A clip from Young Frankenstein.

Scientists suffer from an image problem. If you were to ask a child to draw a picture of a scientist, for instance, you’d probably receive a depiction of an old, crazy-haired white male holding a bubbling test tube, the image drawing heavily from Dr. Frankenstein and Albert Einstein. This image seems to be especially difficult to dig out, and at times even the people who want to bridge the gap between scientists and the public resort to childish name-calling, portraying researchers as freaks and geeks (i.e. “… feel free to imagine startled and upset sheep jumping all over nerdy researchers.“). I have grown increasingly tired of the general term “scientist” being equated