing black-garbed agents enforce ethnological pathos

• Sociology Professor: ‘Minority Report’ Film Title ‘Offensive’
  ‘Don’t we have enough microaggressions without having to deal with them in the cinema?’

• Popular ‘Trek” Film ‘Wrath of Khan’ Irks Genghis Lineage
  ‘He was brutal, yes, but not that brutal.’

Jurassic World opened yesterday.

Dave Huber is an assistant editor of  The College Fix. (@ColossusRhodey)

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