It's very simple: Professional athletes and filmmakers entertain billions of people. Physicists mostly don't even entertain other physicists. Unless you can attract an audience with brilliance (e.g. Newton, Einstein) and/or showmanship (e.g. Feynman, Dyson), don't expect to make much money.

When I was around 10, my buddies and I would point out all the impossibilities of the Loony Toons as we watched:

"Man, your head doesn't go into the shape of a frying pan when you get hit over the head with one."

"Oh, like the coyote doesn't fall until he looks down."

"Geez, if the hunter shoots the duck in the face with a shotgun from a foot away, it does more than make his beak go to the back of his head - it kills him."

I didn't know at the time that we should have published a paper with our observations. We kind of figured it was pretty obvious.

"At some point science becomes indistinguishable from magic."

This is due to Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote many years ago, that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." This has become known as Clarke's First (possibly Second) Law.

Anyone else notice the good professors base their article on anecdotal, subjective evidence-----what they've noted from interaction with a few of their students-----instead of objective, verifiable data, and then commit the classic "correlation means causation" error?

If they had submitted a paper on, say, quantum mechanics with such "data" and reasong, it would've been laughed at instead of published. So why was this one published?

We can only speculate, but I strongly suspect it had a lot to do with income envy (as exemplified by all the "movies stars and athletes make too much money!" comments here) and the need to feel superior to those trashy proles who actually enjoy such movies.

There are tens of thousands of athletes and actors around the world, who incidentally are as dedicated to their occupations as are their science counterparts, who earn pittances compared to a graduate professor of physics. Those among them who earn the huge salaries are in a very small minority and generally are, within their fields of expertise, the most talented and therefore the most sought after individuals.

The same rule applies to any field of human endeavour. Who among the Physics community could claim to possess the natural talent and skills of say Einstein, Kepler, Rutherford, Newton, Dirac etc., etc. Few, if any, of the aforementioned suffered a life of poverty following the revelation of their genius to their peers.

If those bemoaning the drop in the number and quality of students studying science would just get off their collective butts and do what the sports and performing arts communities have done to promote themselves, then maybe the brightest kids out there would begin to see science as sexy and sign up for the courses. Those kids may then go on to produce the next breakthroughs or become the kind of teachers who recognize and nurture those elusive geniuses that are currently being overlooked by an education system more concerned with attracting sponsorship money than academic excellence.

The real problem, in the US specifically, is the lack of a comprehensive public school system, whose sole aim is to educate the entire populace to at least a high school standard. Relying on commerce to provide the funds to teach our children is an insane policy. Schools looking for funds are going to take the path of least resistance, which generally means a curriculum skewed in favour of the sporting scholarship. After all, there is a far better chance of a school producing the next Super Bowl champion than the next Einstein, and the billion dollar sports industry is only too willing to share its wealth in order to keep its stadiums full of paying customers. If the US would wake up to the fact that the fastest growing economies on the planet are all nations who take public education seriously and have rapidly expanding populations of graduates with real degrees in real subjects, they may just stop the rot before its too late. If they don't, the end result will be a nation incapable of competing with the emerging superstates of the likes of China and India. If you don't believe me, take a look at your history books to see what a huge impact the tiny nation of Japan had on the US economy in the last century.

As for movies and TV having a detrimental effect on a student's ability to understand real physics, I don't think there is a case to answer. If what they see on screen is wrong, its up to their teachers to explain why. If the student then doesn't understand the real physics they are probably on the wrong course and should head off to the football field. Blaming anyone else for your own lack of understanding is just plain silly. I don't know how to fly an airplane, although I have seen it done in a myriad of times in movies. However, if I were to go to flight school and, after much tuition, subsequently fail to get my pilot's licence, I don't envisage myself turning up at Charlton Heston's home demanding he apologise for my failure because he piloted the Jumbo Jet in Airport '75 in the wrong way.

And here I thought that we'd be able to get those cool laser blasters as an after market add on for my car, complete with all of the sound effects like the whizzing sound when someone ducks out of the way of an energy bolt.

You’re not likely to find any critic not using their own imagination throughout their reviews on books, movies, fashion, or most anything else.

I’m reminded of the following three quotes:

“You can’t depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus.”
- Mark Twain

“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere.” - Carl Sagan

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” - Albert Einstein

So let ‘em role Lester and be prepared to be scrutinized like a microbe in a drop of water under a microscope by students of your local science class. Teachers are finding new ways to teach their classes as well as learn from their students. The challenge remains. The results are – Well, they haven’t graduated yet.

look how many people - students too - that question the 911 collapse with alternate scenarios that have no basis in science. That too is a embarrassment to the state of science and its teachings. God Bless - Lokis Aug 20 07

Would someone who believes everything in movies as being realistic actually have the capability to be a physicist?

Maybe they are in the wrong field. I think a career in the food industry might be more appropriate for these people.