In the movies, scholarly work is a contact sport. At a conference or during a public presentation, the scholar is always passionate and articulate. He proclaims radically new theses that cause the audience to shout out objections or gasp at his intellectual audacity. Then, he dashes off a masterful proof on the chalkboard or rips open a curtain to reveal a newly discovered dinosaur skeleton. Someone in the back of the lecture hall starts to clap, and soon all his assembled peers break out into raucous applause.