Science is Cool!

A couple of  months ago I blogged about pop culture science. I think it’s also worthwhile to slow things down and take a look at the evidence, but also to appreciate the fact that not only is science everywhere, it’s also cool and hip! Let me explain.

I did the sciences in high school, and we scientists used to persecute our fellow students who did business subjects. While some of us went on to become doctors and engineers and so on, those business students went on to become lawyers and, well, businessmen and women, and now they laugh at us about who makes more money, etc. Recession aside (which has given at least some of them them a comeuppance), they’re right. But we’re still right there on the cool factor.

There have been a lot of TV shows about lawyers and the like, and shows like The Apprentice glorify the world of business, all as entertainment. But scientists are having their day in the sun. TV’s number 2 comedy (and soon to be #1) is The Big Bang Theory, and its perennial top 10 shows are the CSI franchise shows, as well as shows like The Mentalist, all playing up science-as-cool, with their slick labs and analyses (as recaps) and, of course, scientists in cool fashions and cars.

There is a need to appreciate this pervasiveness of science-as-cool; there are lessons in all of this. Apart from the fact that good science pays off (cool clothes and cool cars and cool apartments), the whole Hollywood-glamorization of the field serves to increase the appeal of science to young people as future scientists.  I’m still a bit taken aback that my own final-year university students are not aware of many of the pop-culture science references, and, perhaps even worse, can’t imagine how science can be integrated into entertainment. To them, science is just labwork and homework.  As much as John Grisham is a lawyer and the late Michael Crichton was a doctor, their fame came from their writing. Imagine how we’d have been deprived of their fantastic work if they just stuck to their fields. How many young people were inspired by their work and have become lawyers or scientists because of this? (By the way, I first learned about DNA by watching Crichton’s Jurassic Park.)

We should embrace the cool factor. We should be enthusiastic about this field! This is how innovation is born and sustained. Science is more than labwork and homework. Once my students figure that out, they’ll realize how much easier they’ll make their lives, now and in the future.