“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
Right?
It’s like those people who are like “Why are we wasting our time sending people to space when we still haven’t cured cancer” as if rocket science is somehow in the same field as studying diseases to find a cure...I genuinely think that some people just assume that every scientist everywhere is somehow skilled at all fields of science as if the second they’re handed a white lab coat from Scientist School they magically obtain Infinite Knowledge Of All Things
This wouldn’t be quite as much of a problem if some of the people who believed this weren’t themselves scientists (this is basically how you get Nobel Prize Syndrome)
