negative portrayals of scientists and scientific research in the media.
However, a closer examination reveals that these media images are inevitable
and probably cannot be changed. Science should turn instead to practical
steps to improve its image with the public. This address was recorded at the American Association for the Advancement of Science on January 25 1999, and broadcast on the Science Show on April 3, 1999
This address was recorded at the American Association for the Advancement of Science on January 25 1999, and broadcast on the Science Show on April 3, 1999
I come before you today as someone who started life with degrees in physical anthropology and medicine; who then published research on endocrinology, and papers in the New England Journal of Medicine, and even in the Proceedings of the Peabody Museum. As someone who, after this promising beginning, turned to a life of crime, and spent the rest of his life in what is euphemistically called the entertainment business. And it is from the perspective of someone who has lived in both worlds that I want to speak to you today.
Scientists often complain to me that the media misunderstands their work. But I would suggest that in fact, the reality is just the opposite, and that it is science which misunderstands media. I will talk about why popular fiction about science must necessarily be sensationalistic, inaccurate, and negative. I'll explain why it is impossible for the scientific method to be accurately portrayed in film. I will explain why I think traditional concerns about media are misplaced, and I'll suggest some steps that science can take to genuinely improve its image.
I'll speak informally, so I ask your indulgence if I refer to "science" as if it were something monolithic, or if I refer to mass media and popular culture interchangeably. In the past, I would have also have asked you to excuse me for talking about news and entertainment as if they were interchangeable though, of course, these days they are.
But let me return to my original point: that science misunderstands media. Let's begin by talking about two recent and typical examples of this misapprehension. One is an essay in the journal The Sciences, and the other is an article from the New York Times.
This image is from the November-December issue of the excellent journal The Sciences. The article is entitled "Script Doctors," and the subtitle reads "Movie Scientists, from evil doctors to the merely insane, from bumbling nerds to stalwart heroes, still inform public perceptions of the real thing." No, they don't.
Notice first how arbitrary the characterization is. The illustrations show an old version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and a still from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. But Stevenson's story isn't about science, it's about the dual nature of man. And Indiana Jones is not a figure that leaps to mind when we think of scientists in movies. He's an adventurer. And the film The Temple of Doom is, like Gunga Din before it, a story about a murderous religious cult. To identify these pictures as representations of scientists is a stretch.
Another page from the same article, which shows a nasty-looking fellow from a movie no one has ever seen, called Reanimator, based on an H.P. Lovecraft story. We also have Sharon Stone from a movie I co-produced, Sphere. You may not like the flawed character she plays, the reviewer doesn't, but why single her out, rather than Dustin Hoffman, or Sam Jackson, or Peter Coyote? Everybody in Sphere is a scientist. Do you expect them all to be admirably portrayed? If so, do you think that corresponds to real life?
I ask that because I sometimes think scientists really don't notice that their colleagues have flaws. But in my experience scientists are very human people: which means that some are troubled, deceitful, petty or vain. I know a scientist so forgetful he didn't notice he'd left his wife behind at the airport until the plane was in the air. I once was at a party with Jacques Monod when a gorgeous young woman - a Ph.D. bacteriologist - came up to him and said, 'Oh, Dr. Monod, you are the most beautiful man in the room." And he preened. But why not? He was very handsome in a sort of Camus-existential-Gauloise-smoking way. We all know that Nobel Prizes tend to magnify human foibles, anyway.
I find these flaws reassuring, but an essay like this, which primarily focuses on negative rather than positive images, is a perennial exercise in self-flagellation, and is what I call ritual abuse. The implication is that scientists are singled out for negative portrayals, and that the public is therefore deceived in some way we should worry about. I say, that's nonsense.
Let's be clear: all professions look bad in the movies. And there's a good reason for this. Movies don't portray career paths, they conscript interesting lifestyles to serve a plot. So lawyers are all unscrupulous and doctors are all uncaring. Psychiatrists are all crazy, and politicians are all corrupt. All cops are psychopaths, and all businessmen are crooks. Even moviemakers come off badly: directors are megalomaniacs, actors are spoiled brats. Since all occupations are portrayed negatively, why expect scientists to be treated differently?
But wait, you may be thinking. Don't these movie images provide some insight into the attitudes of the wider society? Don't they reflect the society in some way? No, they do not: for proof of that, you need only look at images of women in the last 50 years. Fifty years ago movies were characterized by strong women; Crawford and Stanwyck and Bette Davis. Women of intelligence and substance - women to be reckoned with. Since then, during a time of dramatic change for women in society, the movies have portrayed women primarily as giggling idiots or prostitutes.
So I suggest to you there is essentially no correspondence between social reality and movie reality. None at all. And hence no point in worrying about movie portrayals.
Scientists are not alone in their concern about movie images. Other professions worry as well. Consider the 1994 essay by Victoria Beard, "Popular Culture and Professional Identity: Accountants in the Movies," or another by Phillip Bougen, "Joking Aside: The Serious Side to the Accountant Stereotype." Many professions aren't happy.
Let me refer to a recent article from the New York Times: "Scientists seek a new movie role, hero not villain" (December 1, 1998). Again, notice the arbitrary nature of that dichotomy. We see three pictures: Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, a movie that is mentioned as critical of technology. Charlie Chaplin is run off his feet by racing technology. Imagine feeling that way! But of course it's a comedy. Next, Jurassic Park, where the caption reads, "Scientists as bunglers: Richard Attenborough, left, hatches a deadly dinosaur." But Richard Attenborough is not a scientist, he's a businessman. The other two people in the picture are scientists and they have had nothing to do with the bungling. Indeed, the scientist on the right is about to complain about the bungling, as any sensible person would. How does this story moment get encapsulated as "Scientists as bunglers?"
In passing, I'd remind you Jurassic Park does have a scientist as its hero. He's right there, Alan Grant. He saves the kids, he saves the day, rights the wrongs, and looks dashing. Beside him is another hero, Ellie Sattler, a botanist. So in a movie where nearly every character has a doctorate, why talk about wanting to be heroes not villains? The scientists already are heroes. Why are they so insistent on discounting the positive portrayals? Ritual abuse.
The third picture, from the movie Contact. The caption here is "Real science: Jodie Foster's driven search for extraterrestrial life won plaudits from astronomers". We all know what that means. That means some of the background is authentic, or some technical dialog is good, or the filmmakers went to Puerto Rico and filmed an actual radio telescope. But to call a movie about contact with extraterrestrial life an example of real science is very odd, indeed.
Let's move beyond the issue of images of scientists, because this discussion is really about something more interesting: how the scientific method is portrayed in fiction.
Key Complaints by Scientists about Media
I've said that scientists don't understand media, and one form of misunderstanding concerns why stories about the scientific method are as they are. I hear four principal complaints:
Let's take these in order. Why are unnecessary razzle-dazzle and exaggerated plot elements meretriciously added? Well, because it's a movie. Movies tell larger-than-life, exaggerated stories. Most feature sex and violence and explosions whenever possible. As movie mogul Sam Goldwyn said, "Sex will outlive us all."
A variant complaint is to say the story doesn't need one or another element. Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins, whom I very much admire, is quoted as saying "the natural world is fascinating in its own right. It really doesn't need human drama to be fascinating." And he wondered why Jurassic Park had to have any people in it at all, when it already had dinosaurs.
Of course the natural world is fascinating in its own right, but Jurassic Park isn't the natural world. The jungle is on a soundstage at Universal. It has been built to suit the action; if an actor has to climb a tree, the fibreglass bark is supported inside with metal girders to hold the weight. It is lit by artificial light.
And for the most part, the dinosaurs aren't on this set at all: they're added later by computer. The dinosaurs are photo-realistic animations, exactly like Mickey Mouse, except with more pixels.
Furthermore, it's not as if the dinosaurs had some inherent accuracy and the people are added fictions. It's all equally fictitious. No one knows what dinosaurs looked like or how they behaved. Technical advisors can't tell you, because no one knows. We have skeletal remains, some trackways, and some impressions of skin texture. But the minute you start adding muscles and skin color and movement and behavior, you're guessing. Therefore the film portrayal of dinosaurs is fantasy. A novelist imagined their behavior. Artists imagined their appearance. Their actions were honed, and repeatedly revised by artists at Industrial Light and Magic until they looked right to Steven Spielberg. There is nothing remotely real about them.
But let's imagine, for a moment, that dinosaurs were real, and you could film a sort of Discovery Channel segment about them. Would that film be real? Are any of the nature films we see on television "real?" For the most part, no, because those films take raw footage, sometimes filmed over years, and cut it together to make a familiar narrative: the young cub goes on its own, meeting amusement and danger. Mother protects and defends her cute babies. The male is banished from his harem and sulks. And so on. These stories frequently do not occur in front of the cameras. They occur in the editing room.
Why are the films cut that way? Because people like stories. They find sequential narratives, even when palpably untrue, interesting and organizing. In fact when people go on safari to Africa they're disappointed to find the animals aren't acting out the little half-hour vignettes they've come to expect from TV. Alternatively, when they do find a real life episode, it often lasts too long: a dominance fight between hippos can go on for hours. With no convenient commercial breaks in which to change film and go to the bathroom.
But Dr. Dawkins said he didn't know why you needed the people in the story. The answer is that the person who dreamed up this particular fiction wanted it to be that way. It was written to revive the corny movies of people arid dinosaurs together that I had loved in childhood. King Kong, One Million Years BC, all of that. Jurassic Park is meant to stand in a long line of related movies. It is thus explicitly a work of fiction. The natural world is entirely irrelevant.
Let's go to the second point, inaccuracy and made-up plot devices. Scientists from Leo Szilard to Isaac Asimov to Carl Sagan have all written fictionÑand all have unhesitatingly used inaccurate and gratuitous plot devices. There must be a reason. Carl invented a message, he invented a machine, and he invented an extraterrestrial life. None of this could be called accurate in any reasonable sense of the word. It's fantasy. Asimov is best known for his I, Robot series. No accuracy there.
In a story like Jurassic Park, to complaint of inaccuracy is downright weird. Nobody can make a dinosaur. Therefore the story is a fantasy. How can accuracy have any meaning in a fantasy? It's like the reporters who asked me if I had visited genetic engineering firms while doing my research. Why would I? They don't know how to make a dinosaur.
But on another level of texture and detail, accuracy is always at risk, because it is never the most important value. Jack Horner, the paleontologist who served as the film's advisor, was dissatisfied with the portrayal of a dinosaur dig, where people are exposing bones. He'd gone to a lot of trouble to plan a real sequence for Steven, instead of the unrealistic one that was shot. I said, "Would your sequence take the same amount of time?" No, he said, it would take a little longer. Maybe another minute. "Well," I said, "there's your answer." Because a minute is a very long time in a movie. And the dinosaur dig isn't a plot point, it's only meant to establish a milieu for the characters. Verisimilitude in a narrative is more important than veracity.
Point three. Why are the stories about science always so negative? We've already discussed that characters in every profession are shown negatively. But what about the stories themselves: why can't we have positive stories?
One answer is that people like scary movies. They enjoy being frightened. But the more important answer is that we live in a culture of relentless, round-the-clock boosterism for science and technology. With each new discovery and invention, the virtues are always oversold, the drawbacks understated. Who can forget the freely mobile society of the automobile, the friendly atom, the paperless office, the impending crisis of too much leisure time, or the era of universal education ushered in by television? We now hear the same utopian claims about the Internet. But everyone knows science and technology are inevitably a mixed blessing. How then will the fears, the concerns, the downside of technology be expressed? Because it has to appear somewhere. So it appears in movies, in stories - which I would argue is a good place for it to appear.
And let's remember there is genuine reason for concern. As Paul Valery put it, "The whole question comes down to this: can the human mind master what the human mind has made?" That's the question that troubled Oppenheimer. It troubled the editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. It troubles many scientists now. And it should.
Finally, our society is now dependent on technology, and dependent on science. With so much power, science will inevitably receive strong criticism. It comes with success. It's entirely appropriate. Take it as a compliment. And get over it.
And so we come to point four. Why not show the real scientific method in stories?
The article quotes my friend David Milch, a creator of NYPD Blue. His answer is blunt: "the scientific method is antithetical to storytelling." And he's right, at least for movies. Movies are a special kind of storytelling, with their own requirements and rules. Here are four important ones:
Unfortunately, the scientific method runs up against all four rules. In real life, scientists may compete, they may be driven - but they aren't forced to work. Yet movies work best when characters have no choice. That's why there is the long narrative tradition of contrived compulsion for scientists. In Flash Gordon, Dr. Zharkov must work or else Dale Arden will be fondled by Ming the Merciless. In countless other stories, the scientist was given a daughter, so she could be captured by the bad guys, to force the scientist to work. Another time-honored method to compel is to build in a clock. That's what I did in The Andromeda Strain. You must accomplish a task before something awful happens. Or you can murder the character's family, thus forcing him to track down the bad guys. But however you do it, the end result is always the same: the movie character is compelled to act.
You can dispute this rule, and you can find exceptions. But the great majority of dramatic movies work this way.
Second, the villain. Real scientists may be challenged by nature, but they aren't opposed by a human villain. Yet movies need a human personification of evil. You can't make one without distorting the truth of science.
Third, searches. Scientific work is often an extended search. But movies can't sustain a search, which is why they either run a parallel plotline, or more often, just cut the search short. There's a fabulous sequence in The French Connection where the cops spend all night tearing apart a car, searching for cocaine. But on film it only lasts about thirty seconds. Whereas if you short-circuit the search in science, you aren't faithful to the nature of research.
Fourth, the matter of physical action: movies must move. Movies are visual and external. But much of the action of science is internal and intellectual, with little to show in the way of physical activity. Even the settings of science are unsatisfactory: contemporary laboratories aren't physically active, like the bubbling reagents and lightning sparks of old Frankenstein.
For all these reasons, the scientific method presents genuine problems in film storytelling. I believe the problems are insoluble. The best you will ever get is a kind of caricature of the scientific process. Nor will the problems be solved by finding a more intelligent, dedicated or caring filmmaker. The problems lie with the limitations of film as a visual storytelling medium. You aren't going to beat it. And of course, movies are resistant to the advice of outsiders. As Sam Goldwyn said, "When I want your opinion, I'll give it to you."
Misunderstandings About Mass Media
I have suggested that negative and distorted views of scientists and the scientific method are inevitable. But I've also suggested that it's all unimportant, and that worrying about it is a lot of hot air.
To understand why, let's review some truths about the mass media.
Mass media isn't mass. If Letterman cracks an anti-science joke, does it matter? He's a famous guy with an audience of 3 million people. But wait: that's 1.2% of the US population. How about a nasty article in Time magazine? Four million circulation, say two people read each issue. That's 3%. The New York Times is critical of science? The article is seen by perhaps one percent of the population. Of course, we can always count on a good word from Nova - but that's only reaching 8.5 million, or 3.3%. Internet, you say? Only 18% of homes wired. And how they use the net is hard to assess.
Even huge media events - ER on television, or Jurassic Park at the movies - will only be seen by twenty to forty million people, or eight to fifteen percent of the domestic audience. That means five out of six Americans never see it. The perception of an all-pervasive media that reaches everybody is simply not accurate. No media speaks directly to the majority of Americans.
Mass Media isn't Respected. For the last decade, an increasing majority of Americans say that the media isn't responsive to their concerns, that it is focused on trivia, that it is sensationalistic, unreliable and unbelievable. As a result, they have turned away. Network news has lost audience for twenty years. They lost 6% last year. Movies have been losing audience for fifty years. All traditional media are viewed less often, and more skeptically, with each passing year.
Mass Media isn't Influential. We have a clear example of just how influential the media isn't in the recent treatment of the president. For a year, his affair was all over the television. For months, we heard interminable predictions of his removal. Talk about a negative image and distorted media coverage - nobody has had it like Bill Clinton. But did it harm him? Evidently not. The American public heard it all, and decided that what was wrong was the news reporters. And then they turned the news off.
Let's be clear: this is a change. In 1985, 60 Minutes gave a misleading report on Audi's braking system, and Audi lost 80% of its American business. Although Audi subsequently won the relevant lawsuit, its business took a decade to rebuild. But no television report would have that impact today. Nobody would believe it. They'd think the cars were rigged, the interviews paid for, the reporters biased, the story one-sided. Every major network has had scandals and fraud and firings and embarrassment.
The media has lost its power. All the more reason for science to stop worrying about how it is portrayed.
What then should scientists be concerned about? I want to advance the radical notion that what really matters is not the image, but the reality. Adopting this attitude has the advantage of turning your focus from things you can't do anything about - like scientists in the movies - to things you can.
If I were magically put in charge of improving the status and image of science, I would take several steps. I recognize they are difficult steps, because they involve changing the prevailing culture of science. But I'll run them past you anyway.
First, I would address my known problems. There's a problem about women in science. You don't attract enough, and you don't keep enough of those you do. It's not a minor problem and it can't wait. Fix it.
And there's a problem about the number of Americans drawn to technical and scientific careers. We are a technological society that can't fulfill its own needs - Silicon Valley imports foreign nationals with software skills.
I don't know anyone who thinks that scientific education is as good as it should be. But if it were up to me, I'd put particular emphasis on introductory courses. First, because you want to attract talent. And perhaps more important, most students aren't going to become scientists, so the introductory course is your only direct chance to work on them.
I'm sometimes asked if I think my books hurt science. This is my answer.
My answer is no, but these posters scare me. Because a lot of young people are going to be excited enough by a movie or a novel, to give science a try; to sign up for a course. And my fear is that these kids will conclude that even though Jurassic Park made science seem interesting and exciting, the introductory course proves conclusively that it isn't.
I was very fortunate. In college, I was taught introductory biology by George Wald, and introductory psychology by Jerome Bruner. All my introductory teachers were full professors, individuals of charisma and eminence, imbued with passion for their field. That was before it became unfashionable for senior professors to teach. I'd work hard to change the fashion. It's damaging every academic field, but that's no reason not to fix yours.
How to Use the Media
As for the media, I'd start using them, instead of feeling victimized by them. They may be in disrepute, but you're not. The information society will be dominated by the groups and people who are most skilled at manipulating the media for their own ends.
For example, under the auspices of a distinguished organization - like this one - I'd set up a service bureau for reporters. (I know you do something like this, but I mean going much farther. I called the number and got an answering machine: no good.) Reporters are harried, and often don't know science. A phone call away, establish a source of information to help them, to verify facts, to assist them through thorny issues. Don't farm it out, make it your service, with your name on it. Over time, build this bureau into a kind of good housekeeping seal, so that your denial has power, and you can start knocking down phony stories, fake statistics and pointless scares immediately, before they build. And use this bureau to refer reporters to scientists around the country who can speak clearly to specific issues, who have the knack of being quotable, and who can eventually emerge as recognizable spokespeople for science in areas of public concern, like electromagnetic radiation scares, cancer diets, and breast implant litigation. Convince these scientists that appearing on media isn't an ego trip, but is part of their job, and a service to their profession. Then convince their colleagues.
Because this pool of scientists will eventually produce media stars, and you need the profession to respect them, instead of making their lives hell. Carl Sagan took incredible flak from colleagues, yet he performed a great service to science. So too, at an earlier time, did Jacob Bronowski, who similarly bore heavy criticism. I am sure there are scientists today who might become media figures but don't because they correctly foresee professional scorn. All this must change. Science has dealt with its disdain of the press by turning media work over to popularizers. But popularizers can't do what needs to be done, because people see they aren't really scientists, they're just well-informed talkers.
You need working scientists with major reputations and major accomplishments to appear regularly on the media, and thus act as human examples, demonstrating by their presence what a scientist is, how a scientist thinks and acts, and explaining what science is about. Such media-savvy people are found in sports, politics, business, law, and medicine. Science needs them too. And it doesn't hurt if they're characters: Richard Feynmann, with his strip-tease lunches and pranks and bongo drums, did much to put a human face on physics. He, too, was criticized.
In this matter of personal dealings with the press, science is far behind the times. Thirty years ago, when I published The Andromeda Strain, authors didn't talk to the press. That would be selling. It undermined our dignity as intellectuals. Back then, the major figures of business, finance, and the universities behaved similarly. And so did scientists. Even movie directors didn't give interviews; that was a job for actors.
Ten years later, things had begun to change. More and more authors were doing press. It had lost its pejorative charge. And twenty years later, every author did a press tour. It was now part of the job. If you refused to do it you might not get published. During the same period, businesses had learned that they fared better when the president of the company talked to reporters, not the PR guy. And so the presidents of companies did. If they were bad at it, they took lessons. It was part of the job. Financial people quickly saw the advantages of press exposure. Lawyers argued their cases before the media. And film directors were expected to promote their movies, right alongside the actors. It was part of the job.
But it's my impression that science has not kept pace with other professions. Scientists retain the old disdain for the press. To do interviews badly may even be a point of pride, establishing your intellectual bona fides. You are above the fray. But the truth is, the world has really changed and science is now suffering.
Ways that Science Can Improve its Public Image
Today, if you say "businessman" or "sports figure" to most people, they can conjure up a half-dozen faces - people they would recognize if they passed them on the street. If you say "scientist" to most people, they draw a blank. Perhaps Stephen Hawking, because of his dramatic illness. Any others? Maybe Jim Watson or Steve Gould. But mostly, a blank. This is not good.
I recognize that to build a pool of media stars is going to take a minor revolution in professional attitudes. But you have no choice. I hope I have convinced you that you can never convey a sense of real science through movies or TV shows. You can only do that by exposing real scientists, with wit and charisma, to the waiting public -in the media, and in the classroom.
Finally, I would rethink the advancement of science. Too often, the advancement of science has meant the advancement of scientists. More money for research, more spending for big projects. The public correctly perceives this as lobbying.
Instead, I would improve the image of science by helping people with problems they can't solve. A few years ago, the American public expressed enormous concern about drugs; half of all Americans reported they personally knew someone who had gotten in trouble with drugs. Now our schools are flooded with some fifty drug prevention programs; federal money pays for them; but nobody knows which, if any, work. Similarly, drug rehabilitation succeeds only about a third of the time. Which programs perform best? What factors improve outcomes? Science has the means and the tools to help here.
Other groups are already taking action. My professor Howard Hiatt some years ago started a series of evaluative programs at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Today, when the public says their greatest concern is education, it is not surprising that Frederick Mosteller's report for the Academy on classroom size has had widespread impact. But such high-powered studies are still astonishingly rare. I find it ironic that scientists will form skeptical societies to make the world safe from the dangers of astrology, yet fail to attack the truly hazardous superstitions in this country.
For example, one superstition has blighted the lives of young Americans for decades. I refer to whole-word reading, a program instituted without ever being tested, a program that to my knowledge has never been shown to work, and yet generations of teachers have been schooled in its practice, defend it hotly, and perpetuate it. Now, 40% of our population is functionally illiterate. They can't all have learning disorders. At some point you have to suspect teaching methods just aren't working. Many believe the precipitous decline in California reading scores coincides with the introduction of new teaching methods. But who is going to put a stake through the heart of this superstition? What academic body has enough integrity and prestige to take on other misguided academics, and issue a definitive report on reading methods, similar to the Mosteller report on classroom size? I am sure Dr. Hiatt would be glad if other organizations joined in this effort. But however it happens, if you do something to improve reading, and every parent in America will have a clear and direct appreciation of what science can do, and what it has done for them. And then I think when scientists ask for a big supercollider, they're more likely to get it.
So let's stop the self-flagellation, the ritual abuse and the hot air, and let's follow some new paths. Science is the most exciting and sustained enterprise of discovery in the history of our species. It is the great adventure of our time. We live today in an era of discovery that far outshadows the discoveries of the New World five hundred years ago. In a stunningly short period of time, science has extended our knowledge all the way from the behavior of galaxies to the behavior of particles in the subatomic world.
Under the circumstances, for scientists to fret over their image seems slightly absurd. This is a great field with great talents and great power. It's time to assume your power, and shoulder your responsibility to get your message to the waiting world. It's nobody's job but yours. And nobody can do it as well as you can.
© 1999 Australian Broadcasting Corporation