A Question for Scientists....

[Flynn MacCallister]

When am I justified in changing that tag-line there from "Mad Scientist-in-training" to "Mad Scientist!"?

I have finished my Honours (first class), and am published (one paper so far, SPIE conference journal)... but can you really call yourself a scientist before you have your PhD?

What do you think?

(Incidentally, I'm not sure if Metaphysical or Off Topic is the better location for this, but considering we're talking about Mad Science! here, I felt like putting it in this forum.)

[JingleJoe]

The real question you must ask yourself is: "Am I mad yet?" If you do scientific experiments then you are a scientist, but to be a mad one you must do some mad things or be mad!

[Atterton]

Plenty of famous scientists who never got a PhD. A scientist is someone who does science is also what I would go with. Personally I don´t think I will go further than a master´s degree.

Qualifying as a mad scientist depends on what experiments you do really. The madness of it is usually not intentional.

[Rowan of Rin]

I think the first time you cry "IT LIVES!", you will have graduated into a full blown Mad Scientist.

I have gotten as far as "IT LI-oops, best not show anyone the outcome of this experiment.."

Also, for lovers of science, mad or not, I highly suggest the Mad Science Forum, especially for the chemically inclined.

[Flynn MacCallister]

Oh, no, I'm quite mad. This is a well-known fact.

Biology is disgusting. I hope never to cry "it lives!" I have specialised in materials science, plasma physics and chemistry. It fills me with joy every time I get to throw the unnecessarily HUGE SWITCH on the HiPIMS power supply (delivers power densities in excess of 1000 W cm^-2 in pulses of less than 0.1 s). Pretty pretty plasma.... makes damn good arcs, too, if you're... ehem... "not careful".

I do experiments. I like to think I'm doing science.

[H. MacHinery]

I think that you are making a basic error in your thinking.

One requires a PhD/MD/JD/DD to be a "Doctor" - to be a scientist is more of what you do, not what you've done.

And the madness...well, that's a different story.

(Do you exclaim For SCIENCE!")

[Hikaro Takayama]

I consider myself a mad scientist (well, more of a mad engineer, to be perfectly honest), and I don't even have an ASSOCIATE'S degree... Yet.  What I DO have is years and YEARS of practical experience in my field (Electricity and electronics)... Yes, I'm only 31, but I've been tinkering with electrical circuits and devices since I was 8, and ELECTRONIC devices since I was 11, and I've made my career out of working on electronics....

Basically all you need to be a mad scientist is to (a) do science (or work in an science-related field) and (b) think WAAAAAY outside the box.

I likewise won't mess around with any Frankensteinish stuff... Leaving aside my belief in a higher power and the ramifications of attempting to play in his domain (c.f. a certain Far Side cartoon....), there's also the ethical considerations (i.e. like trying to create a human-animal Chimera a-la Fullmetal Alchemist).... I've decided that I may be mad, but I'm not mad as all that.

[Rowan of Rin]

Flynn, I think you will greatly enjoy The Z Machine. Currently outputting 350 terawatts (with 2.7 megajoules in X-Ray energy), with a theorised 1 petawatt in the future, it really is HV heaven.

[Flynn MacCallister]

I think that you are making a basic error in your thinking.

One requires a PhD/MD/JD/DD to be a "Doctor" - to be a scientist is more of what you do, not what you've done.

And the madness...well, that's a different story.

(Do you exclaim For SCIENCE!")

Mmmm, though I have noticed that there is a general feeling that you're not a scientist 'til you have your PhD, until then you're still just a student. On the other hand, there's another general feeling that you're not a scientist 'til you're published.

And yes. Yes I certainly do.

I consider myself a mad scientist (well, more of a mad engineer, to be perfectly honest), and I don't even have an ASSOCIATE'S degree... Yet.  What I DO have is years and YEARS of practical experience in my field (Electricity and electronics)... Yes, I'm only 31, but I've been tinkering with electrical circuits and devices since I was 8, and ELECTRONIC devices since I was 11, and I've made my career out of working on electronics....

Basically all you need to be a mad scientist is to (a) do science (or work in an science-related field) and (b) think WAAAAAY outside the box.

I likewise won't mess around with any Frankensteinish stuff... Leaving aside my belief in a higher power and the ramifications of attempting to play in his domain (c.f. a certain Far Side cartoon....), there's also the ethical considerations (i.e. like trying to create a human-animal Chimera a-la Fullmetal Alchemist).... I've decided that I may be mad, but I'm not mad as all that.

There's a box? What box? Where? Oooooh, that one over there! >_o

As for Frankensteinish stuff, it's more that I just don't like squishy things. ;p

Flynn, I think you will greatly enjoy The Z Machine. Currently outputting 350 terawatts (with 2.7 megajoules in X-Ray energy), with a theorised 1 petawatt in the future, it really is HV heaven.

That's... that x-ray generator that they demonstrated could be used for fusion a few years back, right? (We have a fusion group here, so I get to hear a lot about things being used for fusion...) Does it have a HUGE SWITCH? Still, supremely snazzy. XD

The HiPIMS supply is a power supply to a magnetron sputtering target. Basically, I'm just using a >1000 W cm^-2 pulsed power supply to knock some stuff of a lump of stuff and throw it at some other stuff. I love overkill. >_o Plus the fact that we had it built with a HUGE SWITCH. (For some reason, the guy who built it for us thought we needed it to have a great big knife switch. Plastic, but still...)

[Rowan of Rin]

I can appreciate overly large switches and buttons from every era. They speak volumes about the people who construct these magnificent machines.

[Flynn MacCallister]

Does it help that this guy is also German? >_o

[Mr. Boltneck]

I have yet to hear of any university offering a graduate studies course in Mad Science, so I don't think that a PhD is strictly necessary in this case. In fact, I suspect that a good way to make your way into a career (in either sense of the word) in Mad Science is to have your thesis proposal rejected by a regular Sane Science department. It is at that point that you wig out, scream something like "Bah! What do these blinkered, benighted fools know about weaponized budgerigars/tungsten-based life-forms/interstellar sloth tickling! I'll show them! I'll show everyone!" and disappear, only to be rediscovered some years later in a lonely laboratory in the Sangre de Cristo mountains. It is generally at this point that the hilarity ensues.

[Flynn MacCallister]

Oh, no, like I said, I've already got the mad already underway, there's just the question of whether I can fairly call myself a scientist.

[Hikaro Takayama]

Well, if being German counts towards one's mad scientist cred, then I'm pretty well there, I even speak with a sort of German accent...

...Then again, I'm just a crazy Mennonite living in an Amish Paradise. XD

[markf]

You are absolutely correct to be considered a Scientist, and I can easily prove it.

In the USA one can work in any agency of the Federal gov't and have the job title 'Scientist' with as little as a BA/BS degree.  In fact, and perhaps distressingly, only a very small % of scientists working in the DOD, NIH, CDC, or wherever have PhDs or equivalent degrees. Here are just a few of thousands of civilian jobs in Army that have the 'Scientist' title but do not require any more than a bachelor's degree.

     > Physical Scientist (in a toxic chemical lab)
https://acpol2.army.mil/fasclass/search_fs/search_fs_output.asp?ccpo=AU&jobNum=330225&id=645303
     > Biological Scientist
https://acpol2.army.mil/fasclass/search_fs/search_fs_output.asp?ccpo=AG&jobNum=56099&id=66246
     > Environmental Scientist
https://acpol2.army.mil/fasclass/search_fs/search_fs_output.asp?ccpo=FW&jobNum=09177&id=82673
     > Computer Scientist
https://acpol2.army.mil/fasclass/search_fs/search_fs_output.asp?ccpo=EJ&jobNum=10104&id=106690

I can't comment about the 'mad' part of mad scientist, but you are a Scientist. markf

[Capt. Dirigible]

I think you've got the 'scientist' bit off pat (although I've no idea who Pat got it off!) however does knowing you're mad negate the madness?
I think to be on the safe side you need to get yourself a suitably hunch-backed lab assistant you can yell "THROW THE SWITCH!!" at.

[The Kernel]

My OED defines a scientist as "One who studies or practices science" so even a science student is a scientist.
But how much studying do you have to do to be mad?

(Please the the "Nutty" in my tag-line refers to the scientist, not the science!)

[zpyder]

I've struggled with titles, never knowing what to say in reply to the "what do you do?" question. I want to say Ecologist, but my degree was in Environment & Coastal Management, and so ecology wasn't something that my degree covered heavily, but which I excelled in and found the greatest interest. However I have been lucky to actually have been given a title now as "Researcher in Restoration Ecology" so it's not too far off being an Ecologist. As to the scientist bit...if you do science, you could say you're a scientist in the same way that someone who works with gardens is a gardener. This of course depends on your definition of "science". To me it's research and learning/discovery. Whether this is personal research (as in that gained in education) or research of a groundbreaking matter varies between person and person.
That's the basic level.

But maybe you could argue that true scientists are the kind which are at the forefront of their field/subjects. It's one thing repeating well known experiments (as in school, college and university, or even as a lab assistant perhaps), but if nothing new is learnt or gained, it isn't necessarily 'not science', but isn't fitting the bill quite so well? To go back to the gardening analogy I guess you could argue someone with a couple of plants in pots who waters them is still a gardener, but in a true sense the person who cultivates and nurtures a plot of land from seed to cutting to maturity is more of a gardener?

In which case, indeed getting published would make you a scientist, having produced research which is both novel and useful to the field.

The madness is an entirely separate conundrum altogether.

For me I've yet to get published, though a paper is under review, with some corrections needing to be made, though the findings have been presented at a conference already so I guess they're classifiable as scientific findings. The experiment as well involved heavy metals, maggots, liquid nitrogen and carnivorous plants, and so I guess you could say that the experiment itself was quite mad

[Professor Fzz]

I'll take the "mad" part as given, seeing as you're here.

As for the scientist part, that's all about learning how things work or how to do things that have never been learned before.  If you're doing that, you're doing science.  Which means that most university science courses teach you  about science, but they don't really involve doing all that much science. 

Publishing research papers is a measure of doing science, because most reputable places don't publish work that's been done before.  Some places will publish anything though, so not all publications count.  Still, it's probably a better measure of being a scientist than any letters after your name.  But there are plenty of people that do great science that never publish - often working for industrial research labs.

People are often snobbish about titles such as PhD; well that's just rubbish.  Having a science PhD does mean you have demonstrated you can do scientific research, but it only loosely correlates with being a good scientist.  A PhD is a sort of research apprenticeship, but some people who start a PhD already have the spark that it takes to be a great scientist, and some people who finish a PhD have never gained that spark.  They've spent several years turning the handle, directed by their professor who is hoping that they'll finally get it, but they never do.  It doesn't stop them graduating though.  To be blunt, we don't really know how to teach that spark - there are a load of ways we go about trying to encourage it, but a lot of that comes down to hoping the student learns by osmosis by observing at close hand how it's done.  Quite a lot of it involves the student unlearning bad habits learned through years of mediocre classes (such as believing what the book/paper/lecturer said), and actually learning to really think critically for his or herself.  It's especially hard to learn to think critically about your own work. 

Four of my PhD students have now graduated.  One is at professor at MIT, one is a professor at OGI, one is a postdoc at Stanford, and one is working in a top industry lab.  Those are my success stories.  In two of those, I would say the student already had that spark when they arrived.  In the other two, there was potential, but it took work for it to really burn brightly.  And then there are the two students who still don't really get it and probably never will, though they'll likely gain a PhD if they keep at it long enough.

So, are you a scientist?  Publications and qualifications are some measure, but they're flawed.  Do you have that spark of curiosity; that drive to know how something really works to the extent that you're willing to devote all your time and money and sanity to finding out?  If you do, you're a scientist (and probably quite mad too).

[Auntie Ludmilla]

When I wondered about going back to science after a hiatus of several years, I enquired about funding for a doctorate. I was advised that a far cheaper option was to conduct a research project, write it up and present it to a university for aproval. At which point I decided to bog off and set up my own business instead.... But I still consider myself a scientist. Of course, what others think of me is entirely their own problem

[zpyder]

I guess for some fields of science there may not be much in the way of funding, and so you could argue anyone is mad to want to pursue a career in a lower paid job?

[Auntie Ludmilla]

Hmmm, I'm a zoologist by training, and a horticulturalist by proffession... I'm not expecting to become a millionaire any time soon.... But that's the price you pay for following your heart, and it's far cheaper than the (soul destroying) alternative. The price of freedom is an oxymoron, how can you possibly afford something priceless?

[Atterton]

Seems madder to spend your whole life doing something you don´t like just to get enough money to keep up with the Jones´s.

I´d say again that if you do science(going by official definitions here, not personal ones) then you´re a scientist. As long as you don´t claim to be a scientist with a degree in the wrongly named political science or such. Also it´s not mad science if the madness is intentional.

[zpyder]

What about the definition of madness?

Pilfered from wordnet search

# S: (n) lunacy, madness, insaneness (obsolete terms for legal insanity)
# S: (n) rabies, hydrophobia, lyssa, madness (an acute viral disease of the nervous system of warm-blooded animals (usually transmitted by the bite of a rabid animal); rabies is fatal if the virus reaches the brain)
# S: (n) fury, rage, madness (a feeling of intense anger) "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned"; "his face turned red with rage"
# S: (n) folly, foolishness, craziness, madness (the quality of being rash and foolish) "trying to drive through a blizzard is the height of folly"; "adjusting to an insane society is total foolishness"
# S: (n) madness, rabidity, rabidness (unrestrained excitement or enthusiasm) "poetry is a sort of divine madness"

So by those varying definitions you could be a mad scientist if you classify under the many different definitions of a scientist already given, and/or:

are legally insane
are infected with a disease/parasite/virus etc which has altered your brain activity
have anger management issues
or are over enthusiastic!



I guess you could also argue that madness is defined by "normal" society. If it was the social norm for everyone to wonder around like a nutter, the 'mad' people might be what we class as sane. In which case you could also be a mad scientist if you don't fall within the socially accepted norm for scientists...?

[Dr von Zarkov]

I propose that we settle this by nominating and electing Flynn MacCallister to the Imperial Academy of Pure and Applied Sciences and Natural Philosophy. All in favour will signify by stating "aye".

A scientist is as a scientist does.

As to whether she is mad, only time will tell.