‘The Big Bang Theory’ recap

Washington / DPA

Scientists of all stripes have appeared as characters in movies and TV shows: from the meglomaniacal Dr Frankenstein, to archaeologist adventurer Indiana Jones, the “Back to the Future” time-machine inventor Doc Brown and the palaeontologists in dinosaur-filled “Jurassic Park.”
But rarely has scientific accuracy in an entertainment medium been so carefully researched as in the popular US sitcom “The Big Bang Theory,” whose central characters are scientists.
Margaret Weitekamp, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, has analyzed the show, now in its tenth season, in the scientific journal Physics Today.
Similar to the many US sitcoms that focus on a family or friends in a domestic setting, she points out, the two lead characters in “The Big Bang Theory” are guys who share a flat – and happen to be highly gifted particle physicists with underdeveloped social skills.
The show’s quirky ingredients include Klingon Boggle – a word game played by the nerdy scientists that’s based on a language spoken in the “Star Trek” universe – recognition-seeking girlfriends, a giant model of a DNA double helix and whiteboards with columns of scientific and mathematical formulas and equations that relate to the respective episode’s plot.
To make sure the science in “The Big Bang Theory” is accurate, scripts go for review to David Saltzberg, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Los Angeles and one of the show’s technical advisers. The scripts contain a pronunciation guide for the scientific jargon, which the actors have to memorize and in the early scripts were sometimes more than a page long.
A number of practicing scientists and science educators have made cameo appearances, including the cult astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is director of New York City’s Hayden Planetarium. And the US space agency NASA provided spaceflight details when Howard, an aerospace engineer and the only non-physicist among the four main male characters, flies to the International Space Station (ISS).
Despite the show’s attention to scientific detail, Weitekamp says “The Big Bang Theory” plays with the stereotype of a scientist as a nerd: a socially inept superbrain absorbed with his or her own speciality.
“For ‘The Big Bang Theory,’ nerds form both its subject and much of its audience,” she writes.
In Germany, media scientist Petra Pansegrau of Bielefeld University has done a lot of work on the image of scientists in movies and television. Common stereotypes, she said, are the mad scientist a la Jekyll and Hyde, the adventurous type as in “The Da Vinci Code,” and the professional scientist in films such as “Good Will Hunting” and “The Theory of Everything.”
“Our analysis of more than 220 feature films from the entire 20th century found that more than 82 per cent of the protagonists are male,” she noted.
The roles of female scientists, which are considerably rarer, also tend to follow certain stereotypes, according to Eva Flicker, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Vienna. She says they can often be seen in a subordinate capacity as “the assistant.” Or they fit the mould of “lonely heroine”: modern and competent but socially isolated.
Then there’s the “corrupt female scientist” – young, attractive and ruthless – and the hard, masculinized researcher.
A representative of “normal” people in “The Bing Bang Theory”, meanwhile, is Penny, a less socially awkward woman who lives across the hall and doesn’t know a thing about physics.
Movies and TV shows with scientists as characters are almost never about science per se, says Pansegrau, adding that this is also true of “The Big Bang Theory.”
“The producers aren’t concerned about the image of physics or the appropriate portrayal of physicists,” she remarked.
She says widespread cliches are taken up and exaggerated, as in the US television medical series “Dr House.”
“All of these series try to create interesting, imaginative and novel characters in order to attract an audience.”
And many are quite successful at it. The huge fan base of the BBC drama series “Sherlock,” now in its fourth season, shows that even a hyperrational egghead with an autistic streak can draw an enthusiastic following. But what does a scientist say?
“I find ‘Sherlock’ to be good entertainment, but it doesn’t have anything to do with science,” said US neuroscientist Susan Koester, for whom the biggest shortcoming in many science-related movies and TV series is the unrealistic speed with which scientific analyses are completed.
“It’s: ‘Oh, here’s DNA evidence!’ And the expert has immediately solved the case.”