• Question: r u a real scientist?

    Asked by georgie1 to David, Helen, Ian, rhysphillips, Sarah on 13 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Rhys Phillips

      Rhys Phillips answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Yes! At least I am most definitely a scientist. And I *think* I’m real. Therefore I must be a ‘real scientst’! Being a scientist doesn’t mean you have to wear a white lab coat and goggles all the time. And it doesn’t mean you have to be mad either – believe it or not, some of us are actually sort of normal!

    • Photo: Helen Fletcher

      Helen Fletcher answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Hi georgie1, I am a real scientist. Lab coat, gloves, goggles, pipette…. what more do you want?

    • Photo: David Corne

      David Corne answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      I probably don’t dress like one (well,I don’t dress like anyone else on the planet really). Also I don’t use test tubes or goggles (there would be too many breakages and I would keep bumping into things). I don’t have a machine in the basement that can bring something to life by channelling a lightning strike. But, I do have a three-week-old copy of the New Scientist on my living room table.

    • Photo: Sarah Cook

      Sarah Cook answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      This is a great question!
      I think a lot of my scientist friends that work in labs would say that I’m not a real scientist because I don’t spend my days (anymore) making up solutions and pouring agar plates.
      Also to be brutally honest I get paid a lot more than them whereas they see their career in science as more of a devotion for the progress of scientific knowledge which is very commendable.
      Overall, yes I am a scientist but i’m not sure if I would qualify as ‘real’!

    • Photo: Ian van der Linde

      Ian van der Linde answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Yes, I would say so! You might think of a scientist as somebody in a white coat and goggles, but that is just one kind of scientist. Anybody who uses scientific methods to try to find answers to a question is a scientist — so people who work in very different areas would all be considered scientists, whether Chemistry, Physics, Computing, Biology, even Psychology and Maths!

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