From the October 1998 edition of Contact Kids.

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Inside the X-Files

Meet the Show’s X-cellent Science Advisor

By Lynn O’Donnell

Searching for alien fugitives? Digging up buried flying saucers? Cloning extraterrestrial viruses? It’s all in a day’s work for Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. Unless you’ve spent the past few years hiding out in a cornfield, you know who they are: special agents for the X-Files. This arm of the FBI investigates the paranormal.

But did you know Mulder and Scully have a secret partner? No, not the three techno guys. We’re talking about Dr. Anne Simon. Dr. Simon is The X-Files’ science advisor. She teaches biochemistry, biology, and genetics at the University of Massachusetts. She is also a close friend of the show’s creator and executive producer, Chris Carter.

Picture- Dr. Anne Simon is a real-life Scully

It’s Dr. Simon’s job to make sure the science in The X-Files is as accurate as it can be. In one episode, for example, Mulder and Scully find a mysterious flask filled with a yellowish liquid. After having the contents analyzed, they discover the liquid contains a type of alien bacteria.

Picture- Alien bacteria? Nope. It's pollen!

Dr. Simon suggested that the part of the bacteria be played by pollen. Why? On the show, the bacteria had to be shown magnified. And under a microscope, Dr. Simon told CONTACT KIDS, pollen looks weird. It could easily pass for alien bacteria.

Sloppy science in movies and on TV has always bugged Dr. Simon. She remembers catching an incorrect formula for a type of bacteria in the novel Jurassic Park. Dr. Simon wondered why someone didn’t bother to call a scientist to get the correct information.

TRUST DR. SIMON
For Dr. Simon, the whole scientific advising process starts with a phone call. Carter call Dr. Simon to discuss script ideas. The he overnights a copy of the script to her. After reading the script, she writes down comments and suggestions. The she calls Carter with any necessary changes. Once Carter has made the final fixes, scripts can be given to David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, and the other X-Files cast members.

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE
Working on the show has made Dr. Simon an "expert" on aliens. Once, Carter asked her how a scientist on an episode might decide if a life-form were from Earth. If it were human, says Dr. Simon, it would have four nucleotides. (Those are the building blocks of DNA.) "I told Chris to give the alien six," she says.

Picture- Dr. Simon had Scully test a DNA strand

For another episode, Carter needed to show a baby alien. No problem, said Dr. Simon. She told him to use a very young sea urchin. It was slimy and kind of blobby-looking- just like an alien might be!

Misc. Picture
Picture- Agent Mulder plans his next move

A SCIENCE SPIN
When Dr. Simon isn’t thinking up new ways to make aliens, she’s making plot suggestions. One episode centered on a scientist who manipulates genes. Carter asked Dr. Simon if any "mutant-looking" animals exist in nature. She suggested using a type of fruit fly called homeotic (say: home-ee-AH-tic). These flies have a mutant gene that causes weird things to happen to their bodies. For example, they sometimes grow legs out of their mouths! On the show, the scientist’s genetic experiments produce these strange looking flies.

Picture- A weird fruit fly like this one (it has legs growing out of its head) starred in an X-Files episode

Another time, Carter asked Dr. Simon how Scully could determine if she was infected with a virus. She suggested Scully do a Southern blot test. Dr. Simon had Scully take a piece of the virus’s DNA and make it radioactive. Scully- and the viewers at home- knew she had the virus because her DNA bonded with the virus’s DNA.

Picture- This "extraterrestrial being" is really a sea urchin larva

SIMON SAYS
Dr. Simon also worked on the script for the The X-Files movie. "When I read the script, I was thrilled it was about viruses," Dr. Simon recalls. "My favorite topic."

Misc. Picture

The big question Carter needed Dr. Simon to answer was: Through genetic engineering, can scientists produce a virus in plants? She told him they could by adding virus DNA to the DNA of a single plant cell. The plant that grew from that cell would be infected with the virus. Then the bad guys could use that plant to clone others exactly like it. Bees were used to transfer infected pollen from the plants to people. The result? A nation full of people carrying the virus!

THE FUTURE FILE
Dr. Simon is a resident science source for The X-Files. She’s also busy writing a book about the "real" science behind the show. But Dr. Simon doesn’t plan to give up teaching any time soon. Her students love when she discusses episodes of the show in her class. She leave it to them to guess where she helped out with the science.

"I see a lot of me in Scully," Simon says. "She approaches things like a real scientist would."

In the near future, Dr. Simon even plans to offer an X-Files class! If her students ask her what she likes best about the show, she has an answer already prepared: "It portrays scientists in a good light."

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