[mncharity]

> It's pretty neat

And very very misleading. Those video frames are strobe-like snapshots, very carefully cherrypicked and arranged to spin a very bogus tale.

Those smoothly and carefully walking legs? They're really a cross between Monty Python and Cirque du Soleil, insanely flailing all around. Including backwards. The not-quite-random walking only makes net progress.

And those stately-moving barge-like things being towed as if by a donkey? Picture instead a helium balloon, held by its string. By a crazed drunk mouse clinging to rope. In a cat 5 hurricane. And that's still not flailing violently enough. Between one step and the next, that "stately barge" explores the entire parameter space it can reach given its tether. Even in politics, we'd not call that spin, but more of a bald- and boldface lie. But "pretty".

[droithomme]

That first one was commissioned by Harvard University's BioVisions project and is directed at Cellular Biology students, utilizing in Harvard's words "rigorous scientific models of how biological processes occur".

http://biovisions.mcb.harvard.edu/

It was produced with the oversight of cellular biologists and lead by Dr. Robert A. Lue. (https://www.mcb.harvard.edu/directory/robert-lue/) Yet you say it is a fantasy, misleading, and cherry picked.

Since you consider Harvard University's cellular biologists incompetent and misleading, could you direct us to some accurate videos and name some more competent universities that are not backwater Monty Python loony bins like you consider Harvard? Also would be great if you could provide a critique of all the deficiencies in Dr. Lue's training and background that provided the substrate of total incompetence and ignorance you have discovered in his animations that you assess as "bold and bald faced lies". Thank you!

Also if you have a chance, what sort of egregious errors led to Harvard being ranked the #1 University in the world for Molecular Biology and the only one with a subject ranking of 100?

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/mo...

[mncharity]

Are proteins bright cartoonish colors, or sort of clear? Are cells empty spaces with some few things in them, or packed almost solid? Are molecules moving along trajectories with intent, or slamming about with shocking violence and randomness?

The problem isn't that the authors think proteins are actually bright cartoonish colors. Nor that such colorization isn't pedagogically useful. The problem is that many students, unsure which aspects of what they are seeing are real, and which are artistic license, are known to get it wrong. Are known to end up believing that bodies and cells are big empty-ish spaces, and that molecular motion isn't extremely violent.

As here. That stately motion, is artistic license, not reality.

The critique of the authors, is that they are failing to do some things which would reduce the creation and reinforcement of these student misconceptions. They could have for instance, retained the stately motion for its pedagogic value, but added a brief clip of more realistic motion, to inoculate against the misconception. But they failed to do that.

Hmm, as for the cartoon colors, I don't actually know if some students end up believing they are real. I'd expect so. I do know many students believe blood changes from red to blue, based on the colors in a common circulatory system diagram, reinforced by vein color observed through skin.

I've a paper around here, somewhere, on kinesin towing physical dynamics, if that's something you'd care about.

[tasty_freeze]

Harvard very well may be the top university for this particular discipline but that doesn't mean that every statement by every person there is gospel.

Form reading "The Machinery of Life" by David Goodsell I also got the same impression as the person you are responding to. The brownian motion at the molecular scale is more akin to being in a hurricane than the stately walking this animation shows. It progresses in a herky jerky N steps forward M steps back where N > M manner.