Most of us have sat through a science fiction movie, relished the plot and the suspense – and then got home wondering what was fact or fiction.

Are we just spoilsports? Or are movie-makers taking unacceptable liberties with the truth?

Infectious plot: But scientists have caught mistakes in the science-fiction thriller Contagion.

Take, for instance, the 2011 American movie Contagion, a nail-biting science-fiction thriller that screens tomorrow during Science Week.

Directed by Steven Soderbergh​, and starring Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law, the movie is about the spread of a virus transmitted by fomites​ (inanimate objects contaminated with infectious organisms) – and, after a breakdown in social order, the eventual formulation of a vaccine to stop the virus in its tracks.