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Cool Geeks, Dangerous Nerds, Entrepreneurial Scientists and Idealistic Physicians? Exploring Science and Medicine in Popular Culture

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Abstract

The public image of scientists, researchers and physicians and their work is not only influenced by what people learn in school or hear in the news. How medicine, science and research are represented in popular and entertainment culture also has an influence on how many people perceive them and what they think about it. In this chapter we will explore various interactions between science, medicine and popular and entertainment culture. For instance, physicians and scientists are also citizens that consume products of popular and entertainment culture. Fictional depictions of science and medicine can sometimes inspire people working in these fields and give them bright ideas. However, representations of science, research and medicine in popular culture can also be heavily biased and wrong. Fictional representations of scientists, researchers, physicians and psychiatrists are also important for the public perception of these fields and keep changing over time. We will explore how the public legitimacy of science and medicine is also connected to depictions of scientists and physicians in entertainment culture. Various scientific institutions have created programmes that ensure that the representations of science and physicians are positive and that the storylines in entertainment programmes are scientifically accurate. Another important aspect in the various relationships between science, medicine and popular culture is the recruitment of young people for biomedical and scientific careers. Here it does help if scientifically literate and tech-savvy people in the entertainment culture of today can be depicted as being “cool”, quite in contrast to depictions of former decades.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As mentioned above there are various routes that can be taken: science and biomedical innovations can be influenced and inspired by products of popular culture and vice versa. References from popular culture are also employed to publicly communicate on science and research, and sometimes such references are even used in inter-scientific communications, such as in journal articles. Another interesting example is the roboticist and Cherokee citizen Daniel H. Wilson, who published scientific articles on his research on robots and wrote popular science texts on robotics, but is better well-known for his best-selling fiction tech novels Amped, Robocalypse and Robogenesis (see: http://www.danielhwilson.com). The interactions between science and popular culture are manifold and versatile and the whole field of study is too under-researched so far to fully illuminate the complexities between public images and opinion, entertainment and popular culture and the professional practices of scientists, engineers and biomedical experts.

  2. 2.

    Science communication researcher Martin Bauer (1998: 745) speculates: “It would appear that the medicalisation of science news is a correlate of […] larger changes in society, celebrating the successes of medical sciences, anticipating breakthroughs on the health front, and mobilizing an ever greater demand for medication and services. Hence, the explanation of medicalization as a social trend may also explain the medicalization of science news.”

  3. 3.

    Eighty-five percent of the movie physicians in his sample were male and only 15% female, and 91% were white (Flores 2002, 2004).

  4. 4.

    For instance, many of them were having sexual intercourse with their patients. Movie psychiatrists most frequently slept with their patients (this was the case in 29% of the movies with psychiatrists as main characters, but the trend drastically increased in the last two decades of the sample period) (Flores 2002, 2004).

  5. 5.

    For instance, when clips from movies are used to teach students about empathy and compassion.

  6. 6.

    Many Hollywood und television productions nowadays rely on the expertise of scientific consultants and other experts (Kirby 2010).

  7. 7.

    For instance in this video the geneticist Josef Penninger is publicly ‘dancing’ his PhD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQMx8duCJw0 (accessed: March 22, 2016).

    This is the website of the Science Cheerleaders:

    http://www.sciencecheerleader.com (accessed: March 22, 2016).

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  1. Department of Science, Technology and Society Studies, Alpen-Adria-University, Klagenfurt, Austria

    Joachim Allgaier

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  1. Research Unit Communication Design, Bern University of the Arts HKB, Bern, Switzerland

    Arno Görgen

  2. Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH) University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    German Alfonso Nunez

  3. Department of History, Theory & Ethics of Medicine, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Heiner Fangerau

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Allgaier, J. (2019). Cool Geeks, Dangerous Nerds, Entrepreneurial Scientists and Idealistic Physicians? Exploring Science and Medicine in Popular Culture. In: Görgen, A., Nunez, G.A., Fangerau, H. (eds) Handbook of Popular Culture and Biomedicine. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90677-5_3

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