You may recall a couple years ago when the Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique started issuing badges.
Now, the Science Scouts have a spiffy new webpage and many new badges … and there are rumors (or should I say rumours) that actual, physical badges, suited for stitching onto sashes or lab coats, will be available.
So it seems like a good time to review the badges I have earned thus far as a Science Scout.
The “talking science” badge:
I don’t need to explain this one, right?
Even before I had a blog about matters scientific, I talked science. At work, at dinner parties, on the bus. I calmed fussy babies with explanations of intermolecular forces, for goodness sake.
The “I blog about science” badge:
Because I blog about science. And I like badges.
The “Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah, I’ve got a TV gig” badge:
OK, it’s true that my TV gig was/is on public access cable. Still, if people can come across my mug talking science in the course of their channel-surfing (which they have), I think it counts as a real TV gig.
The gig was a set of fifteen lectures for an online version of my philosophy of science course. It was all about science, and I didn’t wear a lab coat on camera.
The “I left the respectable science to pursue humanistic studies of the sciences” badge:
It’s true. I didn’t stay with the chemistry thing. I went and broke my mama’s heart by becoming a philosopher of science.
An employed philosopher of science.
A tenured philosopher of science.
Mama’s OK with it these days.
The “will gladly kick sexual harasser’s ass” badge:
It would be nice, however, if the skills involved in earning this badge had less practical utility in scientific and academic circles.
Actually, it would be nice if they had less practical utility in most walks of life.
The “has frozen stuff just to see what happens” badge (LEVEL I)
The “has frozen stuff just to see what happens” badge (LEVEL II)
The “has frozen stuff just to see what happens” badge (LEVEL III)
Let the record reflect that eggs frozen in liquid nitrogen break much less spectacularly than you might imagine.
The “I know what a tadpole is” badge:
Because I know what a tadpole is.
The “totally digs highly exothermic reactions: badge:
It’s not that I don’t love endothermic reactions; I do.
But an exothermic reaction can keep you warm at night. Or during the day.
The “somewhat confused as to what scientific field I actually belong to” badge:
Yeah, even when I was in chemistry, my area of research seemed a little on the edge of what the laser-jocks and statistical mechanics thought of as physical chemistry.
And now that I’m a philosopher of science who occasionally explores philosophical questions about chemistry, the disciplinary boundaries haven’t gotten any less fuzzy.
The “I’ve set fire to stuff” badge (LEVEL I).
The “I’ve set fire to stuff” badge (LEVEL II).
The “I’ve set fire to stuff” badge (LEVEL III).
Fire! Fire! Fire!
It’s not just fun, it’s also educational.
The “I’m pretty confident around an open flame” badge:
Setting fire to stuff can do that to a scientist.
The “works with acids” badge:
In my graduate research, I worked with quite a bit of acid. However, I managed not to burn holes in any of my clothes or lab notebooks.
Maybe that should be a separate badge.
The “I will crush you with my math prowess” badge:
Here, “you” refers to the average adult, not Mark Chu-Carroll. But I do find conic sections, quadratic inequalities, and polar coordinates soothing.
The “arts and crafts” badge:
Dude, arts and crafts!
And not just for poster sessions or apparatus construction.
The “works with feces” badge:
I’m assuming cleaning the feces out of metabolic cages counts.
(A metabolic cage collects urine samples from the rat in it, because rats will not pee in a cup for you even if you ask nicely.)
The “plant kingdom rules!” badge:
That’s why I spend so much time in my garden, not just gardening but also controlling the populations of gastropods that threaten my tasty, tasty plants.
The “my degree inadvertently makes me competent in fixing household appliances” badge:
Especially if those appliances resemble pumps of various sorts.
The “pharma shill” badge:
Although I haven’t knowingly received a penny from the pharmaceutical industry, it’s quite likely, according to posters in this forum, that I am a full-blown pharma shill, or at least totally brainwashed by big pharma’s PR. Knowing this ought to take the edge off of all those posts I’ve written about untoward pharmaceutical company influence on scientific research and communication.
The “I use Twitter to spread science” badge:
Yeah, I use Twitter. I don’t think it actually threatens my cred as a tremendous Luddite that much. After all, 140 characters is about what you can fit on a wax tablet.
The “I’ve published at the Science Creative Quarterly” badge:
It’s true, I have!
“A tenured philosopher of science.”
Which leads to a question I’ve been meaning to ask: At some point you had your degree in philosophy and was applying for positions meant to lead up to tenure. At that stage, how much did your chemistry degree and subsequent work in that field actively count towards your application? As compared to other philosophers/applicants without the same kind of hands-on natural science experience? I mean in a practical “I have real-world experience of the process of science”, rather than any subject-specific knowledge of course.