Well, Chuck Lorre is an incredibly accomplished and successful television producer. Leon Lederman shouldn’t feel bad. I bet if Chuck Lorre wanted to run an experiment on a particle collider, they wouldn’t let him.

Lederman was told that nobody would want to watch a show about a bunch of nerds. Why was this assessment wrong?

I think that Chuck and Bill Prady, the show’s creators, figured out that the experience of being an outsider had universal appeal. The emotional pain at the heart of “The Big Bang Theory” is the feeling of being an outsider. Our characters, they don’t have to be scientists. They could be anybody who’s felt like an outsider.

Aren’t you stereotyping scientists by labeling them as misfits?

Listen, it’s a story, not a thesis about how everyone is. It’s a collection of specific characters. All scientists are not Sheldon Cooper, who finds it difficult to hug someone or go out to lunch and divide a check. But many people whose cognitive ability outstrips their emotional sense can see some aspect of Sheldon in themselves.

How do you find the science content for your stories?

Well, let’s say we decide that Amy and Sheldon should have a fight. Since they’re scientists, their fight will be about science — about the relative priorities of neuroscience and physics. What’s going on emotionally is they’re arguing about the terms of their relationship, but they will cover it by expressing themselves about science. In that case, I wrote that scene because I have my own theories on that subject.

But in another situation, we could say we want Sheldon to be really angry about some branch of science he thinks is important, and he thinks others don’t understand. We’ll ask our science adviser, “What could that be?”

Do you read the professional journals?

No, we read Science Times. We’ll come across stuff that seems worthwhile. The particle accelerator in Switzerland, there was some worry that it would destroy the universe. We probably made some joke about that or maybe even had a little plotline about it.