WHAT DO SCIENTISTS DO?

What images come to mind when you hear the word “scientist”? A person in a lab coat surrounded by chemicals and hi-tech machinery? A disheveled physicist standing at a whiteboard filled with equations? What about the scientists on CSI? My father is a chemistry professor, and I understand those reactions. During college, I satisfied physical and life science requirements with courses entitled (literally) “Chemistry for Non-Science Majors” and “Biology for Non-Science Majors.” I saw no irony in the fact that I, a political science major, had found my way into these courses. But scientists do much more than study chemistry or physics or biology. They study markets (economists), groups (sociologists), and politics (political scientists). The practice of science does not depend upon a particular subject matter. Science is a process; it is a method. The definitive characteristic of a scientist is not what they study but what they do. So what do scientists do?

Scientists build theories and test theories so that they can describe, explain, and predict. These activities are clearly interrelated, but understanding their distinctiveness is important. Description is the process of determining – that is, measuring – the relevant properties of the object of inquiry. For a chemist, this might include the mass, color, and boiling point of a particular substance. For an astronomer, it might be the size of a planet and the planet's distance from a particular star.