Notebook

Concerned about improving the popular image of scientists as personality-free nerds, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman is developing a television pilot that would instead show researchers as "skeptical, creative romantics," according to the New York Times Magazine ("Sunday," Aug. 13, 1995, Section 6, page 16). Working with professional script writers, staffers from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and funding from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, Lederman is hoping the production will help counter what he sees as a growing anti-scientist feeling in society by presenting scientists as having the allure of the lawyers and doctors in such Hollywood productions as "L.A. Law" and "ER." "Scientists fall in love," Lederman told the Times. Apparently, however, while the proposed series attempts to dispel some stereotypes about scientists, it may promote others: "When was the last time you saw a physicist on TV galloping off into ...