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Mad, Bad And Dangerous?: The Scientist And The Cinema

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Science in media As the influence of the media on the society is now stronger than ever, it is sometimes hard to separate real concepts, from what was projected into mass consciousness by film, television, popular literature and other forms of entertainment. These images, no matter how credible they really are, can be either harmful and advantageous. The image of scientists and scientific work is greatly affected by how these concepts are depicted in the mass culture. These influences the popularity of scientific professions and creates harmful superstitions and prejudice towards the methods of scientific research and results of the progress they bring. No matter how widespread modern technologies, which are a direct result of scientific research, have become, there is still a certain bias towards people, who are behind them. The image of a scientist in the media has its roots in classic literature. It goes through changes, sometimes evolving and sometimes degrading. These changes happen even now, as media is used to rehabilitate the image of scientist and scientific …show more content…

In his book "Mad, Bad and Dangerous?: The Scientist and the Cinema", researcher Christopher Frayling references a number of studies of common conception of a scientist during different periods. Aside from personalized images (Alfred Einstein as the most common name) the typical view of a scientist did not change drastically during the XX-ieth century. The image is as follows: a middle aged (or elderly) white male in a lab coat, wearing glasses, working in a laboratory, surrounded by bulbs with unknown liquids. This character is eccentric, obsessed with his work and not very sociable (Frayling, 2013). This image, while emotionally neutral, has a harmful effect on promoting scientific work among young generations. At the same time, in the media (especially film, television and comics) there are even more harmful

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