JP,
Maybe I am being too picky. I guess I have a certain personal description of what I think of as a scientists vs. engineer/technician that doesn't actually fit the widely accepted definition. I probably have a bias towards biological research, which I will readily admit to. We'll see if I can't clarify my position a little.
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disagree in that engineers do have to use the scientific method. I would say that good technicians do also. I have received two awards for my "scientific approach to resolving..." issues that pop up.
I agree with you here. The difference that I see is that engineering is more of a concrete science in that the answers are often black and white. For example, does the bridge take the expected load or not, can we get a certain bandwidth over this copper line or not. Engineers prove things, scientists only support or disprove hypotheses. This is the difference I see between the two. But again, maybe I am being to strict with the term "scientist". Perhaps I should use "research scientist" vs. scientist vs. engineer. Just to recap:
Research scientist: supports or disproves hypotheses, but never able to give concrete conclusions of fact.
Scientist: expert in a technical field, uses scientific methods to further a goal.
Engineer: uses knowledge gained through the prior two professions to build objects.
And I can also see how a person can move in and out of those divisions, depending on what part of a project they are working on.
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What if someone publishes an article that adds knowledge to a majority but a minority already had that knowledge? Is that person a scientist just because his/ her findings were made public?
I would say that person is more of a scientist for exposing their findings to the public. Science doesn't belong to an individual, but rather to all of humanity. It is a mantra among researchers in the biological sciences that "if it isn't published, it never happened." For anyone to make a claim within my field, they have to publish it, or at least present it to their peers in a manner that is equivalent to a publication. It is also the peer review system that is important. The public relies on the peer review system to tell them what is and what isn't good science. Not everyone can be an expert in every field, so it is up to the experts to decide if a hypothesis has been sufficiently supported, both through the data and through the methodologies used. So yes, publication is key because no one else can test privately held data and methodologies.
And I am not looking down at engineers or other scientists who aren't involved in research. There are days when I wish I had gone into engineering, especially if things start to stagnate in the lab. Research that isn't going anywhere gets pretty frustrating.
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