To be...or Not to be...

To be…or Not to be…that is the question

A Shakespearian angle to what is actually a scientist and why are we seeing more of this word?

Well, I think of a young Albert Einstein who before becoming infamous and a noble laureate. Just think, he was selling insurance door to door and apologizing to his parents for the cost of his academic qualifications, before his employment at the Swiss patent office.

My point here was that a scientist may have relevant qualifications, but what you do with that nuance does make all the difference. Technology has changed many things, especially where traditionally the barrier to entry in a laboratory was scarce, and these days the best definition of the title is the ability to pose difficult questions but to also be scrutinized by your peer group in the recognition that your contribution cannot be disproved.

This is the essence of my answering what I say to new connections, "I am a data scientist", but truth be told, I never gave up being that person who strives for the original research question.

My journey has been interesting, it started out as being relatively young to publish in scientific journals (21-year-old in 2004), but it always baffled me as to why no one ever asked me being someone with an honors qualification, "What was your thesis titled"...truly baffles me still...not one new connection. asking me this. I guess maybe it is available on all different social media handles (help me out here!).

I would ask this to anyone that claims to be a scientist, but now with technology questions equalling the playing field, a post-pandemic reset, as well as the institutional decay of tenured professorship, I would also thank the Internet of things.

• You might introduce dance fundamentals to help your kid's tennis footwork…I would call that being a scientist
• Build an app that incorporates all your financial planning on one dashboard, I would call that being a scientist
• Take part in a Kaggle contest, and save a corporation millions in analytics through open source, I would?call you a scientist
• Write a LinkedIn article that gets millions of impressions, that thought axiom transfer from various fields is what I would call a scientist!

So this to me means that we are all in this together, the Covid-19 dilemma raised alarm bells of imitation scientists rising up from all corners of society, yet are we, not all imitation scientists until that breakthrough that peer-rated groups cannot disprove the said proven hypothesis?

To be...or Not to be an Imitation Scientist...is definitely the question

I for one, am still an Imitation scientist, since a jury of my peers does not even know of my existence, but I keep on the road less traveled and it has made all the difference!

Thanks for reading!