Sheldon Cooper and Alfred Nobel

Last week, before we headed out for the weekend, I had a brief exchange with Ben Lillie on Twitter, prompted by the following set of tweets:

OK, here's a thing. I'll often hear people complain that Hollywood gets science wrong because there's *1* scientist who does everything 1/3

— Ben Lillie (@BenLillie) September 27, 2013

But in reality, science is massively collaborative. So why can't storytellers get that right? 2/3

— Ben Lillie (@BenLillie) September 27, 2013

*BUT* at the same time we have, and wildly celebrate, the Nobel, which embodies exactly that myth. 3/3

— Ben Lillie (@BenLillie) September 27, 2013

I sort of feel obliged to respond to this, because I’m both a person who has complained about the lone scientist myth in movies and a guy who’s running a Nobel Prize betting pool, increasing the hype for the upcoming awards (to the infinitesimal degree that I can contribute, anyway). But as I said to Ben, it doesn’t fit well within Twitter’s character limits. The short version, though, is that the Nobel Prizes are basically like The Big Bang Theory on tv.

By that, I don’t mean that they’re a sitcom with an obtrusive laugh track– though there are some comical aspects to the overall pomposity of the event. (OBNobelStories: when Bill Phillips won back in ’97. he created a small stir by blowing a kiss to his wife when he bowed to the audience after receiving the medal, and the Literature laureate, Dario Fo, was ostentatiously sleeping during the boring introductory speeches.) Instead, I mean that both are cultural icons that are a bit controversial and somewhat problematic in terms of their portrayal of science but I think on balance they do more good than harm.

In the case of the Nobels, the primary source of controversy is, as Ben mentioned, the fact that they’re awarded to small number of individuals. This creates an incorrect perception of the business of science as something done by brilliant individuals on their own, when in fact the bulk of the work is done in teams. This is exacerbated by the entirely arbitrary limitation to three recipients, which often leads to deserving scientists being shut out entirely. This is getting a bit more attention these days because the Higgs boson is an obvious candidate for a Nobel in the near future, but there are at least half a dozen physicists with a reasonable claim to the idea. But even with lower profile subjects, there are always a few people with a beef after the announcements are made– the grad students and post-docs who did the real work for which the laureate is being honored, or competitors who had similar results at around the same time, and so on.

In the case of The Big Bang Theory, the problem is more one of image. There’s still a lone genius problem– none of the characters have anywhere near enough collaborators to be actual scientists– but the main source of controversy is that they play as broad stereotypes. They’re not socially adept in any conventional sense, or physically attractive, and their personalities are just collections of nerd signifiers. A fair fraction of physicists roll their eyes when the show gets brought up, and some are deeply annoyed by the perpetuation of unflattering stereotypes about physicists.

On balance, though, I think the show probably ends up being a positive thing– and I say this as someone who would have some reason to complain about the stereotyping. In the end, though, what saves it (for me– this is just opinion, mind) is that for as much as the principal characters are broad nerd stereotypes, at least in the episodes I’ve seen, they are also unquestionably the heroes of the piece. The real focus for audience identification seems to be the character of Leonard, but the plot structure pushes the audience very strongly to root for the science nerds– in the handful of episodes that bring “normal” people into the picture, they either end up as the butt of jokes, or as the villains of the episode. (This is actually the factor that keeps me from watching– I’m not wild about the stereotyping, but the ham-fisted plotting is much harder to take…)

There are unquestionably problems with the show and the characters, and I can totally see how somebody else could decide that the overall package breaks in a different way. But ultimately, I end up feeling that the benefit of getting a massive audience to root for such ostentatious nerd stereotypes is enough of a positive factor to outweigh the negatives of the stereotyping.

Similarly, with the Nobels, I agree that the “lone genius” aspect of the thing is problematic, and they may in some small way encourage cutthroat behavior on the part of elite scientists. But on the other hand, this is the one event every year that’s guaranteed to put science on the front page of major national newspapers in a positive light. They’re not the only story of the year, by any stretch, but with the Nobels, you know you’re going to get a “Hey, look, here’s some amazing science stuff!” frame, where a lot of other high-profile science stories are much more ambiguous, or even negative. October is the one month when I know I will get faculty colleagues from other departments asking me to explain some cool point of physics in a way that is genuinely excited and curious.

That kind of unambiguously positive buzz, which happens on a very broad scale, makes up for a little bit of hard feelings and excessive valorization of individuals. Again, this is just my opinion, and I can see how somebody else might decide that the balance tips the other way, but as far as I’m concerned, the Nobels are a good thing for science on the whole, and I’m happy to have them as an annual celebration of science.

(The original images used to make the composite in the “featured image” above come from here and here.)