Jonathan Roberts: Does it matter how genetics portrayed in popular culture?
Image Courtesy of Jonathan Roberts
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Jonathan: I think one of the things that could be done better is focusing on the process, the uncertainty around science. That's challenging because it's hard to fit those into narratives because we like that eureka moment. We like the mythology of the lone genius. We like the idea of the scientists oppressed by the system, the Galileo narrative, right? We like the powerful people telling the scientists that they can't do it and the science is wrong and they're fighting the system. It's a powerful story.
Jonathan: And I think a challenge is that science is a complicated, messy, uncertain process, and that's its strength. So I think sometimes the representation of the scientific process is something that I think would benefit from having more realistic and nuanced portrayals in popular culture.
Jonathan: I rewatched Contagion, which is a film about a global pandemic and it was released I think in around 2014 or something. A lot of it actually holds up and they have a vaccine and then the vaccine comes in at the end and it's a bit like the vaccine comes in and saves the day. But even in a film that's gone to such lengths to be credible, they couldn't resist the heroic science narrative. And the scientists, they say, "Oh, you can never test this vaccine. It's never gonna work!" And the scientist eventually just tests it on themselves. And this idea that there's got to be the heroic scientist who tests it on themselves and is fighting against the system when no one else can do it, belittles I think the scientific process. It doesn't help us engage with that uncertainty.
Jonathan: So I'm always loath to say pop culture's got it wrong and I wish they would get it right, and if only pop culture would present the scientific facts right, then we'd all be fine. Because I don't think that's true at all!
Kat: I think one of the things that I find is missing in pop culture representation of scientists is just how often experiments don't work and it's just frustrating. Just chuck it in the bin.
Jonathan: Yes. It's such a human activity, isn't it science? It's full of wrong turns and things that don't work and long boring trudges towards trying to get an answer and probably doesn't make quite exciting narratives.
Jonathan: A challenge though is that even if you put those in, you know, as I said, they're not gonna make good stories. And to an extent I think people realise the limitations of what you have to do to do good storytelling. This came out of some of the interviews I'd done into my PhD, and there's one that springs to mind when I was interviewing a family and they were talking about Jurassic Park. And they were showing an acute awareness that was a recurring theme, that something has to go wrong for the narrative to happen. And they're sort of joking about the fact that if you had a functioning health and safety oversight of Jurassic Park, it would be a pretty dull film.
Jonathan: So yes, I think it would be nice to find ways of engaging people with the reality of what the scientific process is like. But at the same time, in pop culture, something dramatic has to happen, you are constrained by that to a point.
Kat: You have a favourite example of all the things you've seen, watched, encountered during your research where you're like, oh yeah, that's like, that's a great story. It is, you know, good science and it just strikes a chord with you.
Jonathan: That's a good question. I do lots of interviews with people, talking about science and the kind of conversation would be stilted. One of the things that always excites me is when suddenly you'd find the thing that captures their imagination and it just opens it up. And one of the things that has kept me coming back to pop culture is so often, it was a pop culture reference.
Jonathan: I really liked the series Orphan Black. That came up in a couple of interviews that I did. It really tapped into people's deliberations around genetics and identity and thinking about this idea of how our genes make us who we are. I don't know if you're familiar, but it's a cloning story, but of people who are genetically identical put into different situations to see what happens and then to see the kind of the people they become.
Jonathan: And it just seemed to kind of initiate that reflective conversation about, okay, so am I my genes, am I my environment? And thinking about that, which has sort of opened up the conversation and really sparked people's interests.
Kat: Given what you know in your research into using popular culture, using it as a jumping off point for conversations, how it grips people and excites people.
Kat: How can we use this to do better public communication, public engagement about genetics and genomics?
Jonathan: I think we can focus on them as a tool for listening, as a tool for communicating. So I think when we're often focused on science communication, we can get a bit bogged down in thinking what the aim is, to take the knowledge that we've got, communicate it to people and success looks like people understanding the science better.
Jonathan: There's an extent to which that is true in some contexts, but often if we're talking about engagement, success isn't about communicating science to one group of people. It's about communicating with each other. It's about understanding each other's point of view. And I think this is why pop culture could be really useful as a tool for listening and understanding as opposed to a tool for simply communicating.
Jonathan: Because there's all sorts of ways in which genetics is going to be pushing at boundaries. We've got obviously testing coming in at scale on the NHS which creates his own problems, both in terms of things like equity of access, how you actually do that in an equitable way. But then obviously there's the bigger stuff like should we be using genome editing? Should be using CRISPR on human embryos. What should we be allowing people to test for?
Jonathan: So I think pop culture offers a really useful space to have those conversations, because it's a kind of a leveller. It allows people into the conversation in a way that they may not be comfortable if you're just kind of sticking to the science, you talk about the scientific facts and talk in very scientific terms.
Jonathan: So when people are using a pop culture reference, often they're not focusing on the validity of the scientific content. They're just using what they've got to hand to express themselves, to express a fear or an anxiety or a hope or an excitement or whatever. And I think if we're going to do science communication or science engagement well, we've got to do emotions as well as facts. So I think pop culture's really helpful there.
Kat: That was Jonathan Roberts. And if you’re interested in digging into his research on genetics in popular culture, we’ve popped a couple of links to articles and papers below.
What can pop culture tell us about genetics? Genomics Education Programme https://www.genomicseducation.hee.nhs.uk/blog/what-can-pop-culture-tell-us-about-genetics/
Roberts J, Archer L, DeWitt J, Middleton A. Popular culture and genetics; friend, foe or something more complex? Eur J Med Genet. 2019 May;62(5):368-375 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30590173/
