Public Understanding of Science

The article aims to analyze the media’s role in the construction of genetic risk. With the help of systems theory journalism and entertainment are described as an integral part of public communication. It is argued, that both serve a synchronization function and influence the public perception of genetic risk. These comparative perspective gets adapted to current theoretical and methodological problems in the analysis of public representations of genetic engineering. It is argued, that content analysis is a promising method to compare entertaining and journalistic communication on genetic engineering, while in the long run it serves only as a starting point of a broader research program.

Throughout Western culture, the master narrative of the scientist is of an evil and dangerous man. This simplification underlying contemporary mythology of knowledge arises from fear of the power and change that science entails, leaving many people feeling confused and disempowered. It reemerges in the media, most often under the name of “Frankenstein, ” with any new discovery that appears to threaten social equilibrium. This is not a new phenomenon. From medieval stories about alchemists to films about computer hackers, good scientists are in the minority, and the number of recurring stereotypes is small. Seven are identified: the evil alchemist; the noble scientist as hero or savior of society; the foolish scientist, whether the gullible, seventeenth-century virtuoso or the absent-minded professor; the inhuman researcher of romanticism; the scientist as adventurer, transcending boundaries of space and time; the mad, bad, dangerous scientist, unscrupulous in the exercise of power; and the helpless scientist, unable to control the outcome of his or her work. These archetypes offer writers and filmmakers a convenient shorthand, a matrix in which to slot contemporary scientists and their projects, simplifying the issues. Like all myths, they appear simple but represent complex ideas and suppressed fears, which transcend time, place, and race.

Scientists often complain, that journalists do not describe the “real” scientific work, but rather present an exaggerated—often alarmistic—negative image of science. But the contrary is also true: There is a tendency in the press to report about science in a very positive, even ecstatic way. In fact, there are two types of exaggeration: Scientists are either described as heroic figures, that bring “God’s formula” down to earth. Or they are portrayed as some form of fallen angel, whose science has turned into something evil and frightening—which is the devil’s contribution to the story of scientific glory. But this is not a unique feature of science-journalism; popular articles often carry an emotional message to attract attention. While politicians know (and use) this knowledge for a long time, it seems especially hard for scientists to accept it. But in order to make Public Understanding of Science successful, scientists should try to understand the laws and mechanisms of journalism. Recommendations as the Guidelines of the Royal Society can be helpful.

By exploring the relationship between the scientific community and the entertainment industry in the construction of fictional films, this paper investigates the impact that fictional representations, created with the assistance of scientists, have on the construction of scientific knowledge and the public understanding of science. I discuss the nature of science consulting on fictional films, including compensation, consultants’ role in the filmmaking process, and the scientific elements consultants can impact in the films. By questioning the nature of fictional “accuracy, ” I demonstrate that the scientific community’s focus on “scientific accuracy” in fiction is flawed. Fictional film naturalizes both “accurate” and “inaccurate” science by presenting both as “natural” via a perceptually realistic framework.

New knowledge has met with ambivalence, as is documented in myths ever since that of Prometheus. This ambivalence is also apparent in the representations of science in literature and the popular media, most prominent among them movies. Shelley’s Frankenstein has become the icon of the “mad scientist” as depicted by filmmakers ever since the 1930s. To trace such patterns of ambivalence and stereotypes of scientists and science in fiction film, 222 movies were analyzed. It is apparent that modification of, and intervention into, the human body, the violation of human nature, and threats to human health by means of science are depicted as the most alarming aspects of scientific inquiry. The threat is dramatized by being associated with the image of the scientist as pursuing the quest for new knowledge in secrecy, outside the controls of academic institutions and peers. Scientific research as perceived by fiction film is seldom a venture across the boundaries of the permissible.

While popular culture is generally acknowledged to have some impact on public opinion of science, attempts to evaluate this relationship have focused largely on how the public perceives science, rather than how well they understand it. Movies, television, and literature are usually argued to foster a negative perception of science and scientists among the viewing and reading public. What has been left out of this analysis, however, is the degree to which popular culture informs or misinforms the public about how science is done. Does the scientific accuracy and plausibility of a movie’s story line really affect the public’s understanding of the related science? As a science researcher, I am biased in my belief that realistic movies provide more engaging and thought-provoking entertainment than ones that violate obvious and well-understood scientific principles. However, whether realistic movies actually stimulate public inquiry into real science remains to be demonstrated. As a science teacher, I am also challenged to find ways to engage non-science students in learning about how and why science is done. To this end, I have developed a general science course called “Biology in the Movies, ” which uses biology-based movies as a starting point for discussing the fundamental ideas, techniques, and societal implications of such topics as human cloning, genetic screening, human origins and evolution, artificial intelligence, and recombining animals. Teaching this course has thus prompted me to consider the qualities of movies that make them useful for furthering public understanding of science. In this essay, I attempt to explain those qualities and explore how movies that treat similar scientific ideas with differing degrees of realism can be used to teach science. I close with comments on how movies can be usefully critiqued for their scientific plausibility.

This paper compares three celluloid adaptations (1932, 1977, 1996) of the classic novel by H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau. The focus is neither the plot nor the special effects but the presentation of the science and the scientist(s) portrayed, considering the year of production and what was known about cells and genes at that time.

The popular media, film, cinema and television, contribute to the public’s general understanding of science. This article focuses on the portrayal of female scientists and the reception of such depictions within the general understanding. The article questions: the images depicted; their relation to scientific reality; how such depictions have changed over time (1929-1997); and their significance within the broader social context.

This article examines two classical examples of biographical films, Young Tom Edison and Edison, the Man, exploring the ways in which popular motion pictures build an image of entrepreneurial inventorship. Both films reflect the time in which they were produced. In 1940, the Great Depression was not forgotten and the film makers venture to re-establish faith in the capitalist system. In pursuing this, they skillfully employ common myths and standards of story-telling. The films are saturated with period detail of nineteenth-century Americana and they re-enact the familiar patterns of the biopic genre. Edison manages to rise from humble beginnings to a world-famous inventor-hero. Around the inventor’s figure, several topics are constructed, such as courage and responsibility, Edison’s allegedly ambivalent relation to money and commercial success, supposed conflict with monopolistic capital, comradeship, leadership and genius. This celebration of the scientific hero is coupled with a sacralization of the act of inventing. In sum, Thomas Alva Edison is molded into an archetype of a Schumpetarian dynamic entrepreneur. As such, Edison destroys old technologies and industries and paves the way for the better.

Though history and science may seem to be substantially different topics, some of the lessons learned from my studies of the historical film can be suggestive for studies of the way science is treated in the visual media. For one thing, both history and science are referential, pointing to empirical realms outside the discourse. Both also come to us through the established conventions of film (and literature). This means we must be prepared to deal with, even accept, certain kinds of stereotyping and fictionalizing in the depiction of science and scientists. Part of our task is to learn to read the language of the visual media, which tends towards symbolic and metaphoric rather than literal truths.