What does it mean to be a scientist?

Some time ago, I found a very interesting post: http://www.soilduck.com/2010/05/i-am-scientist-hear-me-think.html It reminded me something a friend told me long ago:"Your success as a scientist will not be determined by how smart you are but rather by how stubborn you can become"

I've been defining myself as a scientist for about 10 years now and the question of What does it mean to be a scientist? is one that I see in front of me regularly. I work in environmental science, air pollution to be specific, and that means that I'm normally clashing with all sorts of people, from fellow scientists (yes, research in urban air quality is just as scientific as that in the upper atmosphere!) to policy makers (I'll go into more detail on that in another post ... or it will be a very long parenthesis) to random people.

Why, you may ask, should I be expected to clash with seemingly everyone if I work in air quality? Well, as with many environmental research areas, we all experience the environment and therefore have a formed opinion about its quality, what it is and what it should be. Air quality is particularly sensitive in urban areas because everyone has had some first hand experience with the exhaust of a particularly polluting bus, or has had to deal with some restrictions due to regulations. Regulations that have been developed with some consultation to scientists but for the most part, are the result of a much more complex interaction between several players.

But before I digress too much, back to the main question. When I ask myself what a (air quality) scientist is I tend to go for the romantic notion of "truth seeker". The image of someone worrying about the why and how of natural phenomena in the air is very appealing because it kind of detaches me from the implications of my work. So what if I conclude that residential wood combustion should be banned because it's making people sick, while there is no alternative for that people to keep themselves warm during the winter? In reality, I can't remove myself from the world like that. Not only because it's not "ethical" but mostly because I'd be giving up on some questions.

And that's the conclusion I've reached. To be a scientist means searching for questions, asking them and working towards answering them. But never stopping at the answer. So, instead of forgetting about the implications of a ban of domestic wood burning on people's health, I should not only consider but embrace that question and make it part of my research.
That's where the interesting science is, and where interdisciplinary research is originated.