On Being a Scientist – A must watch film for every scientist

“On Being a Scientist” is a fictional film made by Leiden University that tackles some key issues in science, especially research ethics in science. The movie is about science and what it is like to be a scientist. But, it also raises questions which may not have precise answers.

Millions of researchers around the world are conducting their research on discovering new things and developing existing facts. Do you ever wonder how research works are performed? I assume most of you will answer that the professor XYZ discovers this or that! Right? If you are thinking like this then you are far away from the reality. Professor XYZ works to develop a specific idea (most of the time this is his own idea, also the idea could be from his graduate students), then he applies for funding, employ PhD students who usually spend 3-4 years on that idea and finally, we came to know about the outcomes of that research project. So, technically the professor is the mentor who supervises his PhD student and the PhD student is the one who performs all the experiments and gets his works published. While publishing his work, the PhD student should give credits to all the people involved in his experiments and, he should use proper reference of the work that helped him during his experiments. Works in all these steps should be done with professionalism and sound ethics.

The movie is quite attractive and entertaining, well produced, well-acted, well directed exciting movie. I recommend it to anyone who is in any way working in science or curious to know how it really works!

Peter Spegel