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Phoenix666 writes:

Scientific American has a piece on how the public and chemists perceive and mis-perceive attitudes about chemistry:

What my colleagues and I have found is that public perception of chemistry, chemists and chemicals is far more positive than we believed. Like other sciences, people think the benefits chemistry brings to society outweigh the risks. The problem, as described in a report published by the U.K.'s Royal Society of Chemistry, is that many people are confused about what chemists are and what they do. Additionally, people tend to be neutral about chemistry and don't see how it's personally relevant. They have limited "encounters" with chemistry and low awareness about its applications and the role it plays in various industries and sciences. But they are not "anti-chemistry".
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When we looked into chemists' attitudes towards the public we found that our community tends to paint a very negative picture compared to the reality of public opinion. Many are particularly worried that chemicals have a bad reputation and we found that chemophobia is often mentioned as the cause and/or the effect of this reputation. This is now a well-established narrative in many discussions, but one that our community developed without real evidence.
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Understanding this, I have to agree with University of Hull senior lecturer and science writer Mark Lorch who argues that "chemophobia is a chemist's construct" and that "it's time for us chemists to stop feeling so unloved." According to Lorch, "It is almost as if we are experiencing the fear of chemophobia: chemophobia-phobia."

Before we can hope to influence public attitudes we need to change our attitudes towards the public. We need to create new, positive associations instead of focusing on the old negative ones. We should avoid talking about chemophobia (Lorch suggests we hang up the #chemophobia hashtag) or framing our communications in negative terms such as "fighting ignorance" or "debunking errors". Instead we should try to be more positive, showing people how chemistry makes us feel and championing the cause of chemistry in society. Let's not forget that we are all acting as ambassadors for chemistry.

Breaking Bad has perhaps helped create public perceptions of chemistry as something powerful, important, and worth learning. Are there other even more positive portrayals of chemistry that chemists can refer non-chemist acquaintances to, and learn from themselves to speak about the practice of chemistry in a more positive way?

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