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 2005 Sloan Film Summit in New York, which celebrated the sometimes uneasy, frequently entertaining, and usually lucrative union of film and science. Presented by the Tribeca Film Institute, Thursday?s events began with panels on ?Science as Entertainment? and ?Good Science in Good Films? that brought the likes of Jim Watson, Kelley, Varmus, physicist Brian Greene (author of The Elegant Universe), neuroscientist turned filmmaker Ari Handel, and actor Ben Shenkman (?Angels in America,? ?Pi?) together to...
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