Bill Nye is enough of a scientist for me.

Recently I’ve seen an influx of people using a word that they don’t seem to exactly understand. I believe it’s a bit due to the loss of meaning. Earlier this week I mentioned it in my news feed, but figured I’d go a bit more in-depth here. That word is scientist. When I read a comment on youtube about Bill Nye not being a qualified scientist because he has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, it confused me.

Now I think I’ve realized why; I believe the term scientist doesn’t carry the same meaning the more people become scientifically literate, because the more people use the scientific method to understand their world the more they think like scientists, the more importance we place on the discipline they study. The problem arises when people misunderstand the difference between being an expert in a discipline of science and a general understanding of multiple disciplines of science, required in applied sciences. According to the definition of a scientist, you’re a scientist if you use the scientific method, so essentially anyone who is scientifically literate. However, most people seem opposed to referring to every scientifically literate individual as a scientist, which is kind of understandable, though for some people that seems to also leave out engineers, which it shouldn’t. Engineering is an applied science, it requires knowledge of many different disciplines of science. Most often It doesn’t require you to be an expert in one, but it does require you to understand what the experts have to say about their respective disciplines.

Now we can always talk about the big heroes of science, Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Edmond Halley, Albert Einstein, Galileo, ETC. We can all say they were definitely scientists, but they don’t exactly capture the idea of the everyday scientists. The major difference between how the world was for them and how it is now for us is drastically different. Today information is at your fingertips, you can find opinions, studies, and expert opinions just by clicking your mouse. It’s not too difficult to travel halfway across the world to speak with an expert personally about something you’re interested in, if you have the money. So to be an engineer no longer require you to have direct knowledge of the latest physics study, or experiment, you can just look it up in a few minutes and make your designs accordingly. You can gain intimate knowledge of these things with ease. A big problem to this, is there are also many people claiming to have a similar knowledge to experts, who have not done any of the research. So credibility is incredibly important. One must know and be able to trust their sources.

Bill Nye’s credibility is assaulted because he’s an actor, with “The Science Guy” being his acting persona, but Bill Nye is scientifically literate, and his acting person was mostly used to spread scientific literacy to a young audience. The reason Bill Nye is more trustworthy than another TV persona who has been in the headlines recently for not being entirely honest with his audience is, Bill Nye was not selling anything on his show. He merely explained things in a way that was easy to understand. In recent years, he’s almost been replaced by Neil deGrasse Tyson and his show cosmos.

Now, some of the topics he discussed on his show were a bit dated, and scientific understanding and his understanding has shifted in those areas. You see the interesting thing about scientifically literate people, is they often understand when they’ve made a mistake. If the evidence proves them wrong or to have misunderstood, they often correct themselves., and adjust to the new information they have. An example, Bill Nye used to be disinclined toward GMO foods, but after he discussed it with experts in the subject he changed his stance to be more accepting.

None of these things hurt his credibility, I feel it they strengthen it. Everyone has the right and ability to change their mind when it no longer agrees with their world view. Changing one’s opinion when new information is gathered is not pandering, it’s mature. People need to flexible with their ideals, because otherwise we begin to stagnate and cling to beliefs that hold little in the way of truth, or even benefit.

As I mentioned in news feed as a point of fact, Mayim Bialik is an actor and a Neuroscientist, she doesn’t lose her PhD by acting, it doesn’t hurt her credibility, just because she plays one on TV.

Now if were going to start dismissing scientists because they don’t have a formal degree in a discipline, then we’d also have to dismiss Michael Faraday, and I don’t know any scientifically literate individual worth his salt that would ever dismiss Michael Faraday. He never had a formal education and it actually hurt him in many areas later in life because he couldn’t do the math necessary to prove himself right. There’s a great episode of Cosmos all about him. You can find it on Netflix and should definitely check it out if you haven’t already. Bill Nye actually has better qualifications that Michael Faraday did, in fact, he has better qualifications than many famous scientists.

There are many areas of science that aren’t always considered science by some people: engineering, medicine, archeology, paleontology, and probably many others. A problem with current people’s understanding is that most scientists are known by their discipline and not simply as a scientist, as the term has become too broad and encompassing. Applied sciences require no less scientific understanding or thinking than theoretical sciences, differing perhaps, but not lesser.

I think another problem has to do with the term qualified. When really we should be looking for credibility, not qualifications. We want people who cite sources and so research to credible studies. People who don’t rely on misinformation or conjecture for their argument. When someone’s license gets stripped away for making bogus and harmful claims they become less credible. The most important thing about credibility is repetition; if they cannot repeat what they claimed to have done then their claim is likely bogus and noncredible. A singular event that happened only once with few witnesses that sound unbelievable, likely is.

Scientific thinking requires one to doubt and test everything before accepting anything. You can also accept what is presented by those you find credible, and so credibility is incredibly important to scientific fields. It’s also important to not unduly attack someone credibility. Lessening someone credibility for no reason only hurts our scientific literacy by causing distrust of those that we should be able to trust.

The fastest way to become famous as a scientist is to prove your colleagues wrong, so most people in scientific fields are pretty credible because they've usually done the legwork and had others double and triple checking their work for accuracy. Especially when they admit their mistakes. We should never attack someone’s credibility for admitting mistakes. Nor should they be used to discredit science in general.

People jumping the gun on discrediting scientists have allowed a foothold for pseudoscience. By throwing credibility into question over every claim, or retraction and claiming things like Big Pharma, Pseudoscience has been able to goad people into believing some of the most harmful nonsense in our history.

Science isn’t perfect and no scientist will ever claim it is. It’s a process for understanding our observable universe and deserves all the respect of such. I like to think I’m scientifically literate, I might be wrong as often as I’m right, but I try my best to understand the world around me, and it is only with science that I’ve ever felt remotely close to doing so.