How to be an offensive scientist stereotype | Dean Burnett

A video put out by the Guardian has angered scientists for portraying crude and offensive stereotypes of them. Is this anger valid, or is there more to it than that?

Yesterday on Twitter, someone flagged up this video, from the Guardian itself, where a scientist explains how the Higgs Boson works.

Except not quite. The scientist is fictional, and is less an authentic scientist than, as many have noticed, a ridiculously exaggerated offensive stereotype of a "scientist". This video is the last of a series, one that most scientists have never noticed before now. Weird. Nonetheless, this one certainly drew attention. Mostly bad attention; it's really upset/enraged many scientist types. But others like it, finding it amusing, ironic, an obvious joke etc.