Posted by
Steve on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 8:36:28 PM
Contrary to popular belief, scientists are people, too. For the past 100+ years science has delivered many wonderful things for us to enjoy. We have cars, planes, longer life, better nutrition, etc. This has caused us to put scientists on a pedestal and cause people to believe that scientists know everything.
There is a little known fact about education. The higher you go, the more you know about a smaller piece of the pie. A person that has a doctorate in science has spent a lot of time learning about one small fact or set of facts. The knowledge of those facts are extensive and impressive. The drawback to that learning restriction is that outside of their field, they know probably less than the average person.
That is good, because we need people to know lots about things. It is bad, because we think that a chemist knows more about biology than the average person. The chemist may not have had a biology class since high school. Most people take biology in high school That puts the Phd in Chemistry at the same level as the mechanic at the corner garage, when talking about biology. But the average person thinks the person is a scientist and therefore knows everything about science.
There was a time when scientists knew a lot about many kinds of science. Benjaman Franklin knew a lot about many kinds of sciences. It was expected back then. Of course, the science was much more primitive. Scientists that do scientific experiments today have to have extensive knowledge in their field. Back then scientists were still learning about science.
We need to all realize that a scientist outside of their field is no better than the average person in their knowledge of the subject. In fact, his/her knowledge may be less because of the extensive amount of time they spend in studying their field.