Certainly. My house has improperly designed ventilation, and passive ventilation seems to be the better way to go. I'm unsure if anyone would have known 60 years ago when the house was built.
The best way to get a bunch of effective net free exhaust area is a ridge vent. The roof however is relatively new, and has no ridge vent. The house is very long, and does not have a lot of gable area - I want to say it's 55-60ft long, and ~25' wide, with a not-very-steep roof (~20 degrees). In order to get the recommended exhaust area, I would need around 10 of these 18x12" vents, which would take up just about the entire front and rear house gable area:
Given that, is a fan the least bad of many bad solutions?