It was only a TV commercial, but it made Robert Park angry enough to blast it in his weekly newsletter for physicists as a typical example of how little respect scientists get.
The commercial for a weight-loss product depicted a science teacher as an overweight dweeb with huge spectacles, a plastic pocket protector and an oversized bow tie who was rendered tongue-tied by the sight of a pretty female phys-ed instructor.
“In this politically correct era,” fumed Park, “scientists may be the only group left that advertisers can safely ridicule.”
Park, who runs the Washington office of the American Physical Society, is one of many scientists who think that Hollywood’s portrayal of their profession is not only wrong, but may be harming society.
“There’s this notion of `Honey, I Shrunk the Kids’ that scientists are people who fiddle around in basement labs doing crazy things,” said Park. “It goes back to those old `B’ movies I saw as a kid where they had large neon signs that flashed the message `Danger, Mad Scientist.’
“Even when the stories are more subtle, the images in most movies aren’t flattering to scientists. In `Jurassic Park,’ for instance, the theme is this bunch of scientists who get control of the secret of life itself and what do they do with it? They build an amusement park!”
Such treatment helps fuel a public perception of scientists either as bumbling fools or coldly detached geniuses with little concern for the consequences of their work, Park and others argue. It contributes to acceptance of widespread scientific illiteracy in a nation vitally dependent upon technological innovation for economic well-being.
“This is not a healthy situation nor a trivial concern,” said Park.
Other scientists take fictional stereotypes so seriously that they’re trying to start their own prime-time TV show. This wouldn’t be another documentary or educational vehicle like “Nova,” but a dramatic piece of fiction depicting scientists as protagonists, much as “L.A. Law” did with lawyers or “ER” does with physicians.
Advocates of prime-time science drama are pursuing their dream by lining up foundation grants–they are scientists, after all–to finance writing a script.
Leading the effort is Leon Lederman, the Nobel laureate who is director-emeritus at Fermilab and on the physics faculty of the Illinois Institute of Technology.
“This isn’t just something we stumbled into,” Lederman said. “It started six or seven years ago with a round-table group of scientists and journalists in Chicago. We recognize that in this society if you want to really have an impact on people’s attitudes, you have to reach them through prime-time commercial television.”
With credentials as one of the world’s top scientists, Lederman has been able to peddle his ideas with a clout that must be the envy of all but the most successful agents.
He has met with top executives of all the major networks, including a long meeting with Laurence A. Tisch, who owned CBS.
“Having the Nobel does help get people’s attention for your ideas,” said Lederman. “They even buy me lunch.”
But even a Nobel isn’t enough to persuade a network president to put your pet idea into his fall programming lineup.
“We told them our ideas and they listened politely, then they told us they tried science and it didn’t work,” Lederman said. “With CBS they were talking about a show with Walter Cronkite, and we’d talked to Cronkite as well and knew that they didn’t really try it very hard, and it isn’t what we’re proposing anyway.
“They had a lot of points and jargon, but basically what they were saying is that you can’t have an evening lineup that has two dumb shows, then a smart show, then another dumb show.”
Lederman argues that science represents a great area of human interest that is mostly untapped by television.
“If people turned off their set after watching a program and felt that they’d learned something, that would be unusual and would build viewer loyalty,” he said.
“We know that the New York Times regularly sells more papers on Tuesdays, when it has a science section, than on other weekdays. When Time magazine has a cover on a science topic, it sells more newsstand copies than usual, and America’s science museums log 80 million visits a year, which is more than the attendance at all the football, baseball and basketball games put together.”
First, the script
Those arguments have gotten some attention from network officials, said Lederman, but they want to see something more specific, which is why the American Association for the Advancement of Science has raised a few hundred thousand dollars in grant money to commission a TV pilot script.
Once the script is written, Lederman hopes to use it to attract a few million dollars to film a pilot that he can then peddle to a network.
Working on the script is Adrian Malone, who has produced several documentaries for public television and for British Broadcasting. His shows include “The Ascent of Man,” “Cosmos” and “The Age of Uncertainty.”
As now conceived, the show, with a working title “The Dean,” will be something like “NYPD Blue” or “ER” with several subplots and a host of characters that run from one week to the next.
The dean of a research university who controls the purse strings for many scientific undertakings would be at the center of the show.
“Our only rules are to not tell lies about science and never to bore people,” said Malone.
Just like the cops, lawyers and doctors seen on TV, Malone’s scientist characters would include honest, admirable people as well as people with low cunning, greed and jealousy.
The goal of having a prime-time TV show isn’t to glorify scientists, Lederman said, but rather to give viewers a realistic taste of what science is really like, to reveal the true humanity of scientists, warts and all.
“Leon himself is a perfect example of someone in science,” said Malone. “He has one of the best minds in the world, is an attractive man, an open man who draws people to him and never, ever, condescends to them.”
Catching the real flavor of science will be easier in drama than in a documentary, said Malone.
“This is a country that dramatizes itself,” he said. “The good writing in America is in the dramas, not the documentaries. There is no room for subtlety in documentaries here, but there is in drama.”
Among the enthusiastic backers of the project is Jon D. Miller, vice president of the Chicago Academy of Sciences and a leading authority on scientific illiteracy.
“TV is primarily good at conveying attitudes and making people familiar and comfortable with things,” Miller said. “There is now this belief in many people’s minds that science is so complex that I could never hope to understand it. Perhaps that attitude could be changed through TV to one where people will accept that they can understand science.”
While people from nearly every sector of society probably have met a teacher, a banker, a doctor or a lawyer, few–it seems–ever actually meet a scientist, Miller said.
“TV introduces you to people,” Miller said. “It helps to take them off a pedestal and make them seem real.”
Other `experts’ are watching
Perhaps the most popular network TV show now on the air that regularly depicts scientists is Fox’s “X-Files.” But that show uses a basis of real science to quickly launch into a fictional fantasy of space aliens and murky conspiracies.
Chris Carter, creator of “X-Files” and its executive producer, said that Lederman’s concept of a drama about scientists is intriguing.
“Being a science buff myself, I’m curious to see how they’ll create the characters and what they’ll do with them. The idea could make a successful TV show; it’s all in the execution. You do have to remember in commercial television, it’s entertainment first and education second. Anything deemed too pedantic would turn the public away.”
Some scientists such as the physicist Robert Park have lamented that the “X-Files” develops its plots along wildly fictional lines instead of using its characters to debunk pseudo-science.
“They could be doing things like exposing UFO abductions as hoaxes and debunking claims of the paranormal,” Park said.
Asked if he might ever take the “X-Files” into such themes, Carter chuckled and said “stay tuned.”
Just as Lederman’s credentials as a researcher got the attention of top network executives, the Nobelist is also counting on them to gain interest in the project from chief executives at America’s biggest companies.
“These people realize that the future of their businesses depend upon America’s leadership in scientific research,” said Lederman. “Once we get a pilot together, I know there’ll be interest among big companies in sponsoring it.
“But in the end, to get sponsors and get this on the air, we’ll have to have a program people want to watch, something that can compete on its own. I think we’ll do it.”
