Stereotypes in science? The irony of first impressions

Prior to this blog, we did an exercise where we were prompted to gather drawings of what we thought a scientist looked like.  We did our own drawing and then asked for a few from different family/friends.  Most of my drawings were of males with lab coats and a various array of apparatus including: googles, flasks and weird exploding liquids. They were also all white - or at least no one made an effort to color in their scientists to render them a different ethnicity.

What does this say about how we view science?  A lot.  As we talked about in class recently, there seems to be a disconnect between laymen and scientists.  That disconnect seems to stem from the layman's portrayal of the scientist as elitist. 

The language barrier seems to be a key factor here.  Scientists use jargon and terms that the average person has probably never even heard, let alone understand their meaning enough to make it through an already dry scientific article.  

Another factor here is trust.  This may yet prove to be the biggest problem.  It is hard to trust someone that is so wavering in their conclusions - which is sometimes the case in preliminary scientific research. As research progresses, the scientist can only theorize about the data that is produced from their experiments and in an early study, this theory is likely to be altered several times, or even completely thrown out.  

Where this gets misconstrued, is when the popular press gets a hold of a promising result, or a scientist gets too cocky about their results, and word is spread.  People get excited about the newest way to "burn fat fast" or "grow hair so strong and shiny Fabio would be jealous."  And there it begins.

Naturally, more studies are going to be done and come up with conflicting results.  This is where the problems occur.  We saw this firsthand when we researched into vaccines and hydraulic fracking.  It is overwhelming to read 10 different articles on a topic and come out feeling very confused and with way more questions than answers.

As for the myths, they are not to do as much with the scientists themselves, but rather the portrayal of their research and the spread of their results.  We, as students, budding scientists, and writers, must learn to take everything with a grain of salt and realize that what we are reading could be the "quickest way to grow your hair back" but, more likely, it's just a can of spray paint.