How medically accurate are the Harlequin books?

I don't know that this a question answerable in the abstract. Novels from all sorts of publishers use medical information in their plots, with likely varying degrees of accuracy.

hunnypot said:

Sometimes I feel the facts have been shaped to fit the story and/or characters.

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I think you could honestly say this happens in all types of fiction--novels, television, movies.

hunnypot said:

I've read a few and have found the medical accuracy (where there is medical in the story) to be questionable. Not all of them of course.
Sometimes I feel the facts have been shaped to fit the story and/or characters.

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What exactly do you mean?

There's a big difference between playing a wee bit fast and loose with a concussion and having someone recover in a few days from open-heart surgery.

DH is in the medical field and often points out medical inaccuracies on television shows to me. I think those with any kind of training will notice it more when the story contains inaccuracies in that field. How much it goes on, I have no idea. For my own writing, I just try to run whatever I'm unsure about by someone who would know. It does surprise me how much sloppy fact-checking seems to slip in, on TV anyway. It wouldn't surprise me if romance novels, or any novels, have the same problem.

My sister became a med tech around the time the CSI franchise really took off and had to deal with people screaming at her, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN'T HAVE MY RESULTS IN A COUPLE HOURS?! IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME ON CSI: POUGHKEEPSIE!!!"

I wouldn't suggest using them as a research source.

Police dramas, written and filmed, are notoriously inaccurate. Even writers portrayed in fiction can be viewed with a squint. In the first episode of TV show Castle, they have a thriller-writer panting over crime scene photos, practically getting a boner because a real killer is mimicking the murders from his fiction. Now I won't say that there would never be such a moral monster in the writing community, but I will fervently hope that I've never met him. (All indications are that any thriller-writer would be devastated, not electrified, that their imaginary crimes inspired real-life torture.)

Any fiction that casually employs areas of special knowledge in its plot can be generally held as suspect in the details. Most of these constructs facilitate the characters' actions and reactions and are never intended to be educational.

At least on House, you could always expect lupus. Except when it wasn't.

Perks said:

Police dramas, written and filmed, are notoriously inaccurate. Even writers portrayed in fiction can be viewed with a squint. In the first episode of TV show Castle, they have a thriller-writer panting over crime scene photos, practically getting a boner because a real killer is mimicking the murders from his fiction. Now I won't say that there would never be such a moral monster in the writing community, but I will fervently hope that I've never met him. (All indications are that any thriller-writer would be devastated, not electrified, that their imaginary crimes inspired real-life torture.)

Any fiction that casually employs areas of special knowledge in its plot can be generally held as suspect in the details. Most of these constructs facilitate the characters' actions and reactions and are never intended to be educational.

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If you go too deep and long into the hows and whys of a particular medical condition, you're going to lose about 95% of your audience. They don't really care about too much beyond a basic diagnosis and if the cure is more deadly than the condition itself (bonus points if it is). Many medical and police procedural shows get just technical enough in their stories to up the drama without getting into too much of a lecture.

Maryn said:

In my first book, I've got a guy who's a bricklayer. I did some research on bricks that are cream colored. I didn't visit a brick yard or talk to masons, just looked online, picked up some info, and used it. It's possible I used it incorrectly, or it wasn't right in the first place. Any masons who read menage erotica could be rolling their eyes at such ignorance on the page, right?

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I think readers who are looking to erotica for bricklaying information are sadly misguided. Same as people reading romances for the medical information. Although there's some kink potential in either one.

frimble3 said:

I think readers who are looking to erotica for bricklaying information are sadly misguided.

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Just as well I wasn't drinking tea when I read that comment.
Now I'm wondering if there are people who read brick-laying erotica because they have a brick fetish.

I don't think I've ever read a novel, in any genre, that made reference to a hymen and also correctly-noted where it was located. The romance genre may have more call to reference hymens than other genres, but I've seen the same error in general fiction, fantasy, and science fiction too.

So basically, we writers are all just winging it. Yeah, medicine in novels is mostly untrustworthy.

jjdebenedictis said:

I don't think I've ever read a novel, in any genre, that made reference to a hymen and also correctly-noted where it was located. The romance genre may have more call to reference hymens than other genres, but I've seen the same error in general fiction, fantasy, and science fiction too.

So basically, we writers are all just winging it. Yeah, medicine in novels is mostly untrustworthy.

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This article should be required reading for anyone who wants to include a "deflowering" in their novel.

http://www.scarleteen.com/article/b...s_the_hymen_the_myths_that_surround_it?page=1

I did read a romance once where the protagonist didn't bleed on her wedding night in spite of its being her first time. Her husband went into a rage and tried to kill her (not believing her claims that she had no idea why she had no maidenhead), but she saved herself by pushing him out the window. She went on the lam, thinking she'd killed him (he ended up paralyzed). Hilarity ensued with him trying to hunt her down in his wicker wheel chair (there was a scene at the end where he tried to shoot her, and the recoil forced him backwards off a dock to finally drown, so she could be with the true love she'd met since--in period romances, of course, any exes must die before the protagonist can have their HEA).

While the author may have nailed the whole hymen thing more accurately than most, I'm not sure she represented paraplegia in the 18th century as well as she might have.

if you've ever watched Mythbusters, you'll realize that popular entertainment of all sorts is generally not very accurate about science and medicine. When you get to something like Harlequin, I doubt they're particularly concerned about fact-checking medical details. As long as most people can accept "Yeah, she was amnesiac, but the bad guy knocked her out and now she remembers everything," as part of the plot, they're happy.

Any time I see a book or TV show about academia that's not written by an academic, I start to hyperventilate. No, assistant professors do not vie for the same tenure spot. No, profs do not kill one another to be dept chair. No, Rainbow Rowell, undergrad TAs cannot be hired by a prof unless that prof has some sort of grant allowing them to do that and English profs are unlikely to have one. No! That is not the way any of those things work.

So I'd take any medical stuff with a grain of salt.

dawinsor said:

Any time I see a book or TV show about academia that's not written by an academic, I start to hyperventilate. No, assistant professors do not vie for the same tenure spot. No, profs do not kill one another to be dept chair.

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Actually, they're more likely to draw lots with each hoping he/she won't get the short straw and have to take on the extra responsibility and inevitably incur the resentment of some of their colleagues.

Science faculty have been known to fight to the death over lab space, however.

Seriously, though, misconceptions about academia abound in fiction, and they'd be so easy to clear up with a couple of conversations with profs in the discipline in question at the kind of college or university one's story is set at.

Don't get me started about the literary fiction novel they were reviewing on public ratio the other day. It was set in the 70s, and the premise (which went unexamined by the reviewer) was that this aging history professor was being cut from his department because they wanted to hire a young new person whose research was in an area that is currently hot. There's a certain institution in place at colleges and universities that's intended to prevent this very thing (as well as to protect faculty whose research becomes controversial). It's weakened and under fire today, but it was quite strong in the 70s.

It's like they took a basic corporate plot and transplanted it into an academic setting. I know enough about biology, medicine and physiology to notice some things that are messed up in books. I tend to find it most annoying when the twisted assumption is part of the main premise for the story and not just a small detail they get wrong.

Roxxsmom said:

Actually, they're more likely to draw lots with each hoping he/she won't get the short straw and have to take on the extra responsibility and inevitably incur the resentment of some of their colleagues.

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Yeah. I am not in academia, but from what I hear, people are often desperate not to be considered for department head and other similar positions. My father offered the suggestion that they should give a private island in the Caribbean to anyone willing to take the position, and people still weren't sure that was enough of an incentive Actually, he claims he intentionally says things that are slightly out there so he will not be considered an appropriate candidate for such admin spots. Comparing himself to Donald Trump, etc.

dawinsor said:

Any time I see a book or TV show about academia that's not written by an academic, I start to hyperventilate. No, assistant professors do not vie for the same tenure spot. No, profs do not kill one another to be dept chair. No, Rainbow Rowell, undergrad TAs cannot be hired by a prof unless that prof has some sort of grant allowing them to do that and English profs are unlikely to have one. No! That is not the way any of those things work.

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I think that depends a lot on the school, the English department, and the era.

I was an undergraduate T.A. for English classes; it was a special year-long pedagogy program for English majors planning on teaching.

I have absolutely seen two assistant profs in tenure track positions vie for the same tenure appointment. More than once, even.

And I don't know of someone who murdered another prof in order to get the chair's position, but honestly, it wouldn't surprise me.

At a research I university rank not only has privileges, it can involve filthy lucre. Lots of it. A full prof with senior standing and tenure at UCLA made 195,717.00 last year without special benefits/perks, and those can be considerable.

They'll buy you a house, a fancy house, as part of recruitment/retention.

Ditto everyone that dumping on Harlequin seems unfair, since the realities of medicine and science are often bent or ignored in all types of popular entertainment. Don't get me started about the way infertility is portrayed on sitcoms. No, a doctor cannot determine in a single hour-long appointment that a) there's no problem and you'll be pregnant by the end of the season, or b) there's no hope and we're in for an adoption storyline.

Those novels are meant to entertain, not educate. Judging from how may are sold, thy must be doing OK. Never seen one in a textbook list for med school, probably won't