“Right, you in the white coat, get to work on curing this disease.”
“But I’m not a virologist, I work with animals and study their behaviour.”
“Just do science.”
“But my degree is in——“
“Do. Science.”
“Good news! We’ve cured coronavirus!”
“See, I knew you—”
“In mice.”
“We need the top scientists in the country working on curing coronavirus...someone hire those guys who proved mice have facial expressions!”
it’s really weird how we have this cultural idea of a generic “scientist” who is equally skilled in all fields of study, as if geology or chemistry alone didn’t consist of thousands and thousands of more focused and specialized disciplines to which people devote their entire careers
i’d like to blame Hollywood for making the general public think “scientist” is a catch-all profession and not dozens on dozens of individual disciplines
I can see how it can be comfusing seeing how they all wear the same color lab coat.