The dividing line may be a bit blurry, but I have trouble calling something science if it doesn’t involve modeling phenomena and somehow validating those models. Modern math does not, therefore it is not a science. Individual mathematicians may be scientists, but I think you’ll find very few who consider themselves that way.
I’ve been on both sides of the fence here (Ph. D. Biology - Oceanography, MD with subspecialization - Thoracic Radiology).
In general, I would define a scientist as someone who uses scientific methods [hypothesis testing, strong inference, careful experimental design] to find new stuff out about the world. I would use this very loose definition because I would include atypical examples, like high school students who do a good science fair project, and some parapsychologists as scientists, while some professions widely regarded as scientific are pretty dodgy.
In general, I would not include physicians, as doctors generally use received information to diagnose and treat patients. Trust me when I say that making the transition from thinking like a scientist to thinking like a physician is painful and difficult, and that much of the ‘hypothesis-testing, lets find a new way to approach this’ mindset is of little value in medicine.
I would agree with some of the previous posters who discriminate between engineers and scientists on the basis of new versus applied information, and apply the same dichotomy to physicians, putting them right next to engineers.
There are physicians who are also scientists, - I strive to be a good one - but they are rare.
Hey** Fiveyearlurker**, what kind of research do you do with the vacationing physician types.
“Rocket Scientist” is more of a pop culture thing, and isn’t a real job description. I’ve been known to refer to myself as a rocket scientist, but that’s just because people’s eyes glaze over when I say I’m an aerospace engineer.
I’m usually pretty free about including deductive reasoning along with inductive reasoning in the “scientific methods” toolbox.
I wouldn’t even say they’re not necessarily scientists if they do that - exploration is a pretty scientific thing to do in spirit even if the motive is money and not pure knowledge. The tools by which the exploration proceeds would be how I would figure out if the exploration is scientific or not.
This is kind of in the same vein … They may be heavy on the grunt work and light on the intellectual end, but if they’re contributing to the ‘new knowledge’ storehouse about where and how many of these birds are found, but I would consider these technicians scientists. The whole science of ecology would be dead in the water if it weren’t for knowing the distribution and abundance of organisms. - Assuming that what they’re discovering is new, and wasn’t known before. Do you not only have to be doing original research, but also directing that research to be a scientist? I’d say no, but I understand if others disagree.
It’s a good question, because solving such mysteries is one of the reasons science exists. On the one hand, there’s the somewhat unimaginative (symptom #1, symptom #2, symptom #3 —> treatment for X) application of already known knowledge that I wouldn’t really consider science, but is definitely a part of medicine. Then there’s the imaginative (we can’t figure out what he has, but it could be caused by Z, so let’s do something that should cause a change if Z is actually happening) science, writ small, that happens more often on House. I would have to say they’re doing science, but I imagine for most non-TV doctors, that’s only a small fraction of their time. House is quite a bit more like a scientist than most doctors, just as Sherlock Holmes was quite a bit more like a scientist than most detectives. 
I guess I’m a little more inclusive about the term “scientist” than some.
Well, looks like purge time for you, pal.
I’m an immunologist. At the time working in tumor immunology. Though, I left for the dark side and work for a company, so now my dealings with physicians are more limited to the CMO, who is legitimately a physician and a scientist.
I had the misfortune to do my PhD under a surgeon. How he had a lab, with absolutely no lab experience, is another story. But, it was painfully obvious that he had no idea how science was done. It eventually became painfully obvious enough that the lab was disbanded.
The idea that not every experiment was a recipe where you followed steps and got a result was entirely foreign to him. Sometimes (most times!) experiments just don’t work. Controls look like crap, replicates are for shit or the setup just doesn’t work. If you were doing something that had been done before, then it wouldn’t be science!
But, he was in this mind set of, if you do A, then B happens. So, why would we consistently bring him C? Well, maybe C is telling us something! Maybe C is telling us nothing! But, if B is something that is already known, then that’s just not interesting at all! This is probably something that serves him well as a surgeon, but not in the lab. Like I said, I would suck as a surgeon because I would probably be considering too many silly options that would leave me too indecisive.
I’ve probably been left slightly anti physician! (sorry, MDs on the board, it’s nothing personal! Mostly it was surgeons. What the hell is with those guys?!) But, it was not uncommon to have an MD come into the lab with no experience and expect to cure cancer by the end of the week. That they had to learn to culture cells and pipette using sterile technique seemed an unnecessarily arduous task getting in the way.
An Heuristic Methodology for Determining Whether a Subject is a Scientist,
submitted for publication in the IMHO Journal of Knowology by T. Knig[sup]1[/sup], PhD[sup]2[/sup], DCMLFS[sup]3[/sup]
To determine whether or not a test subject is a scientist, the following procedure is employed:
- Obtain a scientist
- Have the test subject perform work in the scientist’s area of interest.
- Have the scientist observe step 2.
There are two possible outcomes:
If the test subject is a scientist, the observer-scientist will say “Ah! I see you’re doing some REAL science now!”
If the test subject is not a scientist, the observer-scientist will say “Ah! I see you’re doing something REAL now!”
This method has proven to have high accuracy is a large number of trials during the author’s time in graduate school[sup]4[/sup].
Notes and References:
[sup]1[/sup] Present address, SDMB Guest
[sup]2[/sup] Support of the National Science Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. I may not be generating any new knowledge for that grant money that got me through grad school and a postdoc, but at least I pay may taxes.
[sup]3[/sup] Don’t Call Me Late For Supper
[sup]4[/sup] Knig, T. 2009 Private Communication[sup]5[/sup]
[sup]5[/sup] OK, you got me - I just made it all up. But it works! Try it sometime.
This is why I say some engineers are scientists. Those who work in research facilities finding out new things about, say, sediment transport and deposition, or blast-resistant construction materials are scientists IMO.
Yup. I agree. One of the best scientists I know is a guy with a PhD in Engineering who went back to medical school. Despite these qualifications, he’s a hell of a scientist.
I think that this gives a pretty good explanation.
Also, if you have siblings or other close relatives, and they’re anything at all like me, they kind of enjoy it. “Yeah, my sister’s really smart. She’s a rocket scientist.” pause “Literally. She figures out how to build rockets.”*
*Disclaimer: I couldn’t for the life of me explain in anything resembling detail what the hell my sister does. Partly because much of it is classified government work, partly because I think you need at least an undergrad degree in engineering to even hope to understand it.
Huh. Maybe I should have become a scientist?
(And yes, I enjoy repeatedly playing that arcade ‘game’ where you hold onto metal handles and are delivered an increasingly strong electric shock. I’m talking about the vintage real ones; not the simulated electric shock ones with the vibrating handles. Oh, how I want one!)
As a mathemagician, I’m going to have to agree with Ultrafilter here. Maths and Theoretical Physics use an entirely different process of inquiry than the other sciences. I wouldn’t call myself a scientist.
Yeah, that too.
They’re doing science, but aren’t necessarily scientists. I don’t think Colibri was referring to some miserable overworked grad students ( c’mon - they’re all miserable and overworked 
) doing the bulk of the grunt work on a project where they’ll at least be partial authors and have input. Rather just pure hired hands.
As an example a friend is currently doing a seasonal job in San Diego county surveying California Gnatcatchers. She isn’t a part of a study group - she’s a short-term GS-5( or 6, I forget ) employee doing survey work. She has no input on data analysis at all - she just generates some of the raw numbers for monitoring/modeling projects designed and run by others. As such she’s doing scientific work, without working as a scientist herself.
Another example springs to mind, this time a grad student.
I knew guy a couple of decades ago ( a heck of a nice guy and damn smart ) who was doing a masters in a botany program. His thesis as such was a county-wide survey of a particular group of plants - working up a detailed herbarium for that county for the group. Now this is very useful information to have for folks doing specific research. But it really isn’t research itself per se - it’s just survey work. One of his major professors ( but not the key advisor, who was an aging emeritus ) at the time opined to me that he was the last of a breed, because they really wouldn’t accept such projects in the future as a research thesis. Not because it wasn’t useful to science, but because it really involved the exercise of little to no analytical skills and as such wasn’t a full test of competency.
He was doing science, but he arguably wasn’t doing the work of a modern scientist ( as opposed to, say, a 19th century naturalist ).
The OP’s sig is rather ironic in this context. Genesis 2:16-17 (KJV) reads: “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
Note that it’s definitely NOT just the “tree of knowledge”, as Ann Druyan would have it. Whether or not her overall point happens to be correct, carelessly misstating the myth she’s supposedly criticizing makes for a very poor argument, to say the least.
Nah, I don’t think it’s about enjoying it; it’s about just needing to know what’s going on regardless of how uncomfortable it may make you.
Interestingly, a lot of early exploration of electrical phenomena basically worked exactly like that. Loosely paraphrased it’s a whole lot of “I rubbed this glass rod with a silk cloth a whole lot and then touched it and it really hurt! I don’t know why, but I’m going to find out what happens if I use wool instead of silk!” and “I put one end of this wire in a cup of brine and touched the other end to this dead frog and the dead frog jumped! Then I tried it on myself and it felt like my heart stopped! I’m not quite sure why, but I’m going to do it ten times more just to be sure.”
Bonus fun fact: Antoine Levoisier, who generally is credited with inventing modern chemistry, relied just as much on taste in his experiments as on any of his other senses. He wasn’t chugging beakers full of hydroflouric acid or anything, but in his observations he generally included a drop or two of the substance on his tongue. It’s extremely interesting to recreate some of those experiments coming from a modern perspective, where you’ve previously been trained to never ever even think about putting something from the lab anywhere near your mouth.
You can’t really do that by using extant knowledge, you constantly have to add to the knowledgebase to get anywhere. e.g. when I was a gold mine geologist, I was constantly mapping & sampling the working face as well as logging new core drilled ahead of it as well as other, deeper cores, to build up a picture of how the ore reef was behaving. Firstly, that’s using the scientific method to solve an immediate problem, which sure as heck made me a scientist. Secondly, all that data often gets used to base theses and research papers off of , so it adds incrementally to the total scientific knowledge, however minuscule the individual contribution is.
Ha! Another way geologists are real scientists. There are a few minerals I can identify mainly by taste.