this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2024
161 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
44184 readers
2065 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Anyone calling themselves a "scientist"
Biologist, astronomer, mathematicians, these are all valid professions.
Scientist is not a profession.
Scientist is the broader category though. If a square says “I’m a rectangle” they aren’t lying.
It is but no educated person qualifies themselves by that name as it means nothing.
People seek to label themselves in the most accurate category not the broadest one.
I am shape.
I’m not sure that’s true. If you ask someone what they do for a living and they say, “I’m a doctor,” you don’t say, “I doubt it. A real doctor would say, ‘I’m a cardiovascular surgeon,’ or ‘I’m a pediatrician.’” We adjust our labels for our audience.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find a biologist or a climatologist who might just say, “I’m a scientist” to a broad audience. Not that they couldn’t use the more accurate label, just that they don’t necessarily have to.