I hate Fiefeld SO much.

[SiL]

So you're saying he intentionally chose incompetent people, or what ... ?

[Vermillion]

Well the dude did stupidly touch the worm thingy

[Scorpio]

So you're saying he intentionally chose incompetent people, or what ... ?

Just because you can get through a rigorous selection process, doesn't mean you are incapable of being incompetent.

Well the dude did stupidly touch the worm thingy

There's a deleted scene where Milburn finds worms, and it's the first multicellular lifeform they found not from Earth.  And he's a biologist, so that explains why he got excited.

[SiL]

Just because you can get through a rigorous selection process, doesn't mean you are incapable of being incompetent.

Yes, but we generally don't see anybody being competent to begin with.

[Scorpio]

I don't know if there is a rulebook for dealing with alien life and technology.

[Olde]

No, just studies in bioethics, standard and advanced scientific procedures, and years of studying to pass qualifications that you're required to be licensed in before you become a practitioner in biology.

But I mean, it's space, so there couldn't possibly be any rules by which scientists have to abide in order to be scientists in space. And did you know that they're just handing out doctoral degrees at Yale and Harvard? 

[SiL]

I don't know if there is a rulebook for dealing with alien life and technology.

In Janek's case we've had captains for a good few dozen centuries.

[Corporal Hicks]

Nitpicking.  People don't always act like professionals in real life.

The kind of people they send on trillion-dollar space missions tend to.

Apparently for this particular mission, they don't.  Characters really weren't Prometheus' strong point.

[Ingwar]

It was planned. Weyland wanted to have true believers and dumb scientists on-board so they would do some crazy irrational shit and give David more opportunity to play with them It worked. A bit.

[Hamster1066]

So you're saying he intentionally chose incompetent people, or what ... ?

That was my assumption. Weyland puts all his trust in David. Shaw's mission crew are all guinea pigs.

[Scorpio]

Yeah, Weyland's purpose was to meet his makers to become immortal.  He is a crazy old man.  This is not a NASA mission to catalogue alien life.  It is about one man's personal crusade to become a god.

And everyone complains that these people don't act like NASA scientists.  It's a fantasy/scifi movie, not a science documentary.  Nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking.

[windebieste]

You mean to say... these movies are for entertainment purposes only and they're not fact laden documentaries about the intricacies of how NASA will colonise the farthest reaches of outer space?  I'm shocked!

Next heretical thing you'll say is: "There are no spaceships.  ...or aliens."

That would be a real downer to some people.  lol.

-Windebieste.

[Ingwar]

Actually it was Vickers who employed the crew.

[SiL]

Actually it was Vickers who employed the crew.

And she doesn't seem like the kind of person who'd intentionally hire people so incompetent.

[Paranoid Android]

And everyone complains that these people don't act like NASA scientists.  It's a fantasy/scifi movie, not a science documentary.  Nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking.

The problem with the prequel characters isn't that they don't act like NASA scientists; It's that they don't even act like the average Joe...The audience questions their decision making because even they know better.

Next heretical thing you'll say is: "There are no spaceships.  ...or aliens."

There are spaceships:

So you're saying he intentionally chose incompetent people, or what ... ?

That was my assumption. Weyland puts all his trust in David. Shaw's mission crew are all guinea pigs.

To kinda add to bursting the "incompetent personnel hiring was intentional" bubble: During the first half of the film, the characters don't know what they might find and aren't even sure that the "Engineer" thesis is correct. Vickers, Millburn and David openly state that they have doubts about the validity of Shaw and Holloway's claims. The hiring of incompetent people to be used as guinea pigs for Davids experiments requires you to know in advance what you'll find. You basically had to have known that Engineers exist and that they have some type of substance stored away somewhere that can be experimented with. What if there was no goo at all? What if there were no Engineers at all? Or even worse - What if there were Engineers, but tracking them down required actual experts? Now you're just stuck with an incompetent crew that serves no purpose other than to sabotage your own mission.