Occasionally, I get a call from a TV researcher. "You're a science expert, right?" They might flatteringly inquire before I can deny everything they're asking. "So, can time travel ever work?" "What about a cure for cancer?" "Does acid dissolve glass?" "Is there a pill we can give our lead character to stifle a voracious libido that's ruining the plot?" Plot? We're talking never-ending soap operas here. Sometimes, I can answer; sometimes, I point them to a real scientist who might be able to help with the script's scientific accuracy.

I am still awaiting that call from Spielberg, of course, but there are many scientists who provide advice on the technological and scientific continuity of TV shows and movies - most do it informally, others make a career of it. But the real reward is in ensuring that the science is credible while still allowing us to suspend our disbelief.

There are many movies, from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Apollo 13, where attention to detail is very high - for instance, the sound inside the spacesuits in 2001 or the free-fall behavior of objects in the spaceship. "You can tell someone (probably Clarke) was paying close attention to such details," says software developer and science-fiction movie fan Steve DeGroof of Raleigh, North Carolina. Of course, the director Stanley Kubrick was also well known for his mathematic ability and incisive knowledge of physics. It is easy to label as nitpicking pedants those who notice seemingly minor details, but we expect to see accuracy in other walks of life depicted in the cinema and on TV, so why not scientific aspects too?

One of four "comet advisers" for the movie Deep Impact, helping to maintain accuracy, was Joshua Colwell, an astronomer in the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Colwell initially provided some informal, free advice to the producers through his brother, who happened to be first assistant director on the movie. "My brother had questions about some aspects of the script," he explains, "asked me for my scientific opinion, and relayed that to the producers." Eventually the producers realized they needed astronomy consultants in addition to the NASA consultants they already had and hired Colwell and three other scientists to serve as "comet advisers." Colwell reckons his broad knowledge of the field and a willingness to come up with innovative yet plausible ideas helped make the movie more realistic than it might otherwise have been. "It is, after all, their movie, and I believe the consultant's role is to find a way to make their movie as accurate and plausible as possible," he told HMS Beagle.

Colwell describes how the consultative process ranged from eradicating minor errors, such as correcting star names, to ensuring that the comet took a realistic timeline on its Earth-bound journey. "I was sent every revision of the script, and I would provide corrections and comments to each revision," Colwell explains. As to any glossing of the script at the expense of science, he calculated that there was certainly a possibility of being blown off the comet by a "jet," but that this would happen "nowhere near as quickly as is shown in the movie."

It is not just space movies where accuracy is important. Wright State University's John Fortman, in the Chemistry Department, specializes in rifling through the cinematic test tubes. Two films he cites as having been well advised are The Man in the White Suit starring Alec Guinness (1952) and It Happens Every Spring starring Ray Miland (1949). "Most newer films," Fortman adds, "seem to not care about details." He agrees with DeGroof that Apollo 13 does a good job, as does Lorenzo's Oil, but emphasizes that too many are like Dante's Peak, "full of impossibilities, such as acid water dissolving the aluminum boat and stainless steel propeller."

Although Fortman is keen on the science in the older movies, University of California at Berkeley cinema lecturer Sofia Hussain suggests that, "In the 1950s, the science in sci-fi movies such as The Fly and Godzilla was 'handwaved'; most movies were pure entertainment and did not try to explain how real something was or how it worked. They just had an old male professor spout out some gibberish," she explains. "Some movies still do this today," she laments. Hussain admits that there are exceptions to the rule. "Movies such as Deep Impact try to get the science right," she says. "The figures about the mass of the asteroid, the velocity it was traveling, and even some of the predictions about the impact were good."

On a show like The X-Files, where science is often the story, the producers pride themselves on getting it right. University of Maryland virologist Anne Simon, in the Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics, is a science adviser for the The X-Files TV show and movie. She got involved through an old friendship with producer-writer-director Chris Carter. "Carter likes my knowledge of genetics, molecular biology, virology, and plants," she explains. But she points out that getting into this kind of consultancy work can be a purely chance event.

Others take the view that in the end, "fictional inaccuracy" is an oxymoron. "In a story like Jurassic Park," author Michael Crichton says, "to complain of inaccuracy is downright weird. Nobody can make a dinosaur. Therefore, the story is a fantasy. How can accuracy have any meaning in a fantasy? [1]" In that movie, the scientific script consultants can, at best, guess at the color of a dinosaur's skin or the sounds it makes, even the position of its nostrils [2].

The problem stretches to the characters themselves and not just the test tubes they wield. French Anderson, of the Department of Medicine at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine, was the scientific consultant on Gattaca. Anderson is a very well-known name in the field and is referred to as the "father of gene therapy," so he was perhaps an obvious "name" for the producers to turn to for advice on genetic accuracies. "Gail Lyon of Jersey Films called and asked me to consult on Gattaca," he told HMS Beagle. "They wanted a 'reality check' on the science. Andrew Nichols had done a superb job, and I had little to contribute except my enthusiastic support of the film and its message." Anderson believes that the characters can strongly influence viewers, though. "Whether appropriate or not, young people get a lot of their ideas about careers and what "being a [particular person]" would be like from movies and television," he explains, adding that the likes of "Dr. Kildare and Ben Casey were major draws of young people into medicine a number of years ago, for example."

Bormanis believes the problem, as it is, lies in the fact that movies and TV are generally interested in dramatic or otherwise extraordinary people. "From a dramatist's point of view, the priest who's lived decently and honorably all his life is much less interesting than the one who's giving in to the temptation to break his vows. The same kind of thing is true with scientists." Anderson adds that scientists and doctors are people like everyone else with the same virtues and flaws as everyone else. "With science requiring team efforts nowadays, the isolated 'scientist' doing something significant either good or bad is highly unlikely," he says.

"Sci-fi for fun, or sci-fi for education?" asks Hussain, "The best thing to do is better educate before seeing the movies, so we can all sit back and enjoy the show.