What do scientists do

The Happy Scientist

Now that we have a workable definition of science, lets use that to take the next step. What do scientists do? When you hear the word «scientist», you probably think of people in white lab coats, mixing chemicals or peering into microscopes. Some scientists do that, but science is a much broader subject.

For example, is someone who cooks a scientist? Do good cooks experiment by tasting the food, and then adding a pinch of salt or a bit of spice to make it better? That is observation and experimentation. Do cooks change their recipes if they don’t taste good? That is self correcting. Do cooks keep track of their favorite recipes? They are gathering and organizing information. The more you look at the act of cooking, the more you realize that it involves a lot of science.

What about other activities? Is a basketball player a scientist? Do they experiment with different moves, to see which works best for avoiding the other team and making a shot? Do they practice a shot over and over until they learn exactly the right angle, distance, and amount of force they need? Do they watch basketball games, looking to see which strategies work and which don’t? Do they organize strategies, so that all the players on the team can work together? Good athletes are scientists.

OK, one more. What about video gamers? Surely that can’t be science, can it? Do good gamers experiment with different strategies to find out how to deal with a specific enemy, trap, or puzzle? Do they talk with other gamers, sharing what they have learned and picking up new information? Are their strategies self-correcting, adapting and changing as they learn more about how the game works? Actually, learning a new video game is an excellent example of how science really works. Good gamers are definitely scientists.

Scientists are people who look for answers to questions. They want to know how to make food taste better, how to win at sports, or how to master a video game. They learn by thinking, observing, and experimenting. They learn from their mistakes, making changes and corrections based on what they have already tried, and what other people have tried. They are willing to do things over and over, until they learn what they need to know to get answers to their questions.

Materials:

Now it is time for you to explore the ways that you already use science.

Grab your science journal, and keep it handy all day. As you go through your day, try to spot the times when you are using the methods of science in your daily life. Make a list of the different ways that you act scientifically to solve a problem or answer a question.

At first it may be difficult to see the science, because you are so used to doing it that you don’t really think about it. The more you pay attention, the more times you will find yourself using a scientific approach to things.

What does a scientist do?

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What is a Scientist?

The word scientist is a general term, used to describe someone who researches and examines various aspects of the physical world in order to attain a better understanding of how things work and function.

There are many specializations of ‘scientist’, and depending on which field of study one chooses to follow, the work can vary greatly. Each scientist, however, follows ‘the scientific method’, which is a strict set of rules that ensure all new discoveries are factual and not just speculation.

In this article:

What does a Scientist do?

Scientists work in every field imaginable, and can therefore be found working for an expansive range of employers.

Large and small companies will hire scientists to work on products and research projects. Universities will hire scientists to do research work or to teach. Governments and hospitals issue research grants and hire scientists to work on funded projects.

Regardless of the path the scientist decides to follow, the ultimate goal is to always add knowledge and insight to the larger scientific community, as well as to help ignite new discoveries for the future.

The following are various types of scientists. Click on each type to learn what they do.

Are you suited to be a scientist?

Scientists have distinct personalities. They tend to be investigative individuals, which means they’re intellectual, introspective, and inquisitive. They are curious, methodical, rational, analytical, and logical. Some of them are also artistic, meaning they’re creative, intuitive, sensitive, articulate, and expressive.

Does this sound like you? Take our free career test to find out if scientist is one of your top career matches.

What is the workplace of a Scientist like?

Where don’t scientists work? A scientist can be found almost anywhere: universities, government facilities, company labs, for-profit companies, in space, on ships, underground, in hospitals, in private practice and in forests. Pretty much anywhere in the world, and in any industry, there are scientists working in their particular field.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are Mathematicians scientists?

Whether a mathematician can be called a scientist or not is a somewhat grey area which is not definitive. Strictly speaking, mathematicians are not considered natural scientists. The latter investigate the physical world; mathematicians’ work is more abstract and intangible.

Nevertheless, some of the traits one may find in a scientist – an investigative spirit, an enthusiasm for discovery, a voracious appetite for constant learning – can be found in a mathematician.

The general population, not involved in either science or mathematics, tend to categorize both in the one field. However, the majority of mathematicians would not consider themselves as scientists. Conversely, scientists would not label themselves mathematicians.

Mathematicians deal in absolute truths and must emerge with proof for a theory or hypothesis to be confirmed, while scientists can hypothesize and conditionally accept the results of the hypothesis. This is why mathematicians’ work is almost never redacted at a later date but sometimes scientists’ work can be revised or disproven.

How to Become a Scientist

Science plays an important role in all our lives. It creates new knowledge, improves education, and increases the quality of our lives. If you like the idea of exploring the world around you and making new discoveries, then you should consider becoming a scientist. If you decide to become a scientist, you could end up working in either the public or private sector. Scientists work in a wide range of settings, including chemical and pharmaceutical companies, research institutes, universities, food and drink manufacturers, hospitals, and environmental agencies.

As part of their job, scientists plan and carry out experiments and then record and analyze the data. They typically specialize in a particular field, such as geoscience, meteorology, or pharmacology. It is crucial that scientists follow the scientific method as a means of ensuring their results are accurate.

Research scientists need a bachelor’s degree in a closely related field for most positions. Usually, a master’s degree or a PhD is preferred.

What Does a Scientist Do

Medical scientists conduct research aimed at improving overall human health. They often use clinical trials and other investigative methods to reach their findings.

How To Become a Scientist

Medical scientists typically have a Ph.D., usually in biology or a related life science. Some medical scientists get a medical degree instead of a Ph.D., but prefer doing research to practicing as a physician.

Education

Students planning careers as medical scientists typically pursue a bachelor’s degree in biology, chemistry, or a related field. Undergraduate students benefit from taking a broad range of classes, including life sciences, physical sciences, and math. Students also typically take courses that develop communication and writing skills, because they must learn to write grants effectively and publish research findings.

After students have completed their undergraduate studies, they typically enter Ph.D. programs. Dual-degree programs are available that pair a Ph.D. with a range of specialized medical degrees. A few degree programs that are commonly paired with Ph.D. studies are Medical Doctor (M.D.), Doctor of Dental Surgery (D.D.S.), Doctor of Dental Medicine (D.M.D.), and Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (D.O.). Whereas Ph.D. studies focus on research methods, such as project design and data interpretation, students in dual-degree programs learn both the clinical skills needed to be a physician and the research skills needed to be a scientist.

Graduate programs emphasize both laboratory work and original research. These programs offer prospective medical scientists the opportunity to develop their experiments and, sometimes, to supervise undergraduates. Ph.D. programs culminate in a thesis that the candidate presents before a committee of professors. Students may specialize in a particular field, such as gerontology, neurology, or cancer.

Those who go to medical school spend most of the first 2 years in labs and classrooms, taking courses such as anatomy, biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology, psychology, microbiology, pathology, medical ethics, and medical law. They also learn how to record medical histories, examine patients, and diagnose illnesses. They may be required to participate in residency programs, meeting the same requirements that physicians and surgeons have to fulfill.

Medical scientists often continue their education with postdoctoral work. Postdoctoral work provides additional and more independent lab experience, including experience in specific processes and techniques such as gene splicing, which is transferable to other research projects.

Licenses, Certifications, and Registrations

Medical scientists primarily conduct research and typically do not need licenses or certifications. However, those who administer drugs, gene therapy, or otherwise practice medicine on patients in clinical trials or a private practice need a license to practice as a physician.

Important Qualities

Communication skills. Communication is critical, because medical scientists must be able to explain their conclusions. In addition, medical scientists write grant proposals, because grants often are required to fund their research.

Critical-thinking skills. Medical scientists must use their expertise to determine the best method for solving a specific research question.

Data-analysis skills. Medical scientists use statistical techniques, so that they can properly quantify and analyze health research questions.

Decisionmaking skills. Medical scientists must determine what research questions to ask, how best to investigate the questions, and what data will best answer the questions.

Observation skills. Medical scientists conduct experiments that require precise observation of samples and other health data. Any mistake could lead to inconclusive or misleading results.

What Does a Scientist Do?

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A scientist is responsible for researching and analyzing the nature and complexities of the physical world to identify discoveries that would improve people’s lives and ignite scientific knowledge for society. Scientists’ duties differ in their different areas of expertise, but all of them must have a broad comprehension of scientific disciplines and methods to support their experiments and investigations. They collect the sample for their research, record findings, create research proposals, and release publications. A scientist must know how to utilize laboratory equipment to support the study and drive results efficiently and accurately.

Scientist Responsibilities

Here are examples of responsibilities from real scientist resumes representing typical tasks they are likely to perform in their roles.

Scientist Jobs You Might Like

Scientist Job Description

Perhaps the hardest question to answer when deciding on a career as a scientist is «should I become a scientist?» You might find this info to be helpful. When compared to other jobs, scientist careers are projected to have a growth rate described as «faster than average» at 8% from 2018 through 2028. This is in accordance with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. What’s more, is that the projected number of opportunities that are predicted to become available for a scientist by 2028 is 10,600.

Once you’ve become a scientist, you may be curious about what other opportunities are out there. Careers aren’t one size fits all. For that reason, we discovered some other jobs that you may find appealing. Some jobs you might find interesting include a postdoctoral research associate, research fellow, postdoctoral associate, and research associate.

Scientist Jobs You Might Like

12 Scientist Resume Examples

Build a professional scientist resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 12 + resume templates to create your scientist resume.

Scientist Skills and Personality Traits

We break down the percentage of Scientists that have these skills listed on their resume here:

Maintained appropriate documentation of primary data records, laboratory notebooks as required by Standard Operating Procedures and Good Manufacturing Procedures.

Responded to customer inquiries for data analysis and offered guidance for better usage of biochemical/ kits products to improve customer satisfaction.

Subject matter expert for the Department of Homeland Security on trace explosives detection and explosives chemistry with an emphasis on thermal analysis

Designed R-statistical algorithms and wrote R codes to develop numerical regression.

Mentored junior scientists in cell culture technology and cellular biology and provided support in troubleshooting, and atypical issue resolution.

Utilized and implemented analytical methods and biophysical characterization techniques for in-process check to ensure protein purity/identification/functionality and nucleic acid purity/identification.

Most scientists list «procedures,» «data analysis,» and «chemistry» as skills on their resumes. We go into more details on the most important scientist responsibilities here:

After discovering the most helpful skills, we moved onto what kind of education might be helpful in becoming a scientist. We found that 60.4% of scientists have graduated with a bachelor’s degree and 18.8% of people in this position have earned their master’s degrees. While most scientists have a college degree, you may find it’s also true that generally it’s impossible to be successful in this career with only a high school degree. In fact, our research shows that one out of every ten scientists were not college graduates.

The scientists who went onto college to earn a more in-depth education generally studied chemistry and biology, while a small population of scientists studied biochemistry, biophysics, molecular biology and microbiology.

Once you’ve obtained the level of education you’re comfortable with, you might start applying to companies to become a scientist. We’ve found that most scientist resumes include experience from Amazon, Takeda Pharmaceuticals U.S.A., Inc., and Eurofins. Of recent, Amazon had 520 positions open for scientists. Meanwhile, there are 186 job openings at Takeda Pharmaceuticals U.S.A., Inc. and 130 at Eurofins.

We also looked into companies who hire scientists from the top 100 educational institutions in the U.S. The top three companies that hire the most from these institutions include Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, and Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Careers Spotlight: What Do People Scientists Do?

Historically, there hasn’t been much overlap between Human Resources and analytics. The people who spent their time crunching numbers and analyzing data typically weren’t the people who were leading the hiring process or developing initiatives to improve employee experience (and vice versa).

But all that’s changed with the field of People science, which, as the name implies, bridges the gap between People and science, and started taking a more data-centric approach to better managing employees — and improving the workplace in the process.

“People science is used as a catch-all to describe a number of different approaches toward improving the human experience and outcomes at work,” explained David Shar, MPS, SHRM-SCP, an industrial and organizational psychology consultant with a focus in People science and founder of performance-management consulting firm IlluminatePMC. “These approaches, whether through the lens of industrial [or] organizational psychology, organizational development, or other fields, typically utilize the scientific method to collect and analyze data in order to inform decision-making [related to Human Resources within a company].”

People science is growing in popularity — and, as organizations look to expand their People science operations, there’s also a growing need for People scientists.

People science can be a great career path for candidates who are equally as passionate about data and analytics as they are about HR, People management, and employee experience. But what, exactly, do People scientists do? And if this career path interests you, what do you need to do to land a job?

In this installment of our Careers Spotlight series, we’ll take a deep dive into the People scientist role — what it is; what People scientists are responsible for within an organization; and what kind of skills, background, and experience you need to get the job. By the end of this guide, you’ll have a better understanding of the People scientist position and how to determine if it’s the right role for you — and, if it is, how to get your foot in the door.

What Is a People Scientist?

People scientists take a data-driven approach to understanding People-related issues within an organization. “People scientists survey, interview, observe, and focus group employees and other stakeholders to understand behaviors, motivations, and attitudes, as well as knowledge, skills, and abilities,” said Shar. They then dig into their findings to gain a deeper understanding of any issues of concern, and based on what they discover, develop data-backed solutions that lead to better outcomes and experiences for employees.

The type of initiatives People scientists work on usually depends on a variety of factors, including company culture, team dynamics, and an organization’s People-related needs, but are all related to driving more successful outcomes for the organization — and the people who work there. For example, People scientists may be tasked with figuring out how to increase employee engagement, develop a more effective performance management strategy, or optimize a company’s onboarding practices to increase employee retention.

What Does a People Scientist Do?

As mentioned, People scientists take a scientific, data-backed approach to solving People-related issues. To illustrate how this manifests in the role’s day-to-day responsibilities, here are some common tasks, responsibilities, and projects that typically fall to People scientists.

1. Work with key stakeholders to identify areas of interest.

People scientists are charged with better understanding — and helping to solve — People-related issues within an organization. But in order to do that, they need to know what those problems are, and that means collaborating with leaders throughout an organization.

People scientists work with key stakeholders at a company (for example, C-level executives, HR directors, or People managers) to gain insight into what’s happening with the organization, identify areas of interest worth exploring, and clearly define any issues that need addressing. Through this process, People scientists get a better sense of leadership’s priorities and the problem or problems facing the organization, and can come up with the best approach to explore, and ultimately, solve it.

2. Collect data from employees.

People scientists are all about data. Once they clearly understand the People-related issue(s) at play, People scientists get to work collecting the data they need from employees.

Depending on what kind of issues they’re dealing with, the data collection process may include:

In addition to collecting the data they need, People scientists also have to process and organize that data, whether that means entering data into a spreadsheet for further analysis or transcribing employee interviews.

3. Analyze the data and use it to make business recommendations.

Once People scientists have collected their data, it’s time to roll up their sleeves and analyze it. Data analysis can take many forms: It might involve going through hundreds of lines of software usage statistics to see which apps are supporting employee productivity, or it could mean reading through transcripts of in-depth employee interviews to identify any trends or themes across interviews.

Once their data analysis is complete, People scientists take their findings and use them to make recommendations on how to best address an issue and create a better, more effective environment for the organization’s employees. And, because they have cold, hard data to back up their recommendations, they’re often more likely to be adopted than they would be without such concrete metrics.

“People scientists have a unique opportunity to back up sometimes softer HR initiatives with hard data,” Shar pointed out. “Executives might push back at an appeal for raises or more vacation days or the ability to telework, but when there is data. to make the case that these initiatives will ultimately benefit the bottom line, [the findings and recommendations] tend to hold greater weight.”

How to Become a People Scientist

If the People scientist job description sounds right up your alley, you’re probably wondering how to get started. Let’s take a look at some of the key attributes you’ll need to land a position in the People science field.

1. Experience

People scientist is not an entry level role; in order to get your foot in the door, you need to have a solid amount of experience in some aspect of People science, whether that’s Human Resources, data analysis, statistics, or psychology.

“A lot of People scientists start out in HR,” said Shar. “Some have psychology backgrounds or a strong background within data analysis. Many enter the field as industrial [or] organizational psychologists.”

2. An Equal Balance of People and Analytics Skills

Some individuals think of themselves as being people-oriented. Others consider themselves to be much more logical, analytical, and numbers-focused. But if you want to make it as a People scientist, you need an equal balance of both.

“Successful People scientists often balance communication skills needed to build trust within the organization with analytic skills used to identify trends and relationships within the data they collect,” Shar said.

3. CuriosityВ

Successful People scientists don’t take issues at face value. They know that in order to truly understand what’s happening within an organization, they need to dig deeper — which is why curiosity is a must-have trait for People scientists.

“When presented with a problem, People scientists dig deeper and investigate, often finding that the original ‘problem’ was just a symptom of something deeper,” Shar noted.

For example, say the C-level team approaches a People scientist with an issue related to employee absenteeism. In order to get to the root of the problem, a good People scientist will get curious and investigate the why behind the absenteeism. Instead of assuming the absenteeism is an employee issue, they might compare absentee rates with major leadership changes, and realize that the problem with employee absenteeism is actually a problem with a high rate of leadership turnover. From there, the company is better equipped to address the root cause — and find an effective, lasting solution.

Successful organizations invest in their people, and People scientists play a huge role in helping leadership better understand their employees and creating work environments that foster employee happiness and high performance. So if you have an equal passion for people and analytics, and you’ve already gained some experience in HR, psychology, data science, or a related field, aiming for a role as a People scientist, whether at your current company or a new organization, could be a great next step in your career. Being a People scientist is a challenging, rewarding role that gives you an opportunity to positively impact an organization — and, importantly, the people who work there.