This article appeared in the June 2021 issue of Discover magazine as "Show Me the Science." Subscribe for more stories like these.
Some scientists wish to uncover truths of the natural universe — to learn the properties of distant stars, or deep-sea creatures, or the interior of our cells. Others seek solutions, hoping to better our lives or undo the damage we’ve done to our environment. The list of motivations runs long, depending on who you talk to. But most people don’t know any scientists personally. In 2017, about 4 out of 5 Americans polled couldn’t name a single living scientist, according to Research America. Of those who could, top answers were Stephen Hawking (27 percent), who died in 2018; Neil deGrasse Tyson (19 percent), who last published research in 2008; and Bill Nye (5 percent), who quit his job as an engineer in 1986. Yet 1.5 million-plus Americans are currently working as scientists, which is more than the number of elementary school teachers.
We don’t know their names because they’re mostly behind the scenes, trying to resolve questions, bit by bit. Few will ever do work that makes the news. Even fewer will garner enough publicity that people begin to recognize them. Regular Discover readers may know names like astrophysicist Avi Loeb, or Jennifer Doudna, the 2020 Nobel Prize winner for her work in CRISPR gene-editing. But before we could edit genes with CRISPR, people were accumulating decades of data on microbiology and genetics. Pull any researcher today out of a hat, and we can only speculate how their work might change our lives.
Despite their power to improve the world, modern scientists face the realities of polarization and politicization. “Those of us who study science see this as a really unsettling time,” says Allan Brandt, a historian of science at Harvard University. “We’re alarmed at the erosion of scientific legitimacy and authority, because it’s so crucial to solving the world’s problems.”
