(Image: Andrzej Krauze)

SCIENTISTS have long had cause to complain about how the public views them and their work. Complaints range from objections to denialism – “they don’t accept evolution” or “they won’t vaccinate” – to more cultural laments: “they always make us look like the bad guys in films” and “they don’t cover us on the news any more”.

Lately, though, the cultural laments seem out of date. In the US, science is becoming cool again among non-scientists. The evidence is all around us, in the form of a popular culture pulsing with content celebrating science.

CBS’s The Big Bang Theory is the number one comedy show on TV, watched by about 20 million people per night. This is a show in which sciencey people say sciencey things, and people can’t get enough of it. Fox and National Geographic’s remake of the classic Carl Sagan documentary Cosmos, fronted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, is making science into a weekly conversation starter. It may not be the number one show in its highly competitive Sunday night slot – Game of Thrones is hard to beat – but every week millions are watching. Heck, you can’t even see a biblical blockbuster like Noah these days without being treated to a surprise montage about the big bang and evolution.


These are strong signs that science is again becoming a pop culture fixture, as it arguably was at the height of Sagan’s influence in the 1980s, and as it certainly was in the 1950s and 1960s. Why?

One part of the reason appears to be that a handful of influential entertainers made up their mind that science rocks, including Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, who made Cosmos happen, and Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert, who regularly featured scientists as guests on The Colbert Report. And they had big enough megaphones to spread the word.

Why did they do it? In MacFarlane’s case, the inspiration is partly political. In a talk he gave last year at the US Library of Congress to mark its acquisition of Sagan’s personal papers, he bemoaned the “politicisation on steroids” of issues such as climate change and evolution. “We took a big, big hit when we lost Carl Sagan,” he said. His answer was to bring back Cosmos.

But here’s where a heavy dose of confusion enters the picture, not to mention some pretty unrealistic expectations. There is no doubt that science is more visible in culture these days. There is also no doubt that MacFarlane and the many fans of Cosmos hope and believe that this will solve the other thing that scientists grumble about: the denial problem. They expect it to make people more rational, more accepting of what scientists have to say about controversial topics, and less willing to dismiss knowledge because it conflicts with their beliefs, values and ideologies.

Dream on. All the evidence suggests that you can have a science-infused popular culture that is also steeped with denialism. One doesn’t negate the other, because the two operate on very different levels.

All the evidence suggests you can have a science-infused culture that is also steeped with denialism

I have never heard of a science denier who didn’t claim to be enamoured with science. Deniers invariably cultivate their own “scientists” and “experts” and trot out scientific-sounding arguments to support their contrarian positions. What is more, psychological research suggests that more scientifically literate political conservatives are bigger deniers of climate change than conservatives who don’t know much about science.

Why would a show like Cosmos change this picture? It won’t – and it hasn’t. Little in the political arena has changed for the better for science lately. Climate change denial is riding as high as ever; its staying power, in the face of all the evidence, can only be described as remarkable. Meanwhile, experiments have shown that trying to disabuse vaccine deniers of their misconceptions backfires and makes the misconceptions worse.

And as for the young-Earth creationists? We all cheered when Bill Nye the Science Guy demolished their arguments in a televised debate, but we know that none of them changed their minds.

What this suggests is that getting people to engage with science and scientists in general is a very different endeavour from getting them to accept scientific claims that threaten their political and religious identities. There may be some overlap, in that greater science appreciation on a cultural level ought to translate into a greater valuing of scientific authorities and what they have to say – but that only goes so far.

What we need to do is separate the concept of science engagement from that of science denial – to pull apart dazzling and fascinating from convincing and persuading. Why? Because then we will see that science denial is a personal and psychological phenomenon, rooted in belief and identity, which can’t be washed away by a wave of science boosterism.

Maybe, then, this ends with a message back to science’s influential friends in showbiz. We can’t thank you enough for showing that science is cool again. But if this matters to you as much as it appears to, then please recognise that the task has just begun. Now comes the hard part: show us not just that science is cool and fascinating, but that science denial is destructive or even immoral. Show us that it amounts to succumbing to one of the least flattering aspects of the human psyche: putting self-serving beliefs ahead of facts and ahead of people.

Show us that science denial is unacceptable in a scientifically advanced society. Tell us stories of people overcoming it, and becoming better for it. Because right now it remains far too accepted, far too normalised and far too easy to get away with.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Loved, but still not liked”