At what point can one be considered a physicist?

[russ_watters]

Well, my argument has been misrepresented...

What argument was misrepresented, and how?

 

[Pythagorean]

Well for one, that my interest is in winning an internet argument. I was raising points about the deficiency of a working title. Your jumping to conclusions and carrying on based on an omission. And a completely justified omission since the thing that was omitted was just eliminated as sufficient criteria and the focus was shifted to working title (and you participated in that). I have been on physicsforums long enough to see the threads about Einstein's education and math skills.

 

[Pythagorean]

Once you recognize the extreme case (Andrew Wakefield) as a valid example of when a title's insufficient (and acknowledge that what Wakefield lacked, Einstein had even when he didn't have the title), then we can move onto more debatable cases, like lemons. People that have the title, but don't really do anything productive in research, aren't good teachers, are nothing but problems for administrators. Perhaps they had a brother or father in the department that got them their position, perhaps there was some featherbedding involved. That's the thing about professional titles - they're arrived at via events that aren't always merit-based.

 

[russ_watters]

Splitting hairs is not healthy. Physics is the Study of the physical universe and our place in it. Anyone who studies this with scientific rigor is a physicist.

Proving competency is done (in part) through demonstrating rigor to a recognized authority.

Is it any wonder that scientific literacy is so low and measles is making a comeback when people think so little of science that they would strip it of its status as a profession?

 

[Ben Niehoff]

Hell, I have a physics PhD and a postdoc job doing research in physics, and I would consider myself kind of a "provisional" physicist (or maybe mathematician). I wouldn't feel comfortable getting too attached to that title until (unless?) I get a permanent job.

Suggesting you can call yourself by a professional title because you "feel it in your heart" is absurd. Feel free to say you're a hobbyist or an amateur, though; hobbyists and amateurs are great!

 

[Pythagorean]

Hell, I have a physics PhD and a postdoc job doing research in physics, and I would consider myself kind of a "provisional" physicist (or maybe mathematician). I wouldn't feel comfortable getting too attached to that title until (unless?) I get a permanent job.

Suggesting you can call yourself by a professional title because you "feel it in your heart" is absurd. Feel free to say you're a hobbyist or an amateur, though; hobbyists and amateurs are great!

When I said Einstein was a physicist "at heart" and it put it in quotes, I didn't mean "because he felt it in his heart". I just meant, that intrinsically, he was a physicist. Whereas somebody like Andrew Wakefield, who had the title doctor, was not intrinsically a doctor.

 

[Khashishi]

I think you are committing a no true Scotsman fallacy in saying Wakefield was not a doctor (prior to being barred from practice). Certainly, he wasn't a good one, but he was at one point practicing the profession, and he had the education and license to back it up, and he published papers, so I don't think you can retroactively say he wasn't a doctor at the time.

As far as Einstein goes, I think it is common practice outside of academia to call physics grad students who are doing physics research 'physicists', at least when describing a team of researchers in news media. For example, "Physicists at the University of ... find that something interesting happens" often refers to work done by grad students.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Pythagorean caused that by citing Einstein circa 1905, not me.

Look guys, you want a win? You want me to say Einstein couldn't call himself a "physicist" for the two years after getting his PhD and before getting his first job in academia despite his job requiring an STEM degree? Arguable, but you can have it. So, what did you win?

No, the opposite. My approach to the OP's question is to ask myself what people mean when they call someone a physicist. When people call Einstein a physicist before he got his PhD and before he was paid for it, they must be referring to his great knowledge of, and expertize in, physics. In fact, I would argue the only reason a degree and paycheck are ever considered as criteria is that they automatically imply knowledge and expertize.
I think you (and Ryan) are approaching the question in a completely different way, which is to try to police the word, to arrive at criteria delineating who should be called a physicist, with the specific goal of protecting the naive from charlatans (or something like that).

 

[Ryan_m_b]

No, the opposite. My approach to the OP's question is to ask myself what people mean when they call someone a physicist. When people call Einstein a physicist before he got his PhD and before he was paid for it, they must be referring to his great knowledge of, and expertize in, physics. In fact, I would argue the only reason a degree and paycheck are ever considered as criteria is that they automatically imply knowledge and expertize.
I think you (and Ryan) are approaching the question in a completely different way, which is to try to police the word, to arrive at criteria delineating who should be called a physicist, with the specific goal of protecting the naive from charlatans (or something like that).

I don't see a problem with calling someone a physicist/biologist/historian/w.e whilst they are doing their PhD. When people refer to Einstein as a physicist are they not always referring to his life as a physicist and not any time before?

My approach to the question is pretty simple: when someone asks you what you do 99% of the time they are asking about your employment, if you respond that you're a physicist then that should be because you are employed as one. The only alternative I can think of that would be acceptable would be if you weren't a physicist most of the time but did regularly contribute papers. Partly this is to protect against abuse but mostly it's because I can't see anything else that makes sense, regardless of job.

 

[Pythagorean]

I think you are committing a no true Scotsman fallacy in saying Wakefield was not a doctor (prior to being barred from practice). Certainly, he wasn't a good one, but he was at one point practicing the profession, and he had the education and license to back it up, and he published papers, so I don't think you can retroactively say he wasn't a doctor at the time.

As far as Einstein goes, I think it is common practice outside of academia to call physics grad students who are doing physics research 'physicists', at least when describing a team of researchers in news media. For example, "Physicists at the University of ... find that something interesting happens" often refers to work done by grad students.

Wakefield was not just a bad doctor. He was a con-artist that looked to profit from intentional misinformation. He violated the hippocratic oath. He published papers that he knew had false information in them. This is an extreme example, but this isn't uncommon (particulalry in the medical sciences):

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/

You're misunderstanding the Scottsman fallacy (or my conclusion); my conclusion isn't "Andrew Wakefield is therefore not a doctor".
It's "job titles can be misleading too" and that "without qualifiers, context is important" and that "amateur astronomer" and "professional astronomer" are a subset of "astronomer".

"What do you do" wasn't what the OP, asked; his question seemed more general to me and employment was just one factor.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I don't see a problem with calling someone a physicist/biologist/historian/w.e whilst they are doing their PhD. When people refer to Einstein as a physicist are they not always referring to his life as a physicist and not any time before?

The question is whether or not you would shift your criteria if Einstein had already completed his PhD and been employed as a physicist when he wrote his famous 5 papers. And whether you would shift it the other way if he had only completed his undergraduate work and not started a PhD yet. In other words, I think you're fitting your criteria to Einstein's situation as it was, because he's too huge to ignore, even though you'd rather have much more stringent criteria. In my mind, Einstein was a full-fledged physicist at that time, not because he was a PhD candidate, but because of the knowledge and expertize he possessed. I mean, he pretty much out-thought everyone in play at the time with those 5 papers, didn't he?

My approach to the question is pretty simple: when someone asks you what you do 99% of the time they are asking about your employment, if you respond that you're a physicist then that should be because you are employed as one. The only alternative I can think of that would be acceptable would be if you weren't a physicist most of the time but did regularly contribute papers. Partly this is to protect against abuse but mostly it's because I can't see anything else that makes sense, regardless of job.

I think it would be perfectly normal and acceptable for an out of work physicist to call him/her self a physicist. It's a career, not merely employment. Feynman worked for a time, I think about a year, as a research chemist. I don't think he would have been misrepresenting himself to call himself a physicist during that time. It was a side excursion when he couldn't find the work he really wanted. At Los Alamos he ended up doing more work in computer science than anything else. There was also the time he was commissioned to do a painting for a massage parlor. (Absolutely true.) I don't feel he should have felt obligated to stop referring to himself as a physicist during those other paid activities. His career was physics.

 

[ChrisVer]

The title is given by the degree and not by the current job.
So by the time you get a degree in physics, you are a physicist. It's not a job, it's a title.
In a similar way, somebody who gets a degree in economics, is an economist, even if he is working as a banker or an analyst.

If you want to use the term "physicist" as something that specifies your job, then you have to be a researcher and into the academia.

 

[russ_watters]

The question is whether or not you would shift your criteria if Einstein had already completed his PhD and been employed as a physicist when he wrote his famous 5 papers. And whether you would shift it the other way if he had only completed his undergraduate work and not started a PhD yet. In other words, I think you're fitting your criteria to Einstein's situation as it was, because he's too huge to ignore, even though you'd rather have much more stringent criteria. In my mind, Einstein was a full-fledged physicist at that time, not because he was a PhD candidate, but because of the knowledge and expertize he possessed. I mean, he pretty much out-thought everyone in play at the time with those 5 papers, didn't he?

I've already said that you can have Einstein as an exception if you want him, just to get us off of that. But I don't think it really helps your point to try to create a rule-of-thumb around a singularly unique individual. Or, at least, it doesn't help me understand your point.

In fact, I would argue the only reason a degree and paycheck are ever considered as criteria is that they automatically imply knowledge and expertize.

I agree. And that "only reason" is what applies almost all of the time because almost all of the time, that's the only way to demonstrate it. It's like Lombardi said: it isn't just the only thing, it's everything.

I think it would be perfectly normal and acceptable for an out of work physicist to call him/her self a physicist. It's a career, not merely employment.

I agree.

I think you (and Ryan) are approaching the question in a completely different way, which is to try to police the word, to arrive at criteria delineating who should be called a physicist, with the specific goal of protecting the naive from charlatans (or something like that).

Not just the naive: everyone needs protection from charlatans.

 

[russ_watters]

It's "job titles can be misleading too"...[example: Andrew Wakefield]

No one has claimed that a job title guarantees competence. But lack of job title and/or educational background is nearly a guarantee of incompetence.

...and that "without qualifiers, context is important"...

I already agreed to that.

...and that "amateur astronomer" and "professional astronomer" are a subset of "astronomer".

Disagree, and I already provided an example of an amateur astronomer who accomplished what basically represents the pinnacle of what an amatur can do. Despite that, he went out of his way to emphasize his amateur status. So if he can't do it, I don't see how anyone could. Please provide at least a hypothetical example of context where you think that substitution/omission would be acceptable.

"What do you do" wasn't what the OP, asked; his question seemed more general to me and employment was just one factor.

Please reread the OP: It focused entirely on employment. He was basically asking if there are any job titles that say "physicist" without requiring a phd.

 

[russ_watters]

Hell, I have a physics PhD and a postdoc job doing research in physics, and I would consider myself kind of a "provisional" physicist (or maybe mathematician). I wouldn't feel comfortable getting too attached to that title until (unless?) I get a permanent job.

One of my favorite TV shows, "Scrubs", dedicated an entire episode to that issue. The show followed a group of doctors for 8 years, starting with their internship.

One funny moment, a janitor who likes to torture a certain resident sits next to him at the lunchtable in a lab coat. People mistake him for a doctor and when he tells them "janitors wear white coats here too", they assume the resident is a janitor too.

In another, someone asks a resident if she's a doctor and she hedges, "well, I'm a resident, which is sort-of like a doctor, but..." And her friend says "just say yes".

The point isn't to quibble over whether the resident can legitimately label herself a "doctor". The point is that the janitor cannot, under any circumstances label himself/pass himself off as a doctor.

 

[russ_watters]

Speaking as a retired engineer, my nominee for the best engineer of the 20th century is Enrico Fermi. Based on Fermi's Wikipedia article, I see that he had zero education as an engineer.

I am also honored to have known another favorite engineer was Charlie Concordia. Concordia was a Fellow of the IEEE, ASME, and AAAS, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and NSPE, a founder and National Treasurer of the Association for Computing Machinery, and first chairman of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers' Computer Committee, forerunner of the IEEE Computer Society.

Mr. Concordia's education ended with high school. According to some, he had no right to call himself engineer or scientist.

"Engineer" is probably the most complicated, mostly because of the existence of professional engineer registration. Most engineers, however, never get PEs because they work in fields where they don't get government building permits. My dad was an engineer in the steel and industrial gas industries for some 40 years and only ran across a few PEs among the hundreds or thousands of engineers he worked with in that time.

Even in industries where it is needed, the line is not so clear. I'm in HVAC, I have a mech-e degree and my business card says I'm an engineer, but I don't have a PE yet. False advertising? As long as I don't sign my name on my drawings and a registered PE does, no.

The other thing about engineering, and perhaps this existed to a lesser extent with the sciences before college became so standardized, is that it started as a trade. As a result, it is only relatively recently that you needed a degree to be an engineer. My first boss was a totally self-educated PE, who worked himself up from being a draftsman to owning his own engineering firm (and for HVAC, at least one owner must have a PE). He studied for and passed the tests on his own. I'm not sure if that is still possible, but you can still work around it by working for a company that has other PEs. One of my current bosses just has the title of "department head" and "Principal", but doesn't have a degree or PE and people assume he's an engineer. Is he? Isn't he? That line is a lot greyer than the line was for Einstein, but no one who knows his work would argue with him if he chose to label himself as an "engineer".

 

[zoobyshoe]

I've already said that you can have Einstein as an exception if you want him, just to get us off of that. But I don't think it really helps your point to try to create a rule-of-thumb around a singularly unique individual. Or, at least, it doesn't help me understand your point.

I don't present Einstein as an exception. I present him as a particularly clear example of why we call anyone a physicist: expertize in physics.

I agree. And that "only reason" is what applies almost all of the time because almost all of the time, that's the only way to demonstrate it. It's like Lombardi said: it isn't just the only thing, it's everything.

Yes, but Yogi Berra said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." Sports figures say stuff.

At the current time a PhD is an accepted certificate of a certain high level of education, yes, but the definition of physicist is not "one who has a PhD in physics."

Not just the naive: everyone needs protection from charlatans.

I suppose, but debunkers aren't lexicographers. Lexicographers don't police the words they define. They gather multitudes of examples of how people use the word and deduce what the majority use it to mean. (Debunkers don't necessarily police words, either, but that's what you're ending up doing here.)

 

[russ_watters]

I don't present Einstein as an exception. I present him as a particularly clear example of why we call anyone a physicist: expertize in physics.

You don't consider Einstein signularly unique? You seemed to be arguing that he was someone for whom the rule needed to be re-written. And he certainly isn't clear, as an example, to me. Because Einstein is unique and you could pick one of several different dates and resumes of his to judge (and it appears you and Pythagorean have mixed and matched), both with or without hindsight, it isn't at all clear which you would select, how you would judge, and why. It just seems to me like you are saying, "Look, you'd exclude Einstein so your criteria must be wrong!" without saying what your criteria is that you think would work and applying it...and without recognizing that I wouldn't exclude Einstein. Please clarify your criteria.

The biggest irony here is that it was Pythagorean who labeled Einstein as "patent clerk" instead of "physicist", not me.

Yes, but Yogi Berra said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." Sports figures say stuff.

Since you didn't disagree with what I said, I'll assume you recognize that I (and the others) are correct.

I suppose, but debunkers aren't lexicographers. Lexicographers don't police the words they define. They gather multitudes of examples of how people use the word and deduce what the majority use it to mean. (Debunkers don't necessarily police words, either, but that's what you're ending up doing here.)

I have no idea what you are talking about with that.

 

[Pythagorean]

To put it simply, Zooby's point is that experts don't own words and their scope (nobody owns them), society and common use dictates what they are.

You wanted a hypothetical example, but I can do a little better with an anecdote. Firstly, in case it's a hidden assumption of yours. I am a PhD candidate who has published in my field (which is not uncommon). On all my professional profiles, I'm listed as a "PhD student", when people ask me what I do, I say "college bum" then they ask what I study and I explain it to them. I'm noNow the anecdote. When these people now introduce me as a neuroscientist or a physicist or a mathematician to their peers (depending on what they remember about my work and degrees) I don't get articulate on them. Most laymen recognize that as including students of.

Another example is when we're watching a movie and I can't help but comment on bad physics and my wife later tells our company "never watch that with a physicist".

Another anecdote, in grad school, when talking with your peers from different backgrounds about the same math problem from a class, you may say something like "yeah you mathematicians like the Ito interpretation, but in physics we prefer Stratonovich."

If I were doing an interview for media, I'd definitely make clear that I'm a student. Again, context matters.

Also, calling Einstein a patent clerk is only ironic if you think peoples are limited to and defined by one label. On some of my profiles, I'm a "scientific programmer". It depends on the nature of the professional network I'm using.

 

[zoobyshoe]

You don't consider Einstein signularly unique? You seemed to be arguing that he was someone for whom the rule needed to be re-written.

No. He is someone who clarifies what the rule actually is. You claimed the rule was either a degree or a paycheck. Einstein's case clarifies that it's actually the person's expertize we are referring to when we call them a physicist. You already agreed I was correct in that. But then you reverted to asserting paycheck and degree, giving the reason these are the only sure indicators of expertize.

You are the one who has been trying to put Einstein into exception status, so your rule will remain intact, I suppose, not me. I'm not claiming him as any kind of exception, but as the clearest example of what the rule actually is.

Consider a scenario: If we look we'll be able to find a physicist no one has ever heard of. Let's say he never made a name for himself because all he ever did was replicate other people's work to make sure it was replicable. It takes expertize in physics to do that, and his expertize in doing that is why we call him a physicist. The indicator of his expertize is not his degree or paycheck, but the quality of his work, his papers, and many conversations with colleagues over the years. He wasn't Einstein, a famous innovator, but we call him a physicist for the same reason we call Einstein a physicist: his expertize in physics. So, I am not presenting Einstein as an exception to the rule, but as a particularly clear example of what the rule (criteria) actually is.

Since you didn't disagree with what I said, I'll assume you recognize that I (and the others) are correct.

No, I distained the source of your bolstering quote, which should not be mistaken for non-disagreement.

I have no idea what you are talking about with that.

I think you (and Ryan) are approaching the question in a completely different way [edit:than me], which is to try to police the word, to arrive at criteria delineating who should be called a physicist, with the specific goal of protecting the naive from charlatans (or something like that).

Not just the naive: everyone needs protection from charlatans.

I characterized you and Ryan as policing what people should understand the word (physicist) to mean, instead of simply observing what people mean when they use it. This is more evident in what Ryan says here, than in your posts:

You are not a physicist (or any scientist) unless you are paid to be one or at the very least have contributed to the field in a measured way (i.e. published a paper). With regards to either I'd argue that you can only claim the title if those are ongoing i.e. just because you published a paper once does not mean you can continually call yourself a physicist.

I agree with Russ here that this is more than just semantic debate, it has very serious real world consequences.

Ryan is more explicit and detailed about controlling what people should understand the word to mean, but you didn't deny acting as a word policeman, and bolstered that characterization by saying: "...everyone needs protection from charlatans."
And my response was:

I suppose, but debunkers aren't lexicographers. Lexicographers don't police the words they define. They gather multitudes of examples of how people use the word and deduce what the majority use it to mean. (Debunkers don't necessarily police words, either, but that's what you're ending up doing here.)

I am characterizing you as a debunker (of charlatans), but cautioning that doesn't give you any special insight into word meanings. 'Word meanings' is the province of lexicographers. I described how they go about it. And, I'll be blunt: To unilaterally decide on a meaning you want people to ascribe to a word and insist they do so, is lexicographical crackpottery.

I don't think there's a definitive answer to the OP because the question is slightly vague. It's not clear to me whether he is asking permission to put "physicist" on his card, so to speak, or whether there's any hope he'll be hired without a PhD, but I am sure he wasn't asking how to tell a charlatan from a real physicist. It's more a question about where, if anywhere, on a continuum we can place a certain threshold, if there is such a threshold.

Speaking of cards, your report of your experience with engineers tell me that, in reality, no one cares about the certification. All they care about is whether someone can actually engineer something.

 

[zoobyshoe]

To put it simply, Zooby's point is that experts don't own words and their scope (nobody owns them), society and common use dictates what they are.

That's right. The dictionary is a true and natural democracy. Majority rules. You look in the dictionary to find out what most people mean when they use a word. Lexicographers spend their time collecting examples of usage and derive their definitions from those.

There is an extremely interesting book called "The Professor and the Madman," which is the true story of the creation of the famous Oxford English Dictionary. That particular dictionary specializes in the history of usage, and you get an inside look at the whole process of how they painstakingly collect and sort examples of word usages dating back centuries to give the history of how a word has evolved over time. All dictionaries are constantly being updated. Meanings are derived from usage, not decided by committee.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Zooby you're taking it to an absolutely absurd degree by characterising my statements as policing what people should say. In what possible way am I policing? I'm not enforcing any doctrine or campaigning for any definition, I'm painting in no uncertain terms what I think is a reasonable use of the term.

You also seem to be arguing a bizarre double standard in which the dictionary definition is gospel because it's democratic and formed from how people use the word but my definition is instead tyrannical and policing. Some have both consensus and dismissal of anything that doesn't match with that? Sound reasoning there...

 

[russ_watters]

To put it simply, Zooby's point is that experts don't own words and their scope (nobody owns them), society and common use dictates what they are.

That's true for "physicist" and not true for "professional engineer" or "[medical] doctor" (the government owns those terms), but since the expert opinion and common usage are aligned, that isn't an issue that needs to be hashed-out. Let me repeat that from the other direction:

What you and zooby are arguing contradicts the commonly accepted usage/context of those terms.

You wanted a hypothetical example, but I can do a little better with an anecdote...

Ok, now I understand the angle. None of what I have been arguing applies to someone else mis-labeling you and certainly nothing said in the context of a joke need be taken seriously, much less corrected. In most such contexts, it is not necessary to correct someone because there is no implied claim of accuracy to warrant a correction. They are just throw-away jokes.

However, I can't comment on your first example because it seems to have a splice error in it and I can't figure it out. Who were "these people" who labeled you as a neuroscientist/phisicist/mathematician? Whether in a professional situation I would correct someone for mislabeling me does indeed depend on the context (if what I gather from that is the correct context). But either way, it is still a wrong description.

Also, calling Einstein a patent clerk is only ironic if you think peoples are limited to and defined by one label. On some of my profiles, I'm a "scientific programmer". It depends on the nature of the professional network I'm using.

If someone is asking you what your job is and you have only one job, then the question has only one answer. Or to be more exact, a group of closely related answers. In response to "What do you do?" I can say I'm an engineer, mechanical engineer, HVAC engineer, project engineer, etc., but not "astronomer". Since being a student is like having a job, it carries its own set.

 

[russ_watters]

Let me try to lay my position out as clearly and concisely as possible. The main part is pretty much exactly what ryan said:

The vast majority of the time (90%? 99%?), when someone asks "what do you do?", they are asking what you do for a living and you should respond with what you do for a living. If your job does not involve physics in a fairly direct way, you should not say "physicist".

Similarly, if you are in a conversation about physics and say something impressive and someone asks "oh, cool, are you a physicist?", that is exactly the same as the above.

There are exceptions/caveats for unusual circumstances, including but not necessarily limited to:
1. Recent/pending graduate
2. Recently unemployed/under-employed
3. Recent professional level contribution to the field
4. Retiree

But here's the kicker: the onus of avoiding misunderstanding is on the person giving the answer. So if one of the exceptions/caveats applies, you should say it explicitly. Ie: "I'm a currently unemployed physicist". That means you are a physics professional who's career is hopefully only temporarily on hold. Or: "kind of -- I just graduated and am looking for my first job". That's a "provisional professional" as Ben suggested.

Some more examples:
Back to "astronomer": I get some form of the second question or volunteer an answer to it without being asked (to avoid sounding like a random know-it-all), a lot. If someone askes "are you an astronomer?", the answer is never "yes". That would be dishonest. It doesn't matter how serious of an amateur I am - how much I love astronomy "in my heart" - or if I discover something that makes a real contribution to the field, like a comet or giant unexplained cloud on Mars. I'm an amateur and not including the qualification is misleading or conceited (when talking to a co-worker who knows what I am a professional at).

If asked: "Do you have any hobbies?", it would be acceptable (though not grammatically correct) to say "I'm an astronomer" because that's a rare occasion where the question specifies the amateur nature of the pursuit. However, if you answer "I'm a physicist" without explanation, be prepared for some quizzical looks because it doesn't make a lot of sense to say you are a "physics hobbyist", since it is not something that can really be dabbled-in beyond reading a layperson's book or three. That's reading physics, not doing physics. But it does happen: one of my mom's cousins is a retired professor who hangs out at the UPenn particle accelerator doing research in his free time.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Zooby you're taking it to an absolutely absurd degree by characterising my statements as policing what people should say. In what possible way am I policing? I'm not enforcing any doctrine or campaigning for any definition, I'm painting in no uncertain terms what I think is a reasonable use of the term.

"Painting in no uncertain terms what I think is a reasonable use of the term" pretty much implies you think all other uses are unreasonable. "In no uncertain terms," is a term often invoked in "laying down the law" situations. The post in question (quoted below) starts off with a strong and specific assertion that is free of any indication this is your opinion, and therefore has the aura of a statement of law, so to speak. The attitude is one of policing, of imposing criteria. Your goal is not to explicate, but to weed out the false, the unqualified. Look at your language: "You are not a physicist unless...", "...you can only claim the title if...". You are trying to control who will be perceived as a physicist, which is a different activity than explaining what a physicist is. Because, if you don't, you conclude, it can have "very serious real world consequences."

You are not a physicist (or any scientist) unless you are paid to be one or at the very least have contributed to the field in a measured way (i.e. published a paper). With regards to either I'd argue that you can only claim the title if those are ongoing i.e. just because you published a paper once does not mean you can continually call yourself a physicist.

I agree with Russ here that this is more than just semantic debate, it has very serious real world consequences.

You also seem to be arguing a bizarre double standard in which the dictionary definition is gospel because it's democratic and formed from how people use the word but my definition is instead tyrannical and policing.

No, I'm not arguing the dictionary is gospel because it's democratic. I am pointing out it's democratic to emphasize the fact it is where you go to find out what people mean by the word, how it's actually used, as opposed to something that was decided by a committee of experts, or some such. I was indirectly supporting my method of approaching the question by saying, in effect, I'm doing it the way lexicographers do it. The dictionary's democratic nature is noteworthy for being unusual, and I thought that might interest anyone who wasn't familiar with it.

I'm also not equating policing words with tyranny. There's a place for policing word meanings. "Definitive" does not mean the same thing as "definite." You may recall that thread ((and in my view I was, in fact, policing the two words). But my understanding of the difference comes from the dictionary. It's not something I unilaterally determined should be the case.

Pythagorean said to Russ:

All the baggage you're carrying of old arguments with laymen that think they're Einstein (I've seen the threads) is a separate discussion that I agree with you on. I feel like the mentor involvement in this thread is kind of PC-oriented about the dangers of that, and I get it, but it misses the broader context.

I think he's got a point.

 

[russ_watters]

No.

Okie, dokie -- I do. I don't think anyone's ever published five significant papers in a year, much less all in the same year he earned is phd.

He is someone who clarifies what the rule actually is. You claimed the rule was either a degree or a paycheck. Einstein's case clarifies that it's actually the person's expertize we are referring to when we call them a physicist. You already agreed I was correct in that. But then you reverted to asserting paycheck and degree, giving the reason these are the only sure indicators of expertize.

You are the one who has been trying to put Einstein into exception status, so your rule will remain intact, I suppose, not me. I'm not claiming him as any kind of exception, but as the clearest example of what the rule actually is.

That doesn't sound right, but due to the multiple mixed and matched timeframes and qualifications from which to judge and lack of clarity on which you are referring to and how you are judging it, I still don't know what your point is, nor am I really intersted in guessing anymore. But if you'd like to say, clearly and succinctly, what your rule actually is, I'm all ears.

Consider a scenario: If we look we'll be able to find a physicist no one has ever heard of. Let's say he never made a name for himself because all he ever did was replicate other people's work to make sure it was replicable. It takes expertize in physics to do that, and his expertize in doing that is why we call him a physicist. The indicator of his expertize is not his degree or paycheck, but the quality of his work, his papers, and many conversations with colleagues over the years. He wasn't Einstein, a famous innovator, but we call him a physicist for the same reason we call Einstein a physicist: his expertize in physics. So, I am not presenting Einstein as an exception to the rule, but as a particularly clear example of what the rule (criteria) actually is.

As above, I still don't know what your criteria actually is, but based on your description it sounds like he had a physics phd and was employeed as a physicist, so he's right in the middle of what I consider the typical answer: The degree and paycheck do indeed provided a clear and objective criteria to make the judgement. Still not knowing what your criteria is, I can at least say that it sounds like you would base it on a subjective judgement of expertise. Is that correct? Ugh...I just tried to guess again...

No, I distained the source of your bolstering quote, which should not be mistaken for non-disagreement.

Fair enough. So how about actually responding to the point?

I characterized you and Ryan as policing what people should understand the word (physicist) to mean, instead of simply observing what people mean when they use it. This is more evident in what Ryan says here, than in your posts:

Ryan and I are in complete agreement here. In particular, he said this:

My approach to the question is pretty simple: when someone asks you what you do 99% of the time they are asking about your employment...

He is "observing what people mean when they use it".

...you didn't deny acting as a word policeman, and bolstered that characterization by saying: "...everyone needs protection from charlatans."

Yes. I've previously accepted labeling as pedantic. I'm perfectly fine with that. But:

To unilaterally decide on a meaning you want people to ascribe to a word and insist they do so, is lexicographical crackpottery.

The problem with that is that I'm not co-opting the definition for myself, contrary to what it really means. I'm arguing for what I see as the accepted definition and arguing that you are misusing it...not to mention the irony of mis-stating an apparently intended negative label: The police don't make-up the rules, Zooby, they just enforce them. That's why I think calling me a "word policeman" is apt.

Speaking of cards, your report of your experience with engineers tell me that, in reality, no one cares about the certification. All they care about is whether someone can actually engineer something.

No, that's not what I said at all. My boss(different boss) has been hounding me to get it for several years. It is a big deal in my industry - an important mark of competence. My other boss works around it via an absurd amount of experience, but he's a rare exception and if he can be legitimately called an "engineer" despite a lack of formal credentials it would be difficult to pinpoint which decade the transition occurred in.

 

[russ_watters]

You also seem to be arguing a bizarre double standard in which the dictionary definition is gospel because it's democratic and formed from how people use the word but my definition is instead tyrannical and policing. Some have both consensus and dismissal of anything that doesn't match with that? Sound reasoning there...

My favorite part of that irony is how in the real world, the police are charged with enforcing the law (which is arrived at democratically), yet in our case, police apparently write their own laws.

 

[zoobyshoe]

What you and zooby are arguing contradicts the commonly accepted usage/context of those terms.

Don't think so:

doc·tor
ˈdäktər/
noun
noun: doctor; plural noun: doctors; noun: Doctor; plural noun: Doctors

1. 1.
   a qualified practitioner of medicine; a physician

 

[russ_watters]

Don't think so:

doc·tor
ˈdäktər/
noun
noun: doctor; plural noun: doctors; noun: Doctor; plural noun: Doctors

1. 1.
   a qualified practitioner of medicine; a physician

Ehem: "Qualified" how? Practicing how? Perhaps a slightly less succinct definition would be more useful?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Okie, dokie -- I do. I don't think anyone's ever published five significant papers in a year, much less all in the same year he earned is phd.

Funny game: you're pretending my "no" addressed your first sentence instead of the second. Ha ha, I guess.

That doesn't sound right, but due to the multiple mixed and matched timeframes and qualifications from which to judge and lack of clarity on which you are referring to and how you are judging it, I still don't know what your point is, nor am I really intersted in guessing anymore. But if you'd like to say, clearly and succinctly, what your rule actually is, I'm all ears.

Wow, you're just all confused. This reminds me of nothing so much as the way Ivan used to suddenly not be able to understand anyone's posts.

As above, I still don't know what your criteria actually is, but based on your description it sounds like he had a physics phd and was employeed as a physicist, so he's right in the middle of what I consider the typical answer: The degree and paycheck do indeed provided a clear and objective criteria to make the judgement. Still not knowing what your criteria is, I can at least say that it sounds like you would base it on a subjective judgement of expertise. Is that correct? Ugh...I just tried to guess again...

I think Ivan's point when he started to not be able to understand anything anyone said was to try and exhaust them by forcing them to repeat things over and over.

Anyway, you got it! Almost. The criteria is a judgement of expertize, which I probably said three times, if not more.

Fair enough. So how about actually responding to the point

I did a bit later.

Ryan and I are in complete agreement here. In particular, he said this:

He is "observing what people mean when they use it".

Not sure why you're quoting that post of his. I was talking about a different post, which I quoted when I addressed it. I didn't have any objection to this post you just quoted, or similar ones by you.

The problem with that is that I'm not co-opting the definition for myself, contrary to what it really means. I'm arguing for what I see as the accepted definition and arguing that you are misusing it...not to mention the irony of mis-stating an apparently intended negative label: The police don't make-up the rules, Zooby, they just enforce them. That's why I think calling me a "word policeman" is apt.

It did not escape me that you and Ryan were convinced you were in possession of the true, correct, ultimate understanding of the word. Therefore, "policing". No irony there. Separately, I was trying to persuade you you aren't in possession of that. Not saying I am, it's just irritating to encounter someone who thinks he is.

No, that's not what I said at all. My boss(different boss) has been hounding me to get it for several years. It is a big deal in my industry - an important mark of competence. My other boss works around it via an absurd amount of experience, but he's a rare exception and if he can be legitimately called an "engineer" despite a lack of formal credentials it would be difficult to pinpoint which decade the transition occurred in.

So, why don't you get it?

 

[Astronuc]

Physicist is also dangerously close to physician. It's even close to pysch when physics is shortened to phys. (for the dyslexics among us)

Try physiatrist - or rehabilitation physicians, who are nerve, muscle, and bone experts who treat injuries or illnesses that affect how one moves. Rehabilitation physicians are medical doctors who have completed training in the medical specialty of physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R).

One still needs certification or licensing from an accredited board. PM&R is one of 24 medical specialties certified by the American Board of Medical Specialties.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Ehem: "Qualified" how? Practicing how? Perhaps a slightly less succinct definition would be more useful?

A dictionary is not an encyclopedia. The fact of qualification is conveyed. It doesn't say: someone who practices medicine.

 

[russ_watters]

Wow, you're just all confused. This reminds me of nothing so much as the way Ivan used to suddenly not be able to understand anyone's posts.

I think Ivan's point when he started to not be able to understand anything anyone said was to try and exhaust them by forcing them to repeat things over and over.

Look, Zooby: I've been explaining myself in detail for three days now and unless I've missed it, you still haven't explained your point -- I've been guessing from the start, and I still am:

Anyway, you got it! Almost. The criteria is a judgement of expertize, which I probably said three times, if not more.

Sure: your criteria has something to do with expertise. I get that: so what is it? Please explain yourself.

 

[russ_watters]

A dictionary is not an encyclopedia. The fact of qualification is conveyed. It doesn't say: someone who practices medicine.

Yes, a dictionary definition is distilled to as few words as possible. It is seems incomplete only because it is so succinct. But it still contains the two key elements, it just doesn't explain them in detail:
Qualified: by degree, work experience and medical board certification.
Practicioner: having a job as a doctor.

These are exactly the criteria I judge by, the vast majority of the time.

There is an additional level of wrong here when you view this choice of what definition to cite in light of your "police" criticism: the physician/doctor job: the title IS policed. The rules are written and enforced by the government and you can indeed be arrested and jailed for violating them:

http://www.10news.com/news/woman-convicted-of-practicing-medicine-without-license-arrested-again-050514

 

[Pythagorean]

Amother dictionary definition:

"Physicist"

1. an expert in or student of physics.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Look, Zooby: I've been explaining myself in detail for three days now and unless I've missed it, you still haven't explained your point -- I've been guessing from the start, and I still am:.

The criteria is expertize. You are really irritating me now because you already agreed to this a couple pages ago when I first proposed this is why people call Einstein a physicist even before he had a degree or job.

You seem to be insisting there's no way to tell if someone is expert unless they have a PhD or paycheck, but how then would the people who grant PhDs know if someone deserves one?? "We can't give this guy a PhD because he doesn't have a PhD." Ridiculous. It's trivial that expertize precedes the degree and therefore can exist without the degree, and therefore can be observed in the absence of the degree. Because, if it couldn't, no one could ever get the degree.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Yes, a dictionary definition is distilled to as few words as possible. It is seems incomplete only because it is so succinct. But it still contains the two key elements, it just doesn't explain them in detail:
Qualified: by degree, work experience and medical board certification.
Practicioner: having a job as a doctor.

These are exactly the criteria I judge by, the vast majority of the time.

There is an additional level of wrong here when you view this choice of what definition to cite in light of your "police" criticism: the physician/doctor job: the title IS policed. The rules are written and enforced by the government and you can indeed be arrested and jailed for violating them:

http://www.10news.com/news/woman-convicted-of-practicing-medicine-without-license-arrested-again-050514

You're misunderstanding the crime, and you're misunderstanding what's being policed.The government polices the practice, not the title. Dr. Dre has not been, and never will be, arrested for calling himself "Dr."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Dre
On the other hand, someone who merely calls himself "Mr. Dre" would be arrested if he started treating patients for lyme disease. The offense is "practicing medicine without a license." It is not, 'calling yourself "doctor" without a license'. The government doesn't own the word, the title, and isn't even trying to own it. It's concerned about the actual activity.

In a larger sense, the sense Pythagorean meant, no one owns words because no one can control what the word means, and it's meaning could shift if enough people start using it to mean something different than it means today.

 

[Pythagorean]

the title IS policed. The rules are written and enforced by the government and you can indeed be arrested and jailed for violating them:

http://www.10news.com/news/woman-convicted-of-practicing-medicine-without-license-arrested-again-050514

It seems more like it was practicing without a license than illegal use of a word. She actually did stuff.

If I randomly told a cop I was doctor on the street, he couldn't arrest me for it. Chiropractors and pharmacists can call themselves doctors, but they wouldn't be able to do what real doctors do.

 

[Mad scientist]

If you ask a carpenter who has been unemployed for an extended period of time or temporarily working as a bartender he/she might respond with "I am a carpenter by trade". It would depend on what they identify themselves as. But then there's what you call yourself and there's what other people call you.

 

[Khashishi]

Pharmacists are generally Pharm.D.s and/or PhD.s, so they are doctors in that sense. (but I know what you mean...) They, and not medical doctors, are the experts in drugs and drug interactions.

 

[Choppy]

For what it's worth, titles such as "medical doctor" can be protected by law - and much will depend on which law applies and the regulating bodies in your state or country.

I don't know that people are commonly if at all ever arrested for title use. But this becomes an issue in terms of professional identification. For example in some places a homeopath would not be able to use titles such as "doctor, physician, or surgeon" professionally because the title is restricted to those registered with the state or provincial college of physicians and surgeons.

The consequences of violating something this are, I believe, generally civil rather than criminal i.e. the college may sue those using a restricted title.

 

[Evan Maxwell]

I think physicist has more value than other titles doctors would have if for no other reason that there are so few of us that we should stick together and support each other with pride.

As for when you are a physicist, well, if you have at least a B.S. and are doing some kind of computing work or any related work that utilizes your knowledge of physics and utilizes the same kind of techniques you would use to solve problems in classical or quantum mechanics, than my view is that's good enough for me.

 

[Anding]

Perhaps a provocative point of view, but one way of looking at it is to say there are only of handful of true physicists existing in each generation. These are the people who make the kind significant and fundamental contributions to theory or experiment that will be read about again and again by generations to come. By their nature, these kinds of contributions are rare! All others who receive university, government, or corporate funding for activities in the field of physics you could call "physics professionals". Those who study or think about physics, whether in a university or an independent setting, you could call "students of physics". Under this definition, to be called a true physicist a person needs to have succeeded in making a breakthrough with the big questions that subsequent generations will hold in honour. Thus it can only be judged in retrospect those of whom are currently physics professionals or students of physics, will turn out to number among the physicists of history.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Not provocative, just uninformed. Physics does not make progress primarily via the lone genius who has popularizations ghostwritten. It makes progress by a large number of people chipping away at little pieces.

 

[Anding]

Not provocative, just uninformed. Physics does not make progress primarily via the lone genius who has popularizations ghostwritten. It makes progress by a large number of people chipping away at little pieces.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions

Come on there is more to it that that :-) I believe you are well aware of Thomas Khun and may even have read the book (I haven't).

I don't necessarily agree with the point of view I suggested, but in posting it I wanted to get away from the idea of defining physicists as those who have a physics job , rather as those who will be remembered as physicists. It seems a more reliable criteria to apply (albeit in retrospect), even if it is overly selective.

 

[Evan Maxwell]

It sometimes seems to me that the days of individual physicists single-handedly making discoveries that completely transform science as Einstein, Neils Bohr and Rutherford did are long gone and in our times our academic climate is such that it is often teams and collaborations - which can grow to be very, very large - all working alongside each other in some capacity to achieve future ground breaking discoveries. Perhaps this may be a reason why the definition of who is and who is not a physicist should be expanded beyond its historic categories.

 

[ZapperZ]

I must say, after 5 pages of discussion, I find it rather amusing that so much time is devoted to something that I consider to be rather superficial. Is there really an issue or a problem here waiting to be solved? Is there really is a need to have such definitive guideline on when one calls oneself a "physicist", etc.? When and where did this problem crop up? In my professional line of work, and in all the years of my interactions with other professionals, I had never encounter a situation where I had to identify myself as a "physicist" or even question what someone else calls him or herself. Especially in the field of accelerator science where one can be from either a physics or engineering background, such issues are meaningless and irrelevant!

Or are we really making an issue out of a non-existent problem, the way many news agencies tried to do to fill up their broadcast time? Maybe we all here have come up with a solution waiting for a problem! How about that?

Zz.

 

[Pythagorean]

Is there really an issue or a problem here waiting to be solved? Is there really is a need to have such definitive guideline on when one calls oneself a "physicist", etc.?

No.

 

[Evan Maxwell]

ZapperZ, I think the sad truth is we live in a world where labels are often absolutely vital. And getting rid of this entirely, at least in the near future, is totally a pipe dream. Sad but true.

 

[Evo]

I must say, after 5 pages of discussion, I find it rather amusing that so much time is devoted to something that I consider to be rather superficial. Is there really an issue or a problem here waiting to be solved? Is there really is a need to have such definitive guideline on when one calls oneself a "physicist", etc.? When and where did this problem crop up? In my professional line of work, and in all the years of my interactions with other professionals, I had never encounter a situation where I had to identify myself as a "physicist" or even question what someone else calls him or herself. Especially in the field of accelerator science where one can be from either a physics or engineering background, such issues are meaningless and irrelevant!

Or are we really making an issue out of a non-existent problem, the way many news agencies tried to do to fill up their broadcast time? Maybe we all here have come up with a solution waiting for a problem! How about that?

Zz.

And this is a good place to end this thread.