Accuracy
While the general facts of the story are accurate, there are some minor discrepancies between actual events and the movie, as well as a number of controversial and disputed issues more fundamental to the case. In the film, Erin Brockovich appears to deliberately use her cleavage to seduce the water board attendant to allow her to access the documents. Brockovich has acknowledged that her cleavage may have had an influence, but denies consciously trying to influence individuals in this way. In the film, Ed Masry represents Erin Brockovich in the car crash case. In reality, it was his law partner, Jim Vititoe. Brockovich had never been Miss Wichita; she had been Miss Pacific Coast. According to Brockovich, this detail was deliberately changed by Soderbergh as he thought it was "cute" to have her be beauty queen of the region from which she came.
Scientists have argued that the movie encouraged exactly the wrong way to think about data, elevating individuals' medical histories to the level of proof and distorting the notion of risk. Scientists, seeing the evidence that so infuriated Erin Brockovich, would be much more cautious, and skeptical. The first question to ask is whether residents of Hinkley really did have more illnesses than people living elsewhere. When found that they had more, it should have then been asked, are these illnesses attributable to the industrial processes nearby. Dr. Lois Swirsky Gold, who directs the carcinogenic potency project at the University of California at Berkeley, notes that Erin Brockovich is billed as fiction. So she has one wish for its audiences. 'They should ask, does the science support the conclusion?'.
Read more about this topic: Erin Brockovich (film)
Famous quotes containing the word accuracy:
“The child who has been taught to make an accurate elevation, plan, and section of a pint pot has had an admirable training in accuracy of eye and hand.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“As for farming, I am convinced that my genius dates from an older era than the agricultural. I would at least strike my spade into the earth with such careless freedom but accuracy as the woodpecker his bill into a tree.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Such is the never-failing beauty and accuracy of language, the most perfect art in the world; the chisel of a thousand years retouches it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)