Some scientists say that although the series “The Big Bang Theory” is funny and scientifically accurate, they are put off by it. Others are lining up for guest spots on the show.
BURBANK, Calif. — Shudders and groans went around the blogs and coffee rooms of the physics world back in the summer of 2007, when CBS announced plans for a new comedy series about a pair of nerdy physicists and their buxom blonde waitress neighbor.
After all, the characters, Sheldon Cooper, a gangly supremely confident theoretical physicist at a place a lot like the California Institute of Technology, who has an IQ of 187 and entered college at 11, and his roommate, Leonard Hofstadter, whose IQ is only slightly less lofty at 173, and who is instantly smitten by the waitress next door, would seem to embody all the stereotypes that scientists have come to hate: physicists are geeky losers, overwhelmingly male and ill at ease outside of the world of Star Trek.
Not to mention their pals Rajesh Koothrappali, who literally cannot speak in the presence of a pretty woman, and Howard Wolowitz, who can’t shut up, and Penny, who works at the Cheesecake Factory and doesn’t seem to know Newton the Isaac from Newton the fig.
Three years later some scientists still say that although the series, “The Big Bang Theory” (Monday nights on CBS), is funny and scientifically accurate, they are put off by it.
“Makes me cringe,” said Bruce Margon, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, explaining, “The terrible stereotyping of the nerd plus the dumb blond are steps backwards for science literacy.”
But other scientists are lining up for guest slots on the show, which has become one of highest rated comedies on television and won many awards. The Nobel laureate George Smoot of the University of California, Berkeley, and the NPR Science Friday host Ira Flatow, have appeared on the show.
Lisa Randall, a Harvard particle theorist who has visited the show’s set twice and appeared as an uncredited extra in one scene said, “I do think the writers are genuinely clever.”
Lawrence Krauss, a cosmologist at Arizona State, and author of “The Physics of Star Trek,” said he had changed his initial dire opinion about the program. “First, because it is funny, and continues to be,” he said. “Second, because the characters have developed softer edges, and one of them has the girl!”
