Why Can't Scientists be Cooler

This week's The Scientist reminds the reader just how few people love scientists. Not many are viewed like rock stars, writes Richard Gallagher, scientist and editor of The Scientist. In fact, more than he knows, scientists (like intellectuals more generally in the past 20 years) have been almost uniformly demonized by in popular culture in the West. Gallagher imagines a day in which scientists will be much more beloved by the public, even viewed as heroic.

A recent poll of the Top 100 Americans1 included just four scientists, Einstein, Sagan, Salk, and Tesla (although this could be increased to seven if we include Edison, Bell, and Franklin). A similar BBC project2 yielded a healthier 12 scientist in the list of "100 Great British Heroes." Before you get too excited, however, what was striking about that is that only one – Stephen Hawking – is alive. It seems that scientists can be memorable, but only one of us is. To hammer home that point, in another poll teenagers in the UK floundered when asked to name a single contemporary scientist, producing suggestions such as Madonna, Chemical Ali, and their science teacher.3 And in the same poll, only 7% considered scientists to be "cool or fun."

Eric Lander in wrap-around shades and a black trench coat isn't going to carry the same punch as Bono, and I don't see Tony Blair cuddling up to Craig Venter on MTV like he did with Bob Geldof. But we don't want or need to have the impact of the rock fraternity on world opinion. We just need researchers to have a higher profile than the current, pitiful, low.

UPDATE: A READER WRITES: ... caught the latest blog and saw a picture of Tori Higgenson as Dr. Weir posted with the blog on The Scientist's commentary on why scientists can't be cooler ... Why not mention using Dr. Weir/Stargate, and the potential positive connotations scifi television can bring to scientists, since you did use the show/character, and thus roundaboutedly implying just that. (I'll be teaching a class next year using Stargate SG-1 to illustrate ethical principles from Greek time to present, so admit I'm rather biased and keyed to pick up on seeing the show mentioned outside the geek-blog forums.) [Thanks for mentioning it and why not beam up a copy of that syllabus to syllabi@bioethics.org?]