How to Teach Biology Using the Movie Science of Cloning People, Resurrecting the Dead, and Combining Flies and Humans

Abstract

While popular culture is generally acknowledged to have some impact on public opinion of science, attempts to evaluate this relationship have focused largely on how the public perceives science, rather than how well they understand it. Movies, television, and literature are usually argued to foster a negative perception of science and scientists among the viewing and reading public. What has been left out of this analysis, however, is the degree to which popular culture informs or misinforms the public about how science is done. Does the scientific accuracy and plausibility of a movie’s story line really affect the public’s understanding of the related science? As a science researcher, I am biased in my belief that realistic movies provide more engaging and thought-provoking entertainment than ones that violate obvious and well-understood scientific principles. However, whether realistic movies actually stimulate public inquiry into real science remains to be demonstrated. As a science teacher, I am also challenged to find ways to engage non-science students in learning about how and why science is done. To this end, I have developed a general science course called “Biology in the Movies, ” which uses biology-based movies as a starting point for discussing the fundamental ideas, techniques, and societal implications of such topics as human cloning, genetic screening, human origins and evolution, artificial intelligence, and recombining animals. Teaching this course has thus prompted me to consider the qualities of movies that make them useful for furthering public understanding of science. In this essay, I attempt to explain those qualities and explore how movies that treat similar scientific ideas with differing degrees of realism can be used to teach science. I close with comments on how movies can be usefully critiqued for their scientific plausibility.