What Makes Someone a Marine Scientist?

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Now when your grandkids ask what you do, you can say...... I'm a diver and a Marine Scientist!
I get this is meant to be a fun thread, but I do tire of society diluting, distorting, and essentially making words and concepts meaningless. Then in order to have meaningful discussions, people are forced to come up with new terms or concepts, because the existing once have been hijacked, diluted, or distorted beyond any useful meaning.

But if you're really obsessed with titles, I hear there's a total-not-scam Established Titles who will happily take your money and tell you you're a "Lord."
 
Quoting the first paragraph of Wikipedia's article on Scientist:

"A scientist is a person who researches to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences.[1][2] By modern definitions, many scientists are required to have advanced degrees[3] in an area of science and careers in various sectors of the economy such as academia, industry, government, and nonprofits pertaining to their discipline."

Advanced degree would mean masters or really more Ph.D.
and careers would mean your main job being doing the science you learned about.

ETA: Rereading wiki's advanced degree, they mean the terminal degree in the field, so PhD if such is available (except some corner cases).

Citizen scientist is a thing, and means, well, citizens doing science. Counting birds migration, measuring pollution in neighborhoods, etc.
 
Hey.... I get it. And it is not at all "my definition". I in no way made up the official "definition" of a scientist. I just Googled it and what I posted is what came up as the most popular and accurate description of what makes a Scientist.
Popular yes. Accurate no.
 
Flipper should’a dropped his 2¢ by now, this thread is already two hours old.
 
PhD candidate or better in some field like marine biology, oceanography, etc.

I myself am not a marine biologist, despite having done some delightful coursework at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology (Oregon's second best marine biology program!), but I definitely am a marine fryologist.
 
Someone who is actively working as a scientist (e.g. doing studies, publishing research papers, etc.)
 
How about marine adventurers or explorers, depending on the dive.
 
I consider myself a marine scientist because I am actively researching and publishing in the field of underwater acoustics.
Albeit part of this research is conducted in a lab or in a large test pool, or in fresh-water (lakes), part is also conducted in the sea, hence "marine".
But the correct definition is that I am an underwater scientist. "Marine" is quite reductive, in my opinion.
Then there is the point of defining a "scientist".
In my opinion the Wikipedia definition is almost right, albeit it gives too much weight to the "advanced degree" as a criterion for defining a scientist.
In some academic environments (UK, Germany, US) a doctorate is considered a mandatory degree for working in the scientific community.
In countries such as Italy, were the education standards were much higher, the Doctorate was unknow until 1987, when the first-generation of PhD candidates got their title: I was among them.
So for many years Italian scientists did not hold a doctorate title, simply because there were no doctorate courses here.
The normal "laurea" degree provided a comparable level of knowledge, if not better, than a PhD obtained in US or UK. Unfortunately this is not true anymore, our academic system has been severely "normalised" and realigned to the international standards (which are much lower).
In Italy people holding a "laurea" degree (which used to last 5 years in a single continuous course) are usually referred to be "doctors". Of course no one doubts that people as Fermi, Rubbia, Volterra, Montalcini, Parisi are scientists, but they have got no PhD degree.
So I would relax this requirement, many top-level scientists never got a PhD, and still impacted significantly on science and even won a Nobel prize.
 
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