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Public Understanding of Science
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Of Power Maniacs and Unethical Geniuses: Science and Scientists in Fiction Film

Peter Weingart

Bielefeld University, peter.weingart{at}uni-bielefeld

Claudia Muhl

Petra Pansegrau

New knowledge has met with ambivalence, as is documented in myths ever since that of Prometheus. This ambivalence is also apparent in the representations of science in literature and the popular media, most prominent among them movies. Shelley’s Frankenstein has become the icon of the "mad scientist" as depicted by filmmakers ever since the 1930s. To trace such patterns of ambivalence and stereotypes of scientists and science in fiction film, 222 movies were analyzed. It is apparent that modification of, and intervention into, the human body, the violation of human nature, and threats to human health by means of science are depicted as the most alarming aspects of scientific inquiry. The threat is dramatized by being associated with the image of the scientist as pursuing the quest for new knowledge in secrecy, outside the controls of academic institutions and peers. Scientific research as perceived by fiction film is seldom a venture across the boundaries of the permissible.

Public Understanding of Science, Vol. 12, No. 3, 279-287 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/0963662503123006
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S. G. Terzian and A. L. Grunzke
Scrambled eggheads: ambivalent representations of scientists in six Hollywood film comedies from 1961 to 1965
Public Understanding of Science, October 1, 2007; 16(4): 407 - 419.
[Abstract] [PDF]