Amateur Scientist?I recently endured a
very unpleasant encounter with a writer at a party. He liked to fling the word "science" about, but didn't like being politely asked to explain what he means in his usage of that word. It can destroy a friendship, for me, if I sense careless abuse of
science. (Incidentally, I grew up
marinated in such abuse, under the ridiculous moniker "Christian Science" -- which, of course, is manifestly neither.)
What is an
amateur scientist? There's a real briar-patch of a question, imho. Climate Science has benefited from pivotal contributions of amateurs as far back as Guy Stewart Callendar (
https://history.aip.org/climate/co2.htm#SC), and so continues. Most notable are the contributions of our host. Beyond garnering the respect he deserves for his well-grounded ideas, Neven excels, possibly beyond the skills of any other genius on Earth, at "herding cats." (I'm old enough to just say what I think, even when it automatically goes into the brown-nose bin.) In a few cases, it's easy to say:
that's an amateur scientist.
In most cases, there's a hazard of implicitly getting slipshod about
science. My own amateur specialty is Mathematical Logic, a field too general to exclude Philosophy, but too specialized to live there. My studies lead to growing uncertainty regarding what kind of beast Mathematical Logic is or ever has been. I don't call myself an amateur scientist, but I know enough to scrupulously preserve the integrity of scientific data passing through my hands. We do keep in mind: To knowingly distribute a false or distorted weather forecast is a serious crime.