More Options  Evaluating the Impact of The Day After Tomorrow
Science and the Media  Matt Nisbet  June 16, 2004  Can a
Blockbuster Film Shape the Public’s Understanding of a Science
Controversy?  In 1995, the Biotechnology Industry Organization
(BIO) went on a public relations offensive, not in reaction to
the protests of environmental organizations opposed to
genetically-modified crops or religious leaders’ concerns over
cloning research, but in anticipation of the release of The Lost
World, the film sequel to Michael Crichton’s 1992 blockbuster
Jurassic Park. BIO worried that the film series, with its
depictions of greedy corporate scientists and dinosaurs run
amok, sensationalized the motivations behind biotech research,
and that the movie might turn the public against important
biotech research.  “Nearly everyone in the book [The Lost World]
with a briefcase or a lab coat is an insensitive myope, a
thoughtless theorist or an evil genius,” wrote Eric Christensen
of BIO in a newsletter to the industry. “Th