What's the worst depiction of science did you see in fiction?

[Khedrac]

Ooh, don’t forget the giant microbes. In space.

What about Star Trek Voyager's giant viruses?

[McNum]

The evolution talk made me remember one silly thing that bugged me about Avatar. (The movie, not the show with the airbender.)

The Na'vi don't make sense. They don't have enough limbs. Look around Pandora, at all the large animals. Six limbs. Everywhere. But the Na'vi? Four limbs.

I mean look around at mammals, birds, and even fish on Earth. Four limbs is the common trend, and sure enough, we, too, have four limbs. But the limb paradigm on Pandora is six. So the Na'vi, too, should have six limbs.

[Fyraltari]

What about Star Trek Voyager's giant viruses?

Having never watched Star Trek, I can't say.

[Traab]

Having never watched Star Trek, I can't say.

Oh it was glorious. The ships cook (among other things) brings on some new cheese to the ship, somehow a virus is missed by the biological filters meant to catch these things, and it started to grow. Not as much in numbers, but in size. Until they went from, iirc how they described it, from microscopic to macroscopic. Eventually being large enough to treat a living human as if it were a single cell it wanted to inject itself into. You had people fighting cgi floating tops the size of their torso with a stabby lance on the bottom trying to figure out how to stop them. I honestly forget how they were stopped but I think it was something like, the doctor created an antibody and set it off in the environmental control area to spread through the ship. Voyager was the best star trek for terrible episodes. The most infamous being the time they made a shuttle reach "Infinite speed" and that somehow made the pilot evolve into a giant salamander that kidnapped the captain, evolved her, then mated and released babies into the wild before being turned back.

[Knaight]

Most egregious was in the TV series Leverage, where the main protagonist figured out a pharmaceutical company was re-using a previously failed drug after 5 seconds of looking at the drug's chemical structure on the company's promotional material. Although to be honest, if the marketing guys are that stupid, the company deserves to be shut down.

Speaking of that chemical structure, it was possibly the most absurd depiction of a chemical I've ever seen - and I'm including the various ludicrous DNA depictions. I'm pretty inured to weird chemical structures between other media depictions and a passing interest in highly unstable structures that take forms that ping as intuitively wrong (e.g. a 3 carbon ring with only double bonds), but that thing? It looked like someone rammed a few bravais lattices they saw in a crystal chem book together, randomized position a bit, then drew lines between atoms that were vaguely near each other almost at random.

Plus, this was supposed to be a drug - at least throw in a benzene ring or 3 somewhere, they basically always show up.

[Brother Oni]

Speaking of that chemical structure, it was possibly the most absurd depiction of a chemical I've ever seen - and I'm including the various ludicrous DNA depictions. I'm pretty inured to weird chemical structures between other media depictions and a passing interest in highly unstable structures that take forms that ping as intuitively wrong (e.g. a 3 carbon ring with only double bonds), but that thing? It looked like someone rammed a few bravais lattices they saw in a crystal chem book together, randomized position a bit, then drew lines between atoms that were vaguely near each other almost at random.

Plus, this was supposed to be a drug - at least throw in a benzene ring or 3 somewhere, they basically always show up.

I vaguely remembered a reasonable standard flat 2d representation, so I double checked.

I must have blanked it from my memory and my subconscious replaced it with something I work with like an innate defence mechanism for my sanity, because what in the dear sweet monkey loving periodic table is this monstrosity?

Spoiler: Somewhere, a chemist is weeping

Show

[Cikomyr2]

This is one that Star Wars shockingly got right. All of the Jango Fett clones were genetically altered to achieve adulthood in a handful of years (unlike Boba Fett, an unaltered clone, who grew at regular speed), they all had individual identities, and had to be educated (indoctrinated) by the cloners to fulfill their job as soldiers. All in all, pretty realistic.

Of all the things wrong about Attack of the Clones, the clones were not one of them.

[Traab]

I vaguely remembered a reasonable standard flat 2d representation, so I double checked.

I must have blanked it from my memory and my subconscious replaced it with something I work with like an innate defence mechanism for my sanity, because what in the dear sweet monkey loving periodic table is this monstrosity?

Spoiler: Somewhere, a chemist is weeping

Show

Looks like my gumball machine after I left it in the sun for too long. Lots of random colored balls here and there with melted strings of something combining them randomly.

[Caledonian]

I thought Frozen II was terrible for a bunch of reasons, but I especially hated they way they used "water has a memory" in their fantasy. It's a clear and obvious reference to the polywater pseudoscience scam.

Pixar has really, really gone downhill.

[Keltest]

I thought Frozen II was terrible for a bunch of reasons, but I especially hated they way they used "water has a memory" in their fantasy. It's a clear and obvious reference to the polywater pseudoscience scam.

Pixar has really, really gone downhill.

Or it could just be a convenient plot device with a superficial resemblance to the scam? I honestly cant tell if this is tongue in cheek or not.

[Forum Explorer]

The entire moral ambiguity of the ending of The LAst of Us and pretty much the entire justification for the Last of Us Part II not being a horrible tragedy where the sociopathic villain gets away with murder is dependant on the idea that a surgeon can create a vaccine on the first try when he has no idea what he's working with and is actively planning to destroy the source for a potential vaccine in the process of studying it.

1: The very fact that the surgeon is planning this is proof that he has no idea what he's doing and is grossly unqualified to do any kind of research at all: The first rule of science is "don't destroy the thing you're studying, especially if you can't get more." Followed by "all experiments much be repeatable and tested multiple times to ensure accurate and precise data" which can't happen if you destroyed the only one of the things you're studying in existence.

In other words, clearly this surgeon failed science class in high school.

2: Beyond that: You can only make so much of a vaccine at a time. Even if successful, he'd maybe have enough for a dozen people.

3: Vaccines don't work that way. You can't vaccinate against a fungal infection.

4: What no one seems to get in stories like this is that a vaccine only stops someone from becoming a zombie, it doesn't stop them from being eaten by zombies and that's the bigger concern. Coming back as a zombie is really only an issue is if you get attacked and survive.

5: Ellie's immunity is becuase she's already infected with a benign strain of the fungus so the parasitic strain can't take root. It is explicitly stated that they've tested her blood and it is saturated with fungal spores. You don't need to cut out Ellie's still living brain and dissect it t study the fungus growing in it, just culture it from the spores in her blood you ****ing moron!.

Infect rats or another human analogwith spores extracted from Ellie's blood, study the pathology in rats, and then dissect them to see what happened. Repeat, introduce differing variables one at a fricking time until you're pretty sure you have rats that are immune, expose them to the parasitic strain to see if they're infected, repeat from step one as often as needed until you can make immune rats, then repeated the perfected process on human volunteers(actual healthy adult volunteers who know the risks, not children that you did it to without asking while they were out cold and helpless, ya goddamn sociopaths) to see if it will take.

If it is possible to replicate Ellie's immunity, approaching the process rationally and ethically while following the scientific method is far, far, far more likely to get results than murdering a child.

(It also assumes that a group of terrorists who screw over people they've made deals with and are willing to murder a child would be willing to share what little vaccine they have instead of hoarding it for themselves if they pull a blasphemous unholy child-murder powered anti-miracle out of their ass, but that's more socioplagy and I assume that we're focused more on the hard sciences here.)

That goes for every media where fatally vivisecting, or murdering and then disecting, the only source of the wrid biology thing to figure out how it works.

Not only is it immoral, it is scientifically unethical and just utterly stupid.

It's one thing to discect a member of an alien species that came to Earth as part of a hostile militerisic invasion force if you've already killed it in battle and want to figure out where to aim your guns or if issuing special bullets would be cost effective.

It's something else entirely to kidnap and murder a friendly alien or mutant superhero for... Hell if I know the reason beyond "for science."

Even ignoring the lack of morality and ethics involved, I garruntee you that there's nothing you can learn from doing that that makes up for the loss of the subject you destroyed in the process of the vivisection.

I think she actually bites someone and causes an outbreak at one point, so it's not the spores that are benign, not that the scientist in question was aware of that event.

Otherwise, yeah, totally agree. That's not how you study anything, let alone something you are hoping can be used to save humanity from a deadly disease. Actually on that note, there's a problem with the whole concept. By the time the games take place, the infection has stalled out. The places where people live don't really have a lot of infections. A vaccine might be useful, but it's hardly going to fix the world.

[Phobia]

No Ellie biting someone specifically does not cause an outbreak.

The infected also specifically migrant and move around through populated areas the characters say.

[Rater202]

I think she actually bites someone and causes an outbreak at one point, so it's not the spores that are benign, not that the scientist in question was aware of that event.

This is literally the first I'm hearing about this.

If it is something unique about Ellie, then it's especially dumb that they're cutting her open. It might be something structural in her brain and taking her brain apart might show that... But all you're doing is murdering a child to satisfy your own curiosity.

If it's genetic, you're gonna need a team of geneticists and biochemists to figure out what it is and either synthesize the chemical cause or a gene therapy to replicate it.

A handful of surgeons can't do crap. They are not remotely qualified for this kind of thing, and again, the very fact...

Seriously. I have to question how this guy passed medical school if he failed medical ethics so badly.

If he is an actual medical doctor then he isn't allowed to do this kind of thing.

Otherwise, yeah, totally agree. That's not how you study anything, let alone something you are hoping can be used to save humanity from a deadly disease. Actually on that note, there's a problem with the whole concept. By the time the games take place, the infection has stalled out. The places where people live don't really have a lot of infections. A vaccine might be useful, but it's hardly going to fix the world.

I think I covered that with the "a vaccine doesn't stop you from being eaten."

You only need to worry about being infected if you walk through a spore patch or get bitten and don't die.

[Caledonian]

I was annoyed almost continually by Interstellar, even from the beginning. I presume the destruction of Earth's ecosystems was being caused by a genetically-engineered microbe intended to 'fix' nitrogen, but the scientists in the movie said it breathed the gas. You cannot respire with nitrogen under Earth-like conditions, it's one of the most neutral substances that exists in nature, and virtually all life on Earth depends on either partnerships with microbes that naturally evolved enzymatic processes to fix it or soaking up bound nitrogen formed in atmospheric electrical discharges.

Still, the movie was at least interesting until they passed through the wormhole. Then it became a nightmare of ignorant stupidity.

[JadedDM]

This is literally the first I'm hearing about this.

Is this confirmation that you never actually played the game then?

Spoiler

Show

At one point Ellie bites Abby. Abby never turns, so that suggests she cannot spread the infection to others.

[tomandtish]

Starship Troopers (1997 Film) is a Paul Verhoeven directed movie (you are probably also familiar with him for Robocop) critiques of society and culture is what he does. Once can use the word "satire" but satire is not exactly the right word for it. There is a great 2020 retrospective of Starship Troopers in the New Yorker by David Roth. I am not linking to these things for it is probably best not to go too deep for we have rules about real world events, politics, etc and things that critique / satire real world things will probably make us start talking about the real / original things that inspired the cultural critique.

Not so much bad science as scientist in denial. "They're just bugs". Yes, bugs who are able to accurately target earth from another star system with a meteor.

Whether it's Life, Prometheus, Alien: Covenant etc., it seems that everyone in sci-fi horror is completely incapable of following basic work safety protocols. How hard is it to wear a helmet? Or just keep it on? You're visiting an exoplanet, even if the air is theoretically breathable, you don't want to contaminate the surroundings with your own microbial life! Sheesh. And what's with the tendency to break quarantine? Good Christ!

It often looks like whoever's in charge of recruiting these people specifically picks the least competent, over-emotional, over-gullible morons.

Very much this. Stupid scientists bother me much more than bad science (which I can uually ignore). In addition to the three examples above, let's see...

Lost in Space (Netflix remake): "The atmosphere is safe, no need for suits". "How can you tell?". "Because there's a hole in yours". Yes, because there could never be anything (pathogen, chemical, etc.), that takes more than 30 minutes to obviously impact someone.

The Meg: We've built a $1.3 billion dollar facility here which is completely wasted if the bottom is solid instead of a gaseous layer as we suspect. As opposed to taking a ship and sub out there, fining out, and THEN building the facility. (and it's the admission of the people who built it and want it to work that it;s a waste of money if the bottom is solid).

Hell, even Stargate SG-1. It's a show I love but man can they be stupid. No real quarantine procedures. Here's how you need to do it. Alpha site: This is the default SG base. Missions leave and return from here. No one returns to earth without x hours in quarantine. Beta site: This is where you go if you can't return to alpha site for some reason, including known infection. Omega site: Has care taking team which goes nowhere other than earth (after quarantine). This is where you evacuate from earth to.

But instead they haul stuff through all the time, and unless they already know of a problem there's no quarantine at all.

[Rater202]

Is this confirmation that you never actually played the game then?

Spoiler

Show

At one point Ellie bites Abby. Abby never turns, so that suggests she cannot spread the infection to others.

No.

It is confirmation that I have never heard of Ellie causing an outbreak.

{scrubbed}

[Forum Explorer]

No Ellie biting someone specifically does not cause an outbreak.

The infected also specifically migrant and move around through populated areas the characters say.

And they clear out the zombies, and the cities are pretty fortified for exactly that reason.

This is literally the first I'm hearing about this.

If it is something unique about Ellie, then it's especially dumb that they're cutting her open. It might be something structural in her brain and taking her brain apart might show that... But all you're doing is murdering a child to satisfy your own curiosity.

If it's genetic, you're gonna need a team of geneticists and biochemists to figure out what it is and either synthesize the chemical cause or a gene therapy to replicate it.

A handful of surgeons can't do crap. They are not remotely qualified for this kind of thing, and again, the very fact...

Seriously. I have to question how this guy passed medical school if he failed medical ethics so badly.

If he is an actual medical doctor then he isn't allowed to do this kind of thing.

I think I covered that with the "a vaccine doesn't stop you from being eaten."

You only need to worry about being infected if you walk through a spore patch or get bitten and don't die.

No.

It is confirmation that I have never heard of Ellie causing an outbreak.

{scrub the post, scrub the quote}

I found what I was thinking of. Ellie bites someone, and claims that she can spread the infection, but we never see if that is true as stuff goes down really soon afterwards, and I think the person she bites ends up dying before the game ends.

[Rodin]

I thought Frozen II was terrible for a bunch of reasons, but I especially hated they way they used "water has a memory" in their fantasy. It's a clear and obvious reference to the polywater pseudoscience scam.

Pixar has really, really gone downhill.

I dunno why you're blaming Pixar, they had nothing to do with Frozen or Frozen 2. To date they have made only one "Disney princess" movie, and that's Brave.

Pixar's most recent five films:

Cars 3 - Meh.
Coco - Excellent.
Incredibles 2 - Pretty good.
Toy Story 4 - Haven't seen myself, but it got rave reviews and a bunch of awards.
Onward - Struck down by coronavirus shortly after it entered theaters, so hard to say.

All told, it seems like Pixar is still going strong. They've always had a mix of "good to great" films with a few standouts in both directions.

[Rater202]

Toy Story 4 - Haven't seen myself, but it got rave reviews and a bunch of awards.

Without any spoilers... So, the team from Pixar that's in charge of al the Toy Story movies worked with Square Enix and Tetsuya Nomura when writing and designing the Toy Story World for Kingdom Hearts III.

Looking at the timelines, they were probably doing this at the same time as they were making Toy Story 4.

You can tell. They don't come out and shout it at you, but the film and the original story from the game touch on a lot of the same themes.

And that's a good thing.

[Keltest]

Hell, even Stargate SG-1. It's a show I love but man can they be stupid. No real quarantine procedures. Here's how you need to do it. Alpha site: This is the default SG base. Missions leave and return from here. No one returns to earth without x hours in quarantine. Beta site: This is where you go if you can't return to alpha site for some reason, including known infection. Omega site: Has care taking team which goes nowhere other than earth (after quarantine). This is where you evacuate from earth to.

But instead they haul stuff through all the time, and unless they already know of a problem there's no quarantine at all.

Stargate at least has the excuse that the actual, physical stargates are whats limiting them in their locations. You cant exactly retrieve a gate from inside another gate. For the first few years especially, they have exactly one option on where to go to that they know is clean.

The wiki also indicates that the alpha site was in fact planned to be used for quarantine should such be necessary. The big issue with using the alpha sites as the primary base is that, due to not being on earth, they have access to basically no resources except what is immediately on hand, and have, IIRC, no means of communicating with earth save for turning on the stargate and tossing letters through. That makes it not great for a primary command hub given the political situation on Earth.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Ah, I think I see the disconnect. Let's dissect the frog, shall we?
we have two character one who is apparently watching DW for the first time and one who is apparently showing it to her. The first woman's initial reaction is "this show is terrible" which is answered with "of course it is." Stating that the bad quality of the show is not a question of opinion. The next two panels consist of the long time fan stating "You have to let it grind you down for a while. Let it lower your standards for plot, character, dialog and acting." Followed by stereotypical brainwashing speak ("Yes. Forget my child, all will be well.") This is stating that the show has subpar writing and acting and that the only way to enjoy it, is to have low expectation of those things. The next panel is the 10th Doctor providing an (exaggerated) example of the bad writing displayed by the show by stating "We can time-travel directly into the plot hole" not meant to represent any particular moment of the show but a "typical" resolution of an episode of the show. (The "" are here because a disspointingly high number of episodes don't actually use the time machine to solve the problem at hand.) The last panel consists of the new fan praising the cleverness of the bad writing with a pained expression on her face her standards for cleverness having been lowered by exposure to DW. The votey is one of the two (I'm actually not sure which) demanding "all of it." I'm guessing this is conveying the complete change of mind of the new fan?

So, what is Weinersmith saying here? That DW has bad writing, plot, dialog and characters, that, on some level, all fans of the show know this but watching the show has lowered their expectation of quality and that that is the only way to enjoy that show. So yes, he is definitely mocking the fans. And no, he isn't mocking some subgroup that has this behaviour rather than the whole fandom because if that was what he'd have contrasted that behaviour with that of more reasonable fans.

Like the second-to-last panel on itself is a good joke, and if the entire comic had been a parody of the show itself it probably would have been good. There's plenty to mock: the mary-sueness of the Doctor, the Britishness of absolutely everything, the weirdness of the plot, the bad special effects and costumes, etc. But the comic doesn't focus on the show, not even to say why it's bad, it focuses on the fans and judges them for liking the show.


Edit: If you have an alternate reading of that comic, I'm interested in reading it.

I hope to not re-ignite this discussion, but I do want to note that I have actually been on both "sides" of the conversation happening in this comic for different franchises. One of those conversations involved Dr. Who, specifically. And I have seen more than a few shows where my overall opinion of the show's popularity is accurately (and humorously) expressed by that particular comic.

I would say that this is an accurate representation of the quality of some shows I still enjoy watching and would have the same sort of conversation with people about if I were to try and explain my liking of it to them right now. I believe a lot of people call this phenomenon "guilty pleasure" entertainment. Examples would risk derailing the thread further. So don't ask.

[Lord Raziere]

I hope to not re-ignite this discussion, but I do want to note that I have actually been on both "sides" of the conversation happening in this comic for different franchises. One of those conversations involved Dr. Who, specifically. And I have seen more than a few shows where my overall opinion of the show's popularity is accurately (and humorously) expressed by that particular comic.

I would say that this is an accurate representation of the quality of some shows I still enjoy watching and would have the same sort of conversation with people about if I were to try and explain my liking of it to them right now. I believe a lot of people call this phenomenon "guilty pleasure" entertainment. Examples would risk derailing the thread further. So don't ask.

Yeah but....

the comic just sounds like internet bucketcrab mentality that I see so much these days. everyone is just out to pull down other peoples enjoyment of something else without considering their feelings, as if no one is allowed to have things that are sacred or enjoyable anymore, and every time someone expresses an opinion an internet bucket crab will come along to pull you down into the bucket of hate and argumentation for no reason other than they don't like people being above it. its depressing.

[Caledonian]

I dunno why you're blaming Pixar, they had nothing to do with Frozen or Frozen 2.

I acknowledge that it's a non-sequitur, but it's still true.

[tomandtish]

Stargate at least has the excuse that the actual, physical stargates are whats limiting them in their locations. You cant exactly retrieve a gate from inside another gate. For the first few years especially, they have exactly one option on where to go to that they know is clean.

The wiki also indicates that the alpha site was in fact planned to be used for quarantine should such be necessary. The big issue with using the alpha sites as the primary base is that, due to not being on earth, they have access to basically no resources except what is immediately on hand, and have, IIRC, no means of communicating with earth save for turning on the stargate and tossing letters through. That makes it not great for a primary command hub given the political situation on Earth.

Actually radio waves go through both ways just fine, so communication isn't a problem. And given what they are doing quarantine should be a default before anyone goes back to earth, since they don't wear protective gear unless they already know of a problem.

[Keltest]

Actually radio waves go through both ways just fine, so communication isn't a problem. And given what they are doing quarantine should be a default before anyone goes back to earth, since they don't wear protective gear unless they already know of a problem.

Its easy to forget, but the SGC does a lot of prep work with robots and such before they send any of the SG teams through. We just dont see it because its boring. And radio waves require that the gates be open, which is extremely non-ideal for, say, emergency communication.

[Caledonian]

Earth is the most heavily- and densely-populated human planet in the known universe in Stargate SG-1, so it's actually more likely that we'd bring novel diseases to other worlds than something nasty back to Earth. It's one of the pesky issues - like the human natives of other planets speaking English - that I'm willing to tolerate in the context of a half-hour TV show.

[Kitten Champion]

I dunno why you're blaming Pixar, they had nothing to do with Frozen or Frozen 2. To date they have made only one "Disney princess" movie, and that's Brave.

Pixar's most recent five films:

Cars 3 - Meh.
Coco - Excellent.
Incredibles 2 - Pretty good.
Toy Story 4 - Haven't seen myself, but it got rave reviews and a bunch of awards.
Onward - Struck down by coronavirus shortly after it entered theaters, so hard to say.

All told, it seems like Pixar is still going strong. They've always had a mix of "good to great" films with a few standouts in both directions.

Onward is quite good, not the strongest of their productions certainly but definitely typical of their overall quality. Its biggest issue is its... Pixar-ness? As in, it feels like it's doing the Pixar formula that we're now pretty familiar with so it doesn't feel as fresh when it bends genre conventions and subverts audiences expectations but more "Yes, that is a Pixar film in 2020".

Cars is the only Pixar production which feels like it only exists for the merchandising.

As to Stargate, the writers do go through some effort of showing Stargate command isn't incompetent in terms of its precautions and procedures, but it just happens in the margins as Keltest pointed out and there's a degree of "for drama" that hits every long-running SF thing. I think the biggest logical jump the franchise takes on a show-to-show basis is ignoring all the language barriers across space and time, but you have to recognize that making the series work in any practical sense means you simply have to accept it and move on.

[tomandtish]

Earth is the most heavily- and densely-populated human planet in the known universe in Stargate SG-1, so it's actually more likely that we'd bring novel diseases to other worlds than something nasty back to Earth. It's one of the pesky issues - like the human natives of other planets speaking English - that I'm willing to tolerate in the context of a half-hour TV show.

Season 1: They brought back one illness, 3 aliens (including 2 goa'uld) and robot dopplegangers.

Season 2: One goa'uld (Tokra fortunately), one genocidal human, a hostile alien sphere that impaled Jack, a virus that mutated Teal'c, angry spirits (while they knew about them, going to a quarantine site would have kept them from earth), connected a black hole to earth, and yet another alien.

And that's just the first two seasons.

Edit: And oh yes, I agree they'd probably be wiping out civilizations left and right with diseases they brought.

[KillianHawkeye]

Oh it was glorious. The ships cook (among other things) brings on some new cheese to the ship, somehow a virus is missed by the biological filters meant to catch these things, and it started to grow. Not as much in numbers, but in size. Until they went from, iirc how they described it, from microscopic to macroscopic. Eventually being large enough to treat a living human as if it were a single cell it wanted to inject itself into. You had people fighting cgi floating tops the size of their torso with a stabby lance on the bottom trying to figure out how to stop them. I honestly forget how they were stopped but I think it was something like, the doctor created an antibody and set it off in the environmental control area to spread through the ship. Voyager was the best star trek for terrible episodes. The most infamous being the time they made a shuttle reach "Infinite speed" and that somehow made the pilot evolve into a giant salamander that kidnapped the captain, evolved her, then mated and released babies into the wild before being turned back.

You've got two different episodes mixed in your head. The cheese infection was from the end of the first season and it infected Voyager's system of bioneural circuitry, which was a big problem because the bioneural gel packs can't be replaced for some reason. They kill off the bacteria by flash heating entire system.

The macrovirus episode is in the middle of season 3, and it's very similar to the Next Generation episode where Captain Picard returns to find the ship adrift and the entire crew affected by the de-evolution virus. The macrovirus got on to the ship by escaping the transporter buffer when the Doctor transported back from an infected alien colony. They end up luring all the macroviruses to the holodeck, because macroviruses hate holograms for some reason, and throwing an anti-virus bomb inside to kill them.

Source: Currently re-watching ST:Voyager

Earth is the most heavily- and densely-populated human planet in the known universe in Stargate SG-1, so it's actually more likely that we'd bring novel diseases to other worlds than something nasty back to Earth. It's one of the pesky issues - like the human natives of other planets speaking English - that I'm willing to tolerate in the context of a half-hour TV show.

Point of fact: Stargate SG-1 and it's spin offs have all been hour-long TV shows.