A MIDDLE-aged white male with unkempt facial hair who never has fun. Sounds familiar? This sorry stereotype of a typical scientist emerged back in 2000 when thousands of children were . Michael Brooks warns on page 16 in this week’s magazine of the damaging consequences of scientists being seen as Santas without the ho-ho-ho. If their work becomes ever more unapproachable, science is going to lose out in the battle for public funding.
This multi-faceted end-of-year issue of 91av is once again full of entertaining articles that show just how appealing science can be. But never far away are the committees and bureaucrats, with their deadly instinct to enforce order and squeeze out all traces of humour and humanity. Names like Sonic hedgehog, Boojum and WIMP remind us that science is done by people, and happily there are more in a similar vein, as Richard Webb points out (see “Byebye boojums: No more silly names”). Purging each and every idiosyncratic name can only make the subject appear more remote and less relevant. That’s one more reason to make science more festive.
