Who is a scientist?

Simple question without a consensus

The AAAS Meeting in Denver was a huge success. Lots of great stuff happened, especially awarding the Newcomb Cleveland prize to a team of scientists that included members of the Lakota tribe who collaborated with Western geneticists and archaeologists to determine that horses were present in the northern US far sooner than was believed. Here’s a great writeup on the paper and the recognition in ScienceAdviser.

Everyone on the team was crystal clear that the discovery could not have been made without the collaboration between Western and native scientists. Following the success of Braiding Sweetgrass, indigenous science is starting to get the attention it deserves. The author, Robin Wall Kimmerer, had an editorial in Science recently making the case for more support. When we publish and recognize indigenous science, we get the usual snark on social media and in letters that there’s no such thing, that science is independent of who does it. That flies in the face of the simple principles of the philosophy of science that it is a living process, which goes all the way back to Popper. Anyone who thinks the Lakota authors are not scientists just because they don’t have a bunch of credentials doesn’t really understand how science works.

In the closing plenary, I had the chance to ask a panel of scientific leaders, including Keith Yamamoto, Peggy Hamburg, Michael Crow, Willie May, and Kaye Husbands Fealing a simple question: who is a scientist? The answers ranged from very narrow (just people who are doing or planning research) all the way to very broad (every living human). It’s worth listening to the answers:

My view is that everyone who contributes to the scientific enterprise is a scientist. It’s not just lab work that makes up science. It’s science policy, science communication, scientific illustration, and science education and many other things. In fact, you could make the case that our current struggles aren’t about whether we’re succeeding in the laboratory but rather whether all of the other parts of science are succeeding. Perhaps they would do better if we recognized the participants as science rather than as so-called “alternative careers.”

It’s not easy. Thanks to all scientists!