Lab Coats in Hollywood: Science, Scientists, and Cinema

  • David A. Kirby
MIT Press: 2011. 264 pp. $27.95 9780262014786 | ISBN: 978-0-2620-1478-6

In the autumn of 2007 I was at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco, California, when my mobile phone rang. The number was blocked; as a recently minted PhD with credit-card debt, I assumed it was a company trying to track me down. Nevertheless, I answered.

To my surprise, the voice at the other end asked, “Dr Hand? I've got James Cameron on the line from New Zealand. Do you have a few minutes to help him?” I had worked with the director before and knew he was working on his next film. Cameron got on the line and described to me life on his distant planet. He needed to feed Sigourney Weaver a few lines of science jargon. Within 20 minutes we had it figured out. I put my mobile away and went on with the meeting.

Sigourney Weaver (front right) in Avatar: director James Cameron sought scientific advice over her lines. Credit: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORPORATION/THE KOBAL COLLECTION

Later that week I would give my talk about Jupiter's moon Europa to some 200 attendees. Two years later, Cameron's film Avatar reached many tens of millions of viewers.

Granted, should we some day discover life on Europa, it will dwarf the impact of any Hollywood movie. But we won't get a chance to search for that life unless the tax-paying millions that watch films care enough about our potential discoveries to invest their dollars in them. From supercolliders to NASA missions, big science is going extinct, in part because the politicians and public are missing the relevance; the story isn't there. Science stands to benefit from a symbiotic relationship with those who know how to tell stories, notably film-makers.

In Lab Coats in Hollywood, scholar of science communication David Kirby analyses the interplay between science consultants and Hollywood film-makers. His approach is academic, but numerous examples and interesting historical details make for an enjoyable read. The book is in part a handbook for those who might try to influence the way in which science and technology are portrayed on the big screen.

Kirby notes that science advisers often labour under the misconception that there is a tension between accuracy and entertainment in film-making. On the contrary: for film-makers, he says, “there is only entertainment”. The best approach for a scientist is thus to focus on how accurate science can make the story better. Rare directors such as Stanley Kubrick and Cameron are obsessed with scientific integrity, but the majority of them use it as ornament.

Although some of Kirby's conclusions are obvious, I found two concepts particularly intriguing. He argues that films are a powerful “virtual witnessing technology”, in that they provide the mechanism for people to gain access to evidence for scientific knowledge. He borrows from the late US evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, who argued that the “need for direct witnessing is what separates scientific practice from religious faith”.

So films serve as the descendant of the theatrical public science lecture, such as those implemented in the nineteenth century by Britain's Royal Institution, in which luminaries like Michael Faraday demonstrated experiments to a live audience. The public could verify the outcomes with their own eyes. Cinema can have a similar effect, even when the viewer is witnessing a simulated experiment on the screen.

Kirby also explores the concept of the “diegetic prototype” — inventions demonstrated in the fictional world that catalyse developments in the real world. For example, the imagined prototypes for rockets and lunar exploration presented in Fritz Lang's 1929 film Woman in the Moon and the 1950 film Destination Moon, whose technical adviser was science-fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, helped to lay the foundation for the political, public and scientific acceptance needed to move space endeavours forward.

Yet, as most researchers are aware, science regularly suffers at the hands of a good story. From the extremes of weather to vaccines and autism, anecdote frequently trumps data. The response of the scientific community is often to seek new and better data. But on the landscape of knowledge, what society needs is not a better map, but a better description of how to navigate the terrain. Science is best conveyed to the public in a compelling narrative.

Love it or hate it, Hollywood remains influential. We may, as scientists, be disappointed that society prefers character over content. As Carl Sagan remarked in his 1996 book, The Demon-Haunted World: “if, for whatever reason, people dislike the stereotypical scientist, they are less likely to support science”. But a good on-screen portrayal of science and scientists allows us to incorporate valuable facts and ideas into entertaining stories. And as Kirby details, new mechanisms for collaboration are emerging. Over the past three years, the National Academy of Sciences' Science and Entertainment Exchange (http://go.nature.com/pcxgsm) has connected film-makers with scientists to brainstorm about how to use good science to build a better story.

Lab Coats in Hollywood provides a framework for scientists to better understand how to influence good storytelling with accurate information. We don't all wear lab coats, but a few more beakers behind the scenes could go a long way towards enhancing critical thinking in modern society.