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Asked by zmzmzm to Allan, Angela, Diva, Harriet, Nathan on 28 Jun 2012.
Question: is being a scientist seen as being respected in society ?
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Harriet Groom answered on 28 Jun 2012:
I think certainly it used to be but unfortunately, in recent years, the popular media covers things that go wrong (like the scientist who wrongly linked autism to the MMR vaccine) more widely than the exciting discoveries that happen every day (these are reported in some places – look at the BBC science page for example!).
I think people who know what we do respect us in our profession and hopefully by chatting to more young people like yourself we will be respected by more!
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Nathan Langford answered on 28 Jun 2012:
Well, this is a difficult question and I think depends on what society you come from.
I’ve certainly lived in places where being a scientist or having a PhD is really given a lot of respect. For example, in Germany, being a professor at a university is viewed as making you a very important person. Of course, in some ways, perhaps, they might take it a bit far.
But in Australia, it’s a bit the opposite. A lot of people are very mistrustful of “smart people” and think they’re just show-offs. I think, while being a bit skeptical can be good, this isn’t necessarily a very good attitude to have.
In the UK, people often also have a fairly small level of respect for scientists. You would often hear comments that they should “get a real job” and “get out into the real world”. I’m making big generalisations here, of course, but there seems to be the idea that if science isn’t making money for us *now* and helping the economy *now*, then it’s a waste of time and money investing in it. Of course, this is also a very short-sighted viewpoint.
I do think that being a scientist *should* be respected in society. Now, maybe I would obviously think that, since I am a scientist myself, but I really do believe that science plays a really important role in our society and that it is a respect-worthy ambition to strive to advance the scope of scientific knowledge.
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Diva Amon answered on 28 Jun 2012:
Hi zmzmzm,
I think there are very mixed views of scientists by society in recent times. I think there is still quite a lot of admiration and respect given but more recently, there has been some negative backlash. Scientists are perceived as being old grey-bearded nerdy recluses who cant communicate properly but hopefully from looking at the scientists chatting to you over these two weeks, you can see that we are just normal young people who love what we do! As Nathan said, society thinks that if your science doesn’t have an immediate result or impact, it shouldn’t be done but it should be remembered that adding to the base of knowledge in any way is good and could lead to greater more important discoveries later on!
In recent times also, especially in environmental sciences, scientists are viewed by some politicians and business-oriented people as impeding development. Environmental scientists may want to conserve our natural resources like a park because a rare bird lives there whereas they may want to bulldoze it and turn it into a car park for a shopping centre. As a deep-sea biologist, we are beginning to encounter problems like this – as we are running out of metals to mine on land, mining companies now want to expand to mine in the deep sea. As a scientist, I understand that we dont fully understand the deep sea and still haven’t discovered 60-70% of animals in the deep sea. We don’t know what could happen if we impacted this environment and so would like to do more studies before mining begins. It is really difficult because of course we need metals for every day life.
The media also has a lot to do with any negative views of scientists as media talks about the bad things rather than the good quite a lot. I also think that people forget that nearly every aspect of our day to day lives are connected to and aided by science is some way – from the vitamins we take in the morning to the computers we are typing on now. At the end of the day, I think science is fascinating and I am proud to be a scientist!
Comments
Nathan commented on :
@Harriet – That’s a really interesting point you make about the media – and I’d like to follow this up with a comment.
I once attended a talk about climate change and the roles of science and media in public opinion. This speaker pointed out that the scientific world and the media have completely opposing and incompatible views about what makes a “balanced” report. In the scientific world, we aim to move towards a “consensus opinion” – that is, we keep coming up with new theories and collecting more measurements and more data until everyone is convinced that one particular theory is correct. For example, 500 years ago, most people thought the Sun moved around the Earth. But more and more experiments and measurements were made until eventually “the scientific world” (that is, the consensus) believed that it was the other way around.
But consider now a report made by, for example, a public broadcasting channel, like the BBC in the UK, who are required to deliver a “balanced report”. When the media makes a report, to keep things balanced, they find one person from the “yes” side and one person from the “no” side. This is what happened for many years with reporting about climate change up to as recently as a few years ago – and still happens to some extent today. But in science, it really matters if for every “no” vote you find, you can find 10000 “yes” votes… When that happens, the jury is no longer out – there is a scientific consensus.
Now, that doesn’t mean that consensus is *always* right – just like at Einstein and classical physics. The skeptic is a really important part of the scientific process that keeps trying to pick holes in a theory and, if the theory is right, this will only make it stronger. But the key point is that once there is a consensus, you need to provide strong evidence to support new ideas, if you expect them to be taken seriously. And, if possible, make testable predictions which can support or disprove the ideas. By the time Einstein came along, there were many little problems with the existing explanations that no one had been able to explain. And when Einstein invented Relativity, two guys called Michelson and Morley set about to build an experiment to disprove him. They came up with a simple test that could distinguish between Einstein’s new theory and the existing theory. But in the end, although they really believed that Einstein was wrong, they ended up performing the first beautiful experiment which support the theory of relativity.
Nathan commented on :
@Diva – Good answer, Diva!
Nathan commented on :
I’m proud to be a scientist too.
zmzmzm commented on :
thank you guys …. personally i think that scientists are respected in the society as their jobs are nearly at the top of the hierachy ……