I am troubled but not surprised to hear your story about the California Air Resources Board and Southern California Air Quality. If sincere scientists don't speak up about things like this and distance themselves from it, then people who hate science (for whatever reason, for example Young Earth Creationists) will say they are justified in hating science because scientists are just as corrupt as everyone else on the planet.

Sometimes scientific research requires wealth, but often it does not. Einstein is a good example. He pondered about light, space and time after dropping out of school and while he was working as a patent officer in Bern. The culmination of all his pondering was the theory of special relativity. He achieved more in those 10 years than a career scientist does in a lifetime.

Remember also that many discoveries are made by accident. In 1950, Richard Doll discovered by accident that smoking causes lung cancer (before then the consensus of the medical profession was that smoking was beneficial to health). Doll's dataset was small by today's standards and the data were retrospective, but Doll's data were more informative and less biased than most of today's expensive randomized controlled trials funded by pharmaceutical companies with a clear agenda.

@Imran2022 Relativity, special and general, are mathematics, not science.

@yvilletom The distinction between mathematics and physics is not critical to my original post, but I am happy to indulge this point.

Mathematics is a set of abstract notions and concepts, such as geometry, calculus, and tensor algebra. Mathematics is removed from the reality of the physical world, for example mathematicians assert that the square root of 2 exists even though it cannot be written down. Mathematicians study their subject for its own sake, and they are not interested in practical applications. For example, mathematicians studied number theory for centuries even though it had no practical applications. It was only in the 20th century that it was realized that number theory could be used in cryptography. Unlike science, mathematics cannot be 'wrong'. As long as you accept the central axioms of mathematics, the mathematical proofs are indeed proofs, which means they are irrefutable.

Science is about understanding and modelling the physical world. Mathematics is simply a language used by scientists, especially physicists, for expressing their understanding and their models. Relativity is not mathematics because it does not contain any new mathematical concepts. For example, general relativity is expressed in the language of tensor algebra, but Einstein did not invent the concept of tensors. Mathematicians invented tensors long before Einstein. Einstein simply used tensors to express a scientific theory. Einstein was a theoretical physicist rather than an experimental physicist, which means he did not collect empirical data himself, however his goal was to construct theories to explain empirical data. His goal was not to invent new abstract mathematical concepts out of love of mathematics, so he cannot be described as a mathematician.

Applied mathematicians sit somewhere between pure mathematicians and scientists. Applied mathematicians seek to explain empirical data, but sometimes they invent new mathematical concepts along the way. For example, Paul Dirac is remembered as a theoretical physicist, but he proposed the concept of the Dirac delta function, which was a new mathematical object. Nevertheless, it was mathematicians who did all the heavy lifting in terms of giving the Dirac delta function a rigorous conceptual footing. They did this by inventing the concept of generalized functions, and the Dirac delta function is an example of a generalized function.

@Imran2022 You wrote: [Einstein’s] goal was not to invent new abstract mathematical concepts out of love of mathematics, so he cannot be described as a mathematician.

Love is necessary?

I don’t believe you.

@yvilletom No, love is not necessary, but it is usually the motivating factor for great mathematicians. They would not devote themselves to a subject so abstract if it were not for love of the subject. Regardless, the fact remains that Einstein did not invent any new mathematical concepts; therefore, he was not a mathematician. What he did is discover a relationship between matter and space-time which explains empirical data. He described that relationship using mathematics, but that does not make him a mathematician, anymore than you or I are scholars of the English language just because we are communicating in English.

As an employee, you have to do as you are told, otherwise you will be shown the door! I think most sincere scientists know that, and they wouldn't even sign up for that because 'real science' is too important to them.

I agree that some scientists are 'sincere scientists' and some scientists are 'career scientists', but they are all lumped together in the same profession of 'science'. If a lay person sees a 'scientist' on TV, they wouldn't know if the scientist belongs to the sincere category or the career category. If the lay person read an article in a scientific journal, they wouldn't know if the author or authors were sincere or not.

I mean, he has to know that, right? He wrote it as a question to point out the absurdity of it all, no?

@ChestRockfield Yes. I assumed that the post was retorical. But you know what they say about assume ? A. It makes an ass of you and me. (Spelling joke.)

@ChestRockfield I like to think I can tell the difference between a 'sincere scientist' and a 'career scientist', but I'm not sure that most people can tell the difference. When two scientists give conflicting opinions, a lay person may not be able to decide who is right, especially if the 'career scientist' keeps going on about how many papers they have published instead of being straight.

@Imran2022 Yes sadly even on this site where you would expect health skeptisim, there are a few pseudo-science and fake science addicts.