8 Responses to “Are Scientists Born Documentary Makers? We Want to Hear From You!”

1. 

   manoj gambhir March 2nd, 2009 at 9:27 am

   hi richard, i think that your question is really very interesting and, actually, the act of posing such a question is so important. i am a postdoctoral researcher at imperial college london working in infectious diseases (i am a scientist rather than clinician, incidentally). why don’t more scientist make documentaries? the answers to this question aren’t as interesting as the question itself:
   1) lack of time (due to frankly crazy levels of work, especially in biomedicine) 2) lack of resources (unless you happen to know someone who has cameras and skill)

   However, 3) (more interesting) most scientists don’t think of their work narratively; i find most of the ‘best’ scientists think of their work as a game (like chess or halo or something) and try to win that game; there are a few who step back and make stories, but very few and generally not the ones who make real discoveries. All of which makes room for a real ecological niche to be filled by people like you and Natalie Angier (from whom you got your film title?—sorry i havent read over your website properly yet).
   Anyway, I think what you’re doing is great and inspirational and there are a minority of scientists who will want to work with you.

2. 

   Paul Ormerod March 5th, 2009 at 7:58 am

   Hi
   A few thoughts! Many of the scientists I have met (as a short form documentary maker about innovation and often science) feel awkward in front of camera, and have an innate fear of being misquoted and their knowledge being trivialised or edited to skew their views and their argument. This particularly the case if they have been filmed by the mass media (say for a breaking news story on a science theme).

   However you have to contrast that with the need that they all have to justify themselves in front of those who ultimately pay their tab.

   So what we owe them is for those who train them, in universities and colleges, and later their research institutes, to give them the tools for public outreach, so they dont just confine themselves to the safety of the scientific paper. We need to make them better communicators for the rest of their professional lives.

   If we dont make young (and older scientists) more competent at sharing the excitement of science and explaining its benefits, then we let them down. We also let the community down which needs the output of their innovation and discovery, as they will/may diminish their support for science in the face of the clamour for financing of all sorts of other things that society wants, and perhaps more directly appreciates, because they understand it better.
   cheers
   Paul

3. 

   Miriam Gordon March 5th, 2009 at 9:36 am

   Dear Richard and Carol,

   I have a PhD in Developmental and Molecular Biology from Einstein (2001), and since then have been pursuing a career in various forms of science writing. Last night, I attended a screening of your film “Naturally Obsessed: The Making of a Scientist” and loved it. I posted my comments in the Talking Science (www.talkingscience.org)blogs and on my own blog, Parallelaphors (I provided the link above).

   Thank you so much for making this film.

4. 

   Ada Yee March 11th, 2009 at 11:21 pm

   I saw your film tonight, and greatly enjoyed it! Thank you so much for making this film. I am a recent college graduate who is planning to pursue a PhD, and it was both exciting and entertaining to see science represented in such a realistic way.

   As per the question posed here: in my short time in science I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard the words “putting together a story” and “nice story”, so I found your analogy very striking. I think that’s a great way to describe what we do: sketching out plotlines, filling in the details with supporting data–albeit a good scientist will be less interested in persuasion and flash than factual rigor, and be willing to restructure his plotline if the details don’t fit. However, I am learning more and more that it is when I sit down between experiments and picture what my ’story’ is starting to look like and what its alternative endings might be (while putting together a presentation, for example) that I figure out my next experiment and can chart my course. Incidentally, I know a lot of scientists who, if they don’t like moving film, at least love still photography–I think it has to do with the love for photography and pretty figures–so maybe in the future there will be more scientists who find a second life in movie making!

   If anything, I think one impediment to making films about science is the general public’s tendency to see science as inaccessible and, conversely, scientists’ tendency to isolate themselves from the greater public. For example, you mentioned at the talk how many editors bridled at the prospect of working on a movie about science. I am curious about how non-scientists and non-academics have received this film; I saw the clip of the screening with high school students, and was pleasantly surprised to see how much they took from it. Has this generally been the case?

5. 

   Greg Dorsainville March 29th, 2009 at 10:52 am

   Congratulations on the warm reception of the film, Rifkinds! It’s an important acheivement for science.

   Regarding the topic of scientists making docs, there is a part of the open notebook movement championed by scientists like Harold Varmus that wants to add a video element to the basic lab notebook experience. Actually much like the tactic used by rob in the film, chronicling techniques and results used in the lab. In the open notebook sense, it helps the community learn techniques to repeat and eventually test claims and results.

   Video notebooks may address the issues of discomfort while being filmed.
   Everyone goes through this adjustment but there is also a point where a scientist changes their opinion on how capturing their work is a benefit. The scientist needs to be doing that often in order for that to happen though.

   I went to a psychiatric grand rounds recently that spoke of this moment: the disappointment one feels when they have a powerful session with a patient but then realize they forgot to press record on the camera.

6. 

   richard rifkind June 11th, 2009 at 12:52 pm

   thanks to manoj, paul, ada and greg for all your very kind words. You’re all correct science needs more story tellers– stories are what the public can easily take in. Film is just one way to do it; it’s not for everyone but learning to communicate our stories is every scientist’s responsibility; or others will do it for us and not so well!

7. 

   amy charles August 4th, 2009 at 10:19 am

   Richard, apart from lack of money and incentive — I mean competitive incentive — I think a good part of the problem is that telling compelling stories on flim isn’t just a craft; it requires talents that not everyone has. I’m a writer, I can handle print, but I don’t pretend to have the kind of visual imagination that makes for good cinematography, and that’s as important in documentary as it is in any other kind of movie. You guys got some moments in this movie that are absolutely wonderful and telling, visually — I’m thinking in particular of the shot of Kil driving on the way to Brookhaven, and the one of Rob with his wife in the train — but you also had four years for collecting these images, and there aren’t too many filmmakers, let alone freelancing scientists, who’ll commit that kind of volunteer time to a single film.

   So that’s the visual side — the story side is something else, and it’s also considerable work. You can’t just go in saying, “Well, I want to make a movie about what goes on in a chemistry department” (and I’m choosing an academic setting on purpose because you’re likely to have most freedom to shoot there). If you do, you get what you guys initially had — that Connecticut-Yankee episode of “and then”s, which is not a story. If you don’t have forever to make the movie, you have to have some idea of what the story is before you start, and then go get it. Likely it’ll change as you go, but if you don’t go in with a fairly clear idea of the story you’re after you’ll waste a lot of many people’s time. It’s like anything else.

   That said, you may want to talk with Margaret LeMay at the University of Iowa College of Medicine; she teaches creative writing to med students and coordinates an anual writing-and-medicine conference here. In fact I’d suggest that her conference would be a nice venue for this film, except that we’re also gearing up to have a second Writing and Science conference, and I have every intention of inviting you guys to that one.

   I think in the end you have to work with the scientists who are most interested in story and storytelling, and the writers/journalists/filmmakers who are most interested in science, and it’s a small proportion of each group. There are a good number of us.

   What _you_ can do, Richard, given your status and experience with this film, is look to get funding to get writers/filmmakers into labs, and scientists into film and journo classes, so that we a) waste less time doing things amateurishly; b) each understand better what the other does and why. It’s easier to get the artists into the labs, because we cost less and have less rigidly tracked careers, but I imagine it can still be done on both sides.

8. 

   Miriam Meisler January 12th, 2010 at 6:52 pm

   I think the recent history of the scientific area I have worked in, human genetics and the human genome project, is rich in human drama and vivid characters, I have thought that bringing these stories to the public would have a very positive impact. I hope your work will inspire other filmmakers to seek out and present these compelling human stories.