Houston, We Have a Narrative: Why Science Needs Story by Randy Olson

Author:Randy Olson [Olson, Randy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780226270982
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2015-08-06T04:00:00+00:00

2. THE FLAWED PROTAGONIST

Now think about the Logline Maker’s flawed protagonist element in terms of the science world. We have talked about the tendency for people to believe that the scientific method is a pure, robotic process carried out by flawless individuals who eventually find their way to the truth. Despite the endless string of essays and books written trying to point out that no, science and scientists are not flawless (such as Henry Bauer’s Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method, which I mentioned earlier), there lingers this deep feeling that scientists are, and should be, flawless robots. Think of Spock from Star Trek, who was essentially the embodiment of the supposedly perfect scientist type. He was constantly marveling at how flawed humans are in their basic reasoning. They could never be him.

So here’s the dilemma that the Logline Maker shows you: the public loves and needs their heroes to be flawed. Oskar Schindler had to overcome his greed in Schindler’s List. Rocky Balboa had to overcome his self-perception as a loser in Rocky. Indiana Jones had to overcome his fear of snakes . . . Over and over, audiences love to see this struggle in their stories.

And yet . . . if you’re a scientist, you kind of want people to trust you by having them think your work is flawless. And yet . . . there are these things called error bars and error measurements and confidence intervals and all kinds of other signals that suggest the scientist is not a flawless character after all.

I know the science world worries a great deal about public image and keeping the public’s trust. It’s a difficult line to walk, and I’m not about to advocate that scientists eagerly share all their personal shortcomings with audiences. But what is important here in a practical sense is the power of the flawed protagonist concept in communication dynamics and the ways in which it can be used constructively. And scientists actually do use it quite often, whether they realize it or not.

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