What Is A Scientist?

Are engineers considered scientists? What about lab technicians, archaeologists and art historians? The answer isn’t always obvious…

AsianScientist (Jun. 15, 2016) – Two things happened recently that made me ponder a question that’s really going to open a can of worms.

Case No. 1: Catching up with an old friend who decided to leave the lab for the bright lights of banking, we started discussing our work and he mentioned meeting someone who introduced themselves as a scientist. Further probing of his new acquaintance revealed that this person worked in a diagnostics lab. My friend was outraged.

“How dare this person misrepresent themselves as a scientist?” he scoffed. “Putting on a lab coat and running blood tests all day does not make one a scientist!”

When I pointed out that this is actually the general stereotype of a scientist in the eyes of non-scientists… let’s just say this conversation got a bit frosty.

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Case No. 2: I recently made a new Italian friend who works in aerospace. A few weeks later, I met a project collaborator who not only came from the same region in Italy, but also from the same relatively small town! Being someone who likes to connect people, I put them in contact with each other.

A few weeks later as I met up with the original friend, she commented that she thought it was strange that they didn’t already know each other.

“Why would you?” I replied. “He’s a scientist and you’re an engineer.”

After a gasp of horror and some waving hand gestures, my friend spluttered out:

“I’m a scientist!”

In return, I pointed out that her degree was in engineering and her job title was thermal engineer.

“Doesn’t that make you an engineer and not a scientist?” I said.

Let’s just say the conversation after this also got a bit frosty.

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So then, here’s my question—what is a scientist? Like many of my informal scientific polls, I asked my colleagues for their opinions. And it also caused a great deal of consternation among them.

In the situation outlined in the first case, the general opinion was that my friend was correct—simply working in a lab does not a scientist make.

“Absolutely not,” said one friend while shaking their head. “Running well-characterized diagnostic tests on different samples is not science.”

But I argued that what she was doing would likely be of scientific relevance—after all, they could be conducting diagnostic tests, for example, on samples that might one day be used for research purposes, such as in cancer or neuroscience research. This caused some furrowed brows.

“But a medical practitioner or a nurse are not scientists, regardless of their work possibly leading to science.”

Many nodded in agreement that while someone working in a biomedical field may be contributing to science, this does not make someone a scientist unless their work has a research component.

This also seemed to be the general consensus for case two—if my friend as an engineer is working in a position that requires research, then she is a scientist. Someone argued that engineering is simply the applications arm of science once all the theoretical aspects have been hammered out.

Interestingly, two engineers who were taking part in the conversation themselves had differing views. One said he considered himself a scientist because of his involvement in developing instruments, but the other said he did not consider himself a scientist even though he does instrument testing. They looked at each other with confused expressions.

Then to make everyone even more confused, I played the devil’s advocate:

“What if someone used to work in a research position but moved to a different position or a senior level that requires more teaching or administration and not that much research? Are they still a scientist?

“And what if you work in a research position that’s in an area not traditionally considered to be scientific? No one would argue whether or not a paleontologist is a scientist, but what about an archaeologist? What about forensics?

“And there are art historians who use serious scientific techniques such as x-ray diffraction and microscopy to conduct their work. Is this not science?!”

There were a few pained faces at this point in the conversation.

The final word, however, went to my boss who had been listening to our debate and chimed in with his own thoughts.

“I think we can all agree that in this day and age, the definition of a scientist is a complicated one. Whether someone is a scientist or not can be self-defined and we have to accept that it goes beyond the classical scientific disciplines of biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics. We’ll know instinctively if someone is a scientist or not,” he said.

“But I can definitely tell you who won’t be a scientist for much longer unless they get back to work!”

And so, I managed to be a scientist for at least one more day.


This article is from a monthly column called The Sometimes Serious Scientist. Click here to see the other articles in this series.

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Source: Asian Scientist Magazine; Photo: Shutterstock.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.

Alice Ly is a postdoctoral researcher in Germany. She completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne, and has a BSc in Pathology (First Class Hons) and BA (Art History). She enjoys microscopy, cakes, photos of puppies, and removing warm items from the incubator.

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