Don’t be an archaeologist in a movie if you want to survive

Josie Ford Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more Archaeologists RIP In July, Feedback reported that geologist characters in movies were surprisingly likely to die, often from “work related” causes like volcanic eruptions, but remarkably frequently by murder. We wondered how other scientists fared. Andrew Hardwick flags The Avengers – not the Marvel superheroes, but the British spy series from the 1960s. “Any character introduced as a scientist was certain to be killed off,” Andrew says, due to the limited budget for hiring guest actors. “Exposition characters had to double up as victims or villains.” Feedback briefly considered performing an analysis to estimate the scientist death toll, but then we learned that th