sharda umanath lead author and researcher duke university us tells diptiman dewan that movies may not always contain factually correct information and should be used with caution in the class when the 3d version of the 1997 blockbuster titanic was released in theatres recently first officer william murdoch was shown shooting two men and committing suicide by gunshot in reality however surviving crew members said murdoch was last seen trying to launch lifeboats and is believed to have died in the water movies especially historical movies are often used in the classroom as a tool to illustrate a particular time period and help engage students in the material however these films often contain historical inaccuracies as the details and sometimes even major parts are changed in order to tell a more entertaining story prior work has shown that exposure to such inaccuracies does affect a students memory for correct historical content students tend to pick up the erroneous information and reproduce it later explains sharda umanath lead researcher at duke university us umanath andrew butler and elizabeth marsh researchers at duke conducted a study positive and negative effects of monitoring popular films for historical inaccuracies which brought this to light in two experiments students were asked to study passages about several historical topics and watched clips from corresponding movies each film clip contained one major piece of information that was directly contradicted by the text thus a historical inaccuracy some students were asked to explicitly try to find the inaccuracies as they viewed the film clips after a delay they were then tested on the material that they read in the passages it was found that students detected only 35 of the inaccuracies presented by the films and those who were asked to detect the inaccuracies learned just as much incorrect information as students who were merely told to watch them the key to reducing this problem is for educators to explicitly inform students about the errors in how a film portrays historical events so that they can learn historically accurate information with such feedback students quite rarely learned and reproduced erroneous content that they saw in the films concludes umanath