What if the 20-somethings on Friends were scientists? Columbia biology professor Darcy Kelley insists it could work. ?We?re just like regular people,? added Nobel laureate and Memorial Sloan Kettering director Harold Varmus. But does the rest of the country, perspectives shaped largely by the lenses of filmmakers, see scientists this way? Or are we pegged as either absent-minded superheroes or evil manipulators of human fate?

Such was the topic of debate this week at the... Click to continue