By Sheril Kirshenbaum and Chris Mooney

Today marks the launch of the National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange, an initiative that will work to connect producers, directors, writers and others in need of scientific information for their productions with science, medical and engineering experts. We’re here in Los Angeles headed to the first symposium. So will this initiative–to be directed by Physics of the Buffyverse author Jennifer Ouellette–correct everything that’s problematic in the entertainment media’s portrayal of science? Of course not. But it’s a very important start.

We love Star Wars, HBO’s True Blood, The Lord of The Rings, and many, many other entertainment industry products. And it seems to us that television and film do amazing things with story lines that stretch beyond possible to embrace fantasy and science fiction.

Yet at the same time, we’ve noticed how often the on-screen depiction of scientists casts them as socially inept nerds, “mad” villains, or emotionless misfits. Scooby Doo excepted, entertainment plots also tend to celebrate credulous believers who think they saw the ghost or monster, while criticizing science minded skeptics who scoff.

Are these trends problematic? While we recognize the need for people to be entertained, there are reasons to think such recurrent images foster an unrealistic (possibly dangerous) idea of the relationship between science and the rest of society. That’s not a very good idea to be cultivating in these uncertain times, when we depend on science for solutions to 21st century energy, water, health, and climate challenges.

But how might we begin to improve the often rocky relationship between science and the entertainment industry? That’s what we’re going to find out, and we’ll be reporting back shortly….