Abstract
To a physicist, a “body” is any object with mass. Depending upon the problem at hand, it can be an atom, a block of wood, a person, a plane, a train, an automobile, a comet, a planet, a star, a black hole, even an entire galaxy. If we want to calculate the trajectories of two bodies moving under their mutual influence—for example, a single planet orbiting a star—that is referred to as a two-body problem. There are reasonably simple equations that can define the state—the positions and velocities of both bodies—of that system at any time.
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
Carl Sagan, planetary scientist
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka” but “That’s funny…”
Isaac Asimov, scientist/science fiction novelist
You scare me, doctor. You risk your patients’ lives and justify it in the name of research. Genuine research takes time... sometimes a lifetime of painstaking, detailed work in order to get any results.
Beverly Crusher, Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Ethics” (1992)
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Notes
- 1.
There are some situations in which an exact solution is possible, such as the Lagrange points discussed in Chap. 8: “The Gravity of the Situation: Orbits”, and a number of highly artificial scenarios of only mathematical interest.
- 2.
Author KRG’s obsessive science pursuit of choice.
- 3.
A “creative” is a person on a production hired for their ability to make a creative contribution to the production, as opposed to the “suits”, who are the people responsible for production finances.
- 4.
An emergent phenomenon is behavior that arises from the interaction between many entities, and which may not be at all obvious from the behavior of a single entity. Think of the difference between two or three grains of sand and a desert dune, or a handful of neurons and an entire human brain.
- 5.
Historically, scientists weren’t professionals in the modern sense of the word. They were either self-funded “gentlemen scientists” (and a few wives of gentlemen), or in the direct employ of powerful patrons who kept them around for their own reasons, which could include a mere display of status or reflect genuine curiosity about the working of the world. It wasn’t until the eighteenth century that institutions arose which allowed scientific careers to be pursued independently of personal wealth or connections.
- 6.
Durant, J (1994) What is scientific literacy? European Review 2(01), 83–89.
- 7.
By “risky” here we mean experiments with a good chance of not having much of scientific interest to show at the end, not, say, trying to attach laser beams to super-intelligent sharks and seeing what happens.
- 8.
A process known as p-hacking.
- 9.
Which is one of the reasons why science and technology journalists like author SAC exist.
- 10.
Read: grunt.
- 11.
For many colleges and universities, in an MS program, the student is required to take graduate classes only. For the Ph.D., a graduate student can often take classes at any level (even freshman), and from any department, providing there is sufficient justification.
- 12.
KRG’s examination at UCLA was three hours long, and he freely admits that, due to the stress, he blanked while performing a derivation and forgot how to expand a Taylor series. While this may not be a task that many readers perform often (or ever), for his research area, and given how often he had to perform the task, this was a very reasonable request by the committee. This gives just a bit of insight into how stressful this exam can be—and, in some cases, that stress can be magnified by the pressure the students place on themselves.
- 13.
Though KRG did one in physics with the intent of then moving into the planetary sciences.
- 14.
Sometimes, for many reasons, there is simply a mismatch between the student and the department, and many a respected scientist failed a qualifying examination at one university, only to perform very well and go on to earn a doctorate at another.
- 15.
You might notice that a theme is emerging—that although it is Hollywood that has a reputation for being cut-throat, hypercompetitive, and often brutal, academia can be equally bad on all these scores.
- 16.
The student can also often accept a Masters Degree at this point en route to the Ph.D. Most students opt for this understanding that earning a Ph.D. is a lengthy process, and sometimes life happens.
- 17.
Although Hawking did his thesis research in the early 1960s, and Penrose was not actually knighted until 1994, Penrose was still pretty awesome back then, so we’ll retcon the honorific.
- 18.
Stressful, but not nearly as much as the qualifying examination.
- 19.
In addition to the tried and true, “You have to hand it to the other team,” “We beat ourselves,” “We gave 110 percent,” “We’re just going to go out and play [TEAM] football,” and “They were the better team today.”
- 20.
Which some snarkier academics say means “All but determination”.
- 21.
Short for “viva voce” or “by live voice.”
- 22.
The common understanding of Occam’s Razor is “Given several solutions to a problem, the answer is usually the simplest.” That is something of a simplification, “Given several solutions to a problem, the answer relying upon the fewest assumptions is typically the right answer.” The second version, essentially, casts “simplest” as a series of statistical probabilities.
- 23.
Re-renamed Live, Die, Repeat for the DVD release.
- 24.
Episode “Fallen Angel”.
- 25.
With one more year remaining for an M.D. Given how slammed medical students are, when did she ever have time to work for Arcangel?
- 26.
Dr. Harry Kloor was an exception to this. Dr. Dr. Kloor is the only person to have been awarded two Ph.D. degrees simultaneously in two distinct academic disciplines. Kloor earned doctorate degrees in physics and chemistry from Purdue University in 1994 (while earning his MS at Purdue, KRG had solid state physics class with Kloor). Harry “Doc” Kloor now works primarily as a Hollywood writer/producer/consultant.
- 27.
Source: National Science Foundation.
- 28.
- 29.
- 30.
Clauset, A., S. Arbesman, and D.B. Larremore, Systematic inequality and hierarchy in faculty hiring networks, Science Advances 12 Feb 2015:Vol. 1, no. 1, e1400005. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1400005.
- 31.
Pay in these careers can be surprisingly low, even for Ph.D. holders. This is why scientists and engineers are sometimes bemused by the consistent rhetoric of industry and governments about a pressing shortage of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) professionals. If there were a true shortage, competition for workers would drive wages considerably higher. Rather, policies focused toward educating more STEM workers at all degree levels has proven to be a way to keep payroll costs down while addressing fears about a workplace increasingly affected by automation that is eliminating middle-class jobs. See “The STEM Crisis is a Myth,” by Robert N. Charette, IEEE Spectrum, September 2013.
- 32.
In Hollyweird Science Vol. 1 we explored the reasons why scientific competency might be concentrated in a select few characters.
- 33.
Barbey, A.K., R. Colom, and J. Grafman (2012) Distributed neural system for emotional intelligence revealed by lesion mapping, Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. doi: 10.1093/scan/nss124
- 34.
Good News, Nerds! IQ Linked to Emotional Intelligence: http://www.medicaldaily.com/good-news-nerds-iq-linked-emotional-intelligence-244372
- 35.
This is a particular problem when it comes to having children, and one most felt by female scientists, with many of them losing ground to their male peers or dropping out of their careers after pregnancy or adoption. Some universities have tried to address this problem by suspending the “tenure clock” for one year after becoming a mother, but a lot remains to be done.
- 36.
Woolston, C. (2015) Leisure activities: The power of a pastime, Nature 523,117–119 doi:10.1038/nj7558-117 http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj7558-117a
- 37.
Root-Bernstein, R. et al. 2008, J. Psychol. Sci. Technol. 1, 51–63.
- 38.
- 39.
- 40.
Not that there’s anything wrong with nerds.
- 41.
Succinctly, there’s the Mad Scientist/Villain, the Socially Awkward Nerd, the Hero, the Sidekick, the Corporate Pawn, and the Conflicted Prantagonist.
- 42.
Neophyte screenwriters, pay attention here.
- 43.
Compared to the duration of their entire lives. Unless they are Amy Pond. Or River Song.
- 44.
Like fanboys/girls, for example. You’re among friends here.
- 45.
OK, there might be something to that one, it’s part of the job description.
- 46.
Suman, Michael (ed) Advocacy Groups and the Entertainment Industry, Praeger (2000).
- 47.
Or, worse, when they have an alternate agenda and/or an a priori stake in a certain outcome.
- 48.
Which is why some studies use what is called a “double blind” technique to eliminate this.
- 49.
Seriously, this study should be taught to undergrads in a “How not to do experimental science” course.
- 50.
Studies have shown that between 70 and 80% of Sprague-Dawley rats develop cancer over a normal lifetime.
- 51.
Displaying another form of bias, one more typically associated with advertising, the paper contained images of GMO-fed rats with huge tumors, but no images of control group rats—many of whom, based upon previously-established percentages, must have had tumors. This type of bias is called reporting bias.
- 52.
The U.S. Navy even has a colorful saying for this: “One ‘Ahshit!’ wipes out 100 ‘Attaboys!’.” People will remember your screw-ups far more than your successes.
- 53.
“Bad is Stronger than Good”: http://www.carlsonmba.umn.edu/Assets/71516.pdf
- 54.
Succinctly, social exclusion is a type of discrimination where individuals or communities are not given full access to the benefits of society, usually due to factors such as ethnicity, religion, sex, or sexual orientation.
- 55.
Mooney and Kirshenbaum, Mooney, C.; Kirshenbaum, S. Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future; Basic Books: New York, 2009.
- 56.
Gerbner, G.; Gross, L.; Morgan, M.; Signorielli, N. Science and Television. A Research Report by the Annenberg School of Communications, 1985.
- 57.
Goldman, S. L. Images of Technology in Popular Films: Discussion and Filmography. Science, Technology, & Human Values. 1989, 14(3), 275–301.
- 58.
Gerbner, G.; Linson, B. Images of Scientists in Prime Time Television. A Report for the U.S. Department of Commerce. 1999.
- 59.
Selecting data or citing references to support a pre-conceived bias—in this case citing a 1990 paper when an update written by the same research group, with radically different findings, existed as of 1999—rather than reaching a conclusion based upon the best available evidence is another type of cognitive bias called cherry picking.
- 60.
After the publication of the first Hollyweird Science book, people actually contacted the authors on multiple occasions complaining that the book was not open access. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HA HA! HA. Seriously?
- 61.
Perkowitz, S. Hollywood Science: Movies, Science & the End of the World. London: Cambridge University Press. 2007.
- 62.
Mooney and Kirshenbaum. Mooney, C.; Kirshenbaum, S. Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future; Basic Books: New York, 2009.
- 63.
Merchant, The Science and Entertainment Exchange: The National Academy of Sciences Goes to Hollywood, in Hollywood Chemistry: When Science Met Entertainment.
- 64.
Barrett M, Wagner H, Gatling A, Anderson J, Houle M, Kafka A (2006) Journal of Science Education and Technology 15 (2), pp 179–191.
- 65.
Admittedly, we also cited it in Hollyweird Science, Vol. 1, Chap. 2: “The Path to Nerdvana”.
- 66.
Which actually seems to have happened about 14,000 years ago during an event called the Younger Dryas.
- 67.
See the Chap. 3: “Scientists: Reel and Imaginary” in Hollyweird Science.
- 68.
For cryin’ out loud, man, have you never seen A Christmas Story?
- 69.
Especially if it’s their science. More on this in a follow-up chapter.
- 70.
Unless they watch a lot of television.
- 71.
What are you doing watching television? You have a conference paper to finish!
- 72.
Even more so, actually. Even though they understand the rationale for it, silence in space runs so counter to some viewers’ expectations that they find it off-putting.
- 73.
Losh, S. C. Stereotypes about Scientists over Time Among US Adults: 1983 and 2001. Public Understanding of Science. 2012, 19(3), 372–382.
- 74.
Being realistic, even though the nerds and megalomaniacs belong primarily to the cinematic past, it is not without good reason that scientists hold the beliefs they do regarding their portrayals.
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Grazier, K.R., Cass, S. (2017). The Many-Body Problem: The Culture of Science. In: Hollyweird Science: The Next Generation. Science and Fiction. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54215-7_3
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