Image and imagination: overhauling the reputation of scientists

Scientists have long suffered from an image problem, a situation that doesn’t help the uneasiness many people already feel about science and where it is heading. LabLit.com is trying to counter this problem with a new strategy involving both fiction and fact

SCIENCE is a burgeoning profession. In the UK alone, it is estimated that more than 1.3 million people practice science, technology or engineering. Scientific facts are also rife, hogging the news headlines, it seems, with increasing frequency. In such a climate, you might expect scientists to have celebrity status, to be the acclaimed gurus of our ever-increasing quality of life. After all, thanks in part to the efforts of scientists, we live longer, we can access an ever-increasing range of new vaccines and medicines, and we are surrounded by a wealth of high-tech gadgetry designed to make our lives easier and more enjoyable. 

Of course, this is not the reality at all. Scientists are never spotted at the exclusive celeb parties that welcome singers, actors, musicians, dancers, writers, sportsmen and artists with open arms. In fact, when Stephen Hawking recently blundered into a hotel party thrown by the actor Barbara Windsor, it made headline news because of the sheer incomprehensibility of seeing the two

"When Stephen Hawking recently blundered into a hotel party thrown by the actor Barbara Windsor, it made headline news because of the sheer incomprehensibility of seeing the two of them under one roof"

of them under one roof. This situation reflects the peculiar void in public awareness that the scientific profession seems to inhabit. As a biologist, filling out online forms, I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been stumped when asked to tick a box describing my profession. You can scroll down a lengthy list from accountant to zookeeper and not see the term ‘scientist’ or any of its synonyms. In many cases, the closest category is ‘health-care professional’ – I tick this off reluctantly, if there is no ‘other’ box, but wonder what my physicist, chemist and mathematician colleagues do in the same situation. Not for the first time, I pause to ask myself why 1.3 million people are effectively invisible. Especially when you consider, for example, that the UK police force numbers only about 161,000 – about eight times fewer than scientists – yet still manages to be right up there with doctors, lawyers and teachers in terms of professional visibility.

This is not to say that people don’t know that scientists exist, or even occasionally think about them or see them as talking heads on television. But despite the fact that the talking head usually looks like a normal person, if you’re not a scientist and are asked to picture one, chances are that one of the following images will flit into your mind: Frankenstein, Einstein, painfully weird and geeky boys with thick glasses and white coats, or vague middle-aged men in beards and sandals. More recently, if you’ve been watching a lot of modern science fiction films or Crime Scene Investigation, you might picture a catwalk-ready woman (designer spectacles optional). Needless to say, as a living, breathing scientist myself, I can testify that none of these stereotypes is particularly accurate. If you were to place my colleagues in a line-up, I doubt you could tell them apart from any other modern professional.

So in my estimation, scientists have two image problems - they are largely invisible, and when they are thought of at all, the view is distorted and typically (catwalk models excepted) unflattering. Why does this matter? People fear (and sometimes hate) what they don’t understand. Science is incredibly complex and therefore inherently scary, and so if the profession is not fronted by a friendly, trustworthy human interface, this impression will persist. And fear of scientists has real consequences for consumers of science. If you happen to believe that scientists are weird, cold-blooded, out of touch or inhuman, why should you listen to them when they point out that the MMR vaccine is actually quite safe or that the homeopathic remedy you’re using instead of conventional chemotherapy is medically useless? As importantly, scientific research is reliant on good public opinion for its funding and regulatory freedom, so a bad image won’t do science any favours either. Finally, although there are plenty of science students now to fulfil our future needs, it would be bad news if the subsequent generations got scared off the career track by inaccurate portrayals of scientists.

Fiction is usually a reflection of life. The mad scientist stereotype I referred to above is deeply rooted in Western culture, in fact, science historians have traced the image all the way back the Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes, whose play The Clouds played on the popular belief that the pursuit of too much knowledge was an affront to the gods. The perception that there are ‘some things that man was not meant to know’ persists to this day – and of course, when scientists devote their life to finding out as much about the unknown as possible, they are infringing on this ancient no-no. Science fiction films from early last century, such as Metropolis, gave us the classic mad scientist look, but the standard-issue boffin has evolved since, shedding evilness for a more light-hearted geekiness via Einstein’s protruding tongue and the sexually hopeless but sympathetic nerds of the Eighties movie Weird Science. Today, things are looking much more promising. It seems to be passé to have film, TV or book scientist characters be anything other than attractive (or preternaturally attractive) and well-adjusted. My main complaint now is not the stereotyping, but the low frequency of scientists and science in mainstream fiction (as opposed to science fiction). The profession is a rich and little-tapped source of original and exciting storytelling, but there still seem to be barriers to producing a story in this setting, as will become clear later.

My own efforts to improve the image of scientists had its roots in Seattle in 1990. I had just started my PhD research at the University of Washington and at a particular party, a graduate student sidled up to me with a battered paperback novel that was doing the rounds: Cantor’s Dilemma by Carl Djerassi. Not science fiction, but a novel about contemporary scientists, set in an actual lab with a scandalous plot revolving around experimental research. When I was at school, girls used to circulate racy novels with all the passages about sex underlined – in the copy of Cantor’s Dilemma I received, someone had highlighted several scenes of explicit biochemistry. It was thrilling to read literature about my own world – I realised I had never done so before, but when I looked, surprisingly, I couldn’t readily find any more examples of literary, realistic novels about scientists that weren’t science fiction. I thought ‘lab lit’ might be an accurate way to describe this oddball genre, but I didn’t even know where to start finding more. 

In 2001, now a professional research scientist, I decided to try my hand at a lab lit novel of my own. Although I quickly found an enthusiastic London agent willing to represent me, she eventually had to give up trying to convince the big publishers that the science as a topic was something that people might want to read. The manuscript was shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize this year and is now on the verge of a publishing deal, but the point is that the extensive editorial feedback I received during this exercise indicated that a novel containing scientists and science was a tough sell in the traditional market. Djerassi himself told me that he’d encountered the same problem, and since then other lab lit novelists I’ve spoken to have echoed this. After Cantor’s Dilemma, I eventually found and read a few dozen or so lab lit novels, all of them original and wonderful in their own way – but as rare as gold dust.

I decided the time had come to take matters into my own hands. I was convinced that if more people knew about the handful of science novels out there, a demand market could be created. A little unscientific experiment I performed in conjunction with the bookseller Waterstone’s supported the idea that people would buy lab lit fiction if it were brought to their attention. In 2005, I founded LabLit.com, an online magazine to raise awareness of science and scientists in fiction and in real life. In addition to the obvious reference to laboratory literature or ‘lab lit, the magazine’s title has another meaning: the illumination of the largely unknown, factual world of the modern laboratory. If more people knew how intriguing the scientific life really was, I reasoned, they might want to read novels about it, so I offered plenty of scope for scientists to contribute articles. Another important part of LabLit is the curated list of lab lit fiction, where readers can write in to suggest books that conform to the working definition of lab lit. Although the list is probably not comprehensive, it is a pretty thorough survey nonetheless, and with only about seventy novels on the list, you can see that there is a need to promote this genre. Seventy realistic novels about scientists ever written is not a lot considering how central science is to our lives.

"When I was at school, girls used to circulate racy novels with all the passages about sex underlined – in the copy of Cantor’s Dilemma I received, someone had highlighted several scenes of explicit biochemistry."

The site became very popular very quickly. It seemed that non-scientists were curious to know more, and scientists had been yearning for an outlet where their voices could be heard, via essays and humorous pieces about their own experiences, and where they could read reviews about the latest instances of science in popular culture and art. And an even larger subset of writers (many of them scientists or former scientists) were delighted to find a place that would publish their original short fiction and poetry and even serialise their lab lit novels. Word spread, and the editorial inbox became flooded with missives from lab lit authors who hadn’t been able to get book deals, asking for exposure and advice. The term “lab lit” as a neglected form of fiction began to be used all over the blogosphere.

There is no doubt that “geek chic” is a trend on the rise. When LabLit and SciCult recently announced a plan to take a stab at residual boffin stereotypes by running a competition to redesign the traditional lab coat, an unflattering garment that has not changed substantially in nearly a century, the response was unexpectedly enthusiastic. TV programs like Crime Scene Investigation have managed to sex up science in a way that tens of thousands of pounds poured into worthy ‘science communication’ projects simply did not. Fiction is not just a reflection of life, it can also change life: forensic science courses the world over have seen an increase in applications since CSI hit the airwaves. The atmosphere now seems conducive to coax lab lit fiction into the mainstream, and another of LabLit’s new projects will be to assist more directly in achieving that goal.

Our inspiration comes from the music industry, where the internet has allowed artists to circumvent the filter of traditional record labels by promoting and selling directly to their audience using MySpace and their own web pages. Similarly, in the past few years, the next generation of quick, cheap, digital print-on-demand (POD) publishing has finally arrived. It is now cost-effective for authors to sell and distribute their books via Amazon with no up-front fees, and even earn royalties. The consequences? Aspiring lab lit authors no longer have to convince the publishing world (in the guise of agents and editors, many of whom make no secret of the fact that they hated science in school and have tried to avoid it ever since) that there is an audience for their book. They can take a punt on POD with no risk – if readers like it, they’ll vote with their PayPal accounts. Although ‘vanity publishing’ has long carried a stigma, this is starting to change. Marketing is the biggest barrier to getting your book read, but LabLit is equipped to help with this, and in the next few months we’ll be rolling out a multi-step plan to help lab lit POD authors get their work produced and seen. The next step will be to get these works adapted for the big and small screen, where they will undoubtedly reach a larger audience.

Scientists still face an image problem, but the atmosphere now seems conducive to get the word out – via scientists’ own voices as well as realistic fictional representation – that they are normal, caring and trustworthy individuals respectful of the power they wield. Science will continue to advance, brushing against ethics and politics along the way, so the world will continue to need to know that scientists are on their side.

By Dr Jennifer Rohn. Jennifer is a cell biologist at University College London, a freelance science writer and the founder and editor of LabLit.com. She was recently elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Art for her work promoting the image of scientists in popular culture