Here's the pitch: swap running experiments with advising on screenplays. Mingle with stars instead of managing postdocs. Become independently wealthy instead of scrabbling for grants. Here's the reality: that could happen only in the movies.

Scenes from the US television comedy The Big Bang Theory benefit from the guidance of physicist David Saltzberg. Credit: Monty Brinton/CBS via Getty

Acting as a science adviser for film and television rarely turns into a full-time career. Most who become science advisers seldom, if ever, rub shoulders with celebrities. And they rarely get paid (see 'All that glitters is not gold').

“I get an e-mail every month from researchers who want to break into this business, thinking it will offer an alternative career, saying, 'How do I get into this? I want to quit the lab,'” says David Kirby, a senior lecturer in science-communication studies at the University of Manchester, UK, and an expert on the intersection between Hollywood and science. “I kind of feel bad telling them they probably can't make a living doing this.”

But many who advise as a 'side job' find these opportunities an entertaining adjunct to their research careers. Physicist David Saltzberg consults regularly on The Big Bang Theory, the popular US sitcom featuring physicists, but he would not trade that experience for his day job at the University of California, Los Angeles — even if it were to pay more. “I have 30 years invested in physics,” he says.

So what is the benefit for scientists who go to Hollywood if it is not about big money or getting their name in lights? They are myriad, says Kirby. Outreach is one: a scientist's involvement in a TV show or film can help to educate people about research in the way that the Star Trek film drew on images from NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn, or how Contagion illustrates the functions of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Involvement can also help those shows to portray scientists as real people and role models rather than as negative or laughable stereotypes.

And some scientists do get paid — in one manner or another. They are often granted film or TV credits, as well as rewards hidden within a film or show — their very own formula scribbled on a whiteboard or a textbook, perhaps, with their name on it, up there on the screen. And in addition to communicating science to the general public, science advisers can take on stimulating challenges such as drafting the rules of physics for a planet with a different gravity from Earth's or simulating the destruction of a space station.

They also get to have fun.

A step into the world of Hollywood became a case of fan fulfilment fantasy for James Kakalios, science adviser on The Amazing Spider-Man. In 2001, he was a newly minted professor teaching physics to first-year undergraduates at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis — and he wanted to use more 'fun' examples than the textbook staples of a brick sliding on a surface or a ball falling from a tower. So he created a course he called “Everything I Needed to Know About Physics I Learned From Reading Comic Books”.

Kakalios used some examples from the Spider-Man comics, such as how the superhero's adhesion to a wall would work using van der Waals forces (weak electrodynamic forces that act over small distances) or how much force a falling body wrapped in a spiderweb would exert. When the film Spider-Man was released in 2002, he and the university wrote a press release describing his class. The release attracted media attention, so he turned his class into a book, which garnered more attention — and, eventually, he was invited to be a science adviser for The Amazing Spider-Man.

He also advised on the film adaption of Watchmen, and subsequently produced a video explaining how one character's powers could be explained by quantum physics. The video has been viewed more than 1.8 million times.

Donna Nelson saw the same possibilities as Kakalios after reading an article in which Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan said that he wanted more formal science advice for his crime-drama TV series. Nelson, a chemist at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, thought that she could use the series “to build a bridge between science and entertainment” and expose more viewers to realistic portrayals of science. Not long after contacting Gilligan, she met with him and the show's writers.

Of course, given the show's subject matter — a mild-mannered high-school chemistry teacher who starts making crystal methamphetamine, an illegal street drug, to fund his cancer treatment — she knew she had to tread carefully. She wanted to portray chemistry but did not want to glorify its misuse. Indeed, the US Drug Enforcement Agency advised the show to skip certain aspects of the production process.

David Saltzberg: “When you are giving a talk or a lecture, you are putting on a show, like it or not. I probably picked up a few things.” Credit: Sarah Tantillo

One of her first inputs was in an episode in which protagonist Walter White taught his students about alkenes. White's classroom featured Nelson's blackboard notes and diagrams, which attracted interest from students around the world, many of whom started science blogs that were based on ideas presented in the show. “They would call me and interview me and then argue on blogs about what was correct or wrong. Or they would argue online and then contact me for a comment,” she says. “These kids were becoming science groupies.”

Scientist advisers on TV shows and films featuring scientists — such as The Big Bang Theory, Breaking Bad and Gravity — can help to create more nuanced versions of researchers than the usual evil nemesis or nerd character, such as a stereotypical James Bond villain or the eponymous lead character in The Nutty Professor.

A science adviser tends to interact mostly with a show's writers, and their first meeting is often a crash course for the writers in learning the everyday realities of science.

Nelson helped the writers to shape the Walter White character: the way he interacted with his former student, Jesse, for example, and how he portrayed his respect for accuracy and logic in science. She recalls that the writers peppered her with questions, such as: “What are scientists like?” and “Is this how they would talk to each other?” They asked what would drive someone like White to get a PhD, how such a person could end up as a high-school teacher, and what could influence a graduate student to give up a promising career in science.

Seemingly innocuous questions can have profound effects. The Big Bang writers asked Saltzberg what one physicist character would do to win back a love interest. Saltzberg vaguely suggested “something to do with holograms”. The writers and producers conjured a scene of the character projecting images of Earth and the Milky Way for his girlfriend — in front of a live studio audience, who gasped collectively, Saltzberg says.

Working with Hollywood writers and producers has helped Saltzberg to develop in ways he had not anticipated. He had to broaden his knowledge beyond his speciality, for one thing. “As physicists, we are often digging narrowly into our own fields,” he says.

And he thinks that his consulting work has improved his interpersonal skills through the need to interact with a set of writers and producers. Before The Big Bang Theory, he was involved in high-energy physics experiments with hundreds of participants, so being a team player was nothing new. But, he says, “something must have happened, because collaboration has become easier and easier”.

Working with professional storytellers has also improved his public speaking. “When you are giving a talk or a lecture, you are putting on a show, like it or not,” he says. “I've probably picked up a few things.” (That would not include skills enough to write for the show. He suggested some jokes once: the writers politely advised him to stick to the science.)

California planetary scientist Kevin Grazier, who has advised on several projects, including the 2004 reboot of the TV show Battlestar Galactica and the film Gravity, says that his role requires soft skills and a thick skin (see 'How to make it big in the movies'). Both develop over time on the job, says the lecturer at Santa Monica College in California. Success requires building relationships: especially in TV where writers and producers can work together for years.

Writers generally respect scientists as long as they are not obstructionists who insist that a plot point cannot be pursued because of an obscure principle that most viewers would neither know nor care about. Grazier says that he has the most success when his suggestions open up story possibilities, not when they slam the door on ones the writers had developed. “You don't want to go in and say 'You can't do this, this or this,'” he says. “If your alternative leads to a better storyline, fine.”

Theoretical physicist Sean Carroll, who advised on Tron: Legacy, adds that science advisers need to remember that they are not a principal investigator on the film set: that would be the director, showrunner or producer. “Part of what makes you a successful science adviser is humility,” he says.

Carroll, from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, says that his personal satisfaction comes not just from creating a more realistic scientific universe in films, but also from subtly introducing people to science. He points to his work on the movie Thor as an example. “It was a movie version of a comic-book version of a Norse god: not something you would associate with accurate physics.” But he made a few subtle but profound suggestions and added accurate language about worm holes and travel through space and time.

The film-makers also wanted the Natalie Portman character — a nurse in the comic book — to have a more lofty profession, so he suggested that she be an experimental physicist and helped to shape her character. He wanted girls to see the film and realize that a science career could be possible, and desirable, for them.

Kakalios hopes that positively framed scientist characters — shaped with the help of science advisers — could even help to bolster funding for science down the road. Sometimes funders need to see the possible in a fictional context before they can make it real, he observes. “It could,” he says, “be a case of superheroes saving science.”