Generic scientists are everywhere in our storytelling, but they're almost always stock characters. Enough, I say. Here are three things you can do to help make your scientists more relatable.
Excellent advice...as a biologist I'm often dismayed at how biologists are often portrayed as little more than a different kind of physician. We're not M.D.s or even D.O.s! And there are many, many specialties...including being a theoretician vs. an experimentalist, but also more generally being "whole organism" vs "parts" (the latter would include biochemists, physiologists, cell biologists, etc.). These distinctions aren't always clear cut but it's a place to start.
And I'll throw out there that not all (in fact most) scientists don't work in academia, and those working in more applied fields or in the corporate world will have different perspectives and even different specializations (e.g. there's not much call for being a fisheries bio analyzing data to make salmon run size forecasts at a university; that's the thing that only interests the people who catch or manage the fish).
Thanks for sharing, and providing more examples. It’s frustrating to see scientists of all kinds treated so simplistically when there are many opportunities for creators to connect and ask questions.
Excellent advice...as a biologist I'm often dismayed at how biologists are often portrayed as little more than a different kind of physician. We're not M.D.s or even D.O.s! And there are many, many specialties...including being a theoretician vs. an experimentalist, but also more generally being "whole organism" vs "parts" (the latter would include biochemists, physiologists, cell biologists, etc.). These distinctions aren't always clear cut but it's a place to start.
And I'll throw out there that not all (in fact most) scientists don't work in academia, and those working in more applied fields or in the corporate world will have different perspectives and even different specializations (e.g. there's not much call for being a fisheries bio analyzing data to make salmon run size forecasts at a university; that's the thing that only interests the people who catch or manage the fish).
Thanks for sharing, and providing more examples. It’s frustrating to see scientists of all kinds treated so simplistically when there are many opportunities for creators to connect and ask questions.