Doctors Paul Wake and Sam Illingworth
The story of the scientist as the over-reacher begins with the Titan Prometheus, who defied the gods of Ancient Greece by stealing fire and giving it to humankind. Zeus punished Prometheus for his bold ambition, condemning him to an eternity of pain, by chaining him to a rock where his regenerating liver would be eaten every day by a monstrous eagle. In his own pursuit of knowledge, Doctor Faustus sold his soul to the Devil only to be dragged to hell crying “I’ll burn my books!” Victor Frankenstein, dubbed ‘the new Prometheus’ by Mary Shelley, would live just long enough to see his creation run wild. Scientists, it seems, for a long time were figures of suspicion, their thirst for knowledge inappropriate and dangerous.
As Matthew C. Nisbet, a professor of communication studies at Northeastern University in the US, has noted, more recent depictions of scientists in the media have taken a positive turn. Films such as Gravity, The Martian and this year’s Black Panther all offer alternatives to the cliché of the scientist as the solitary outsider pursuing arcane and dangerous knowledge. Given this shift in media representations, it’s perhaps unsurprising that current research indicates people are now far less likely to hold negative stereotypes of scientists and their work than they might have done even 20 years ago.