Mom, Who Is a Scientist?

Why Does Society Need the Voice of Science?

Evening. The television is on. Ministers, deputies, economists, athletes and bloggers appear in the news. Then come the advertisements. Mom, who is a scientist? The mother fell silent for a second. Should she show the child a portrait from a school textbook? But the person in that photograph lived a hundred years ago, and he was not from Kazakhstan. Should she name a physicist or biologist known around the world? But the child was not asking about the history of science. He was asking about a person who lives today. What is his name? What does he do? Why is he almost never talked about? And suddenly it turns out that answering is not so simple.

You can ask the same question not to a child, but to adults. Their answers would be no less strange. A teacher would name a classic from the school curriculum. A capable student would explain what peer review is, and then fall silent when asked to name three living scientists from our own country. A neighbor would answer faster than anyone else, because he has heard that science is now receiving money, and quite a lot of it. Notice what happened. The child was asking about a person. But the adults, in giving their answers, spoke about the dead, about diploma defense procedures and about funding. There is no living scientist in any of the answers.

Science has money. It has no voice. Supporting science and hearing it are not the same thing. One can build a laboratory, open a university and award grants. All of this is necessary. But one may still never meet the people who work there. For most people, science will remain a line in the budget. After all, the child did not ask how much had been allocated to it. He asked who a scientist is.

Everyone talks about science here. Science itself almost does not speak. Reports are made about it, it is financed, it is discussed by officials and journalists. But all of these are conversations about science in someone else’s words. The scientist himself is almost unheard in this stream. And the child asked precisely about him.

Let us listen to the skeptic who says that conferences for scientists lost their meaning long ago. Why do we need expensive halls, flights and hotels when online formats exist? If the goal is to bring science closer to people, a conference looks like a questionable tool. The hall is filled with the same scientists. They speak to one another. There are almost no outsiders there.

And yet the skeptic is wrong. He judges a conference as though its task were to immediately deliver scientific knowledge to society. But a conference has another function. Any scientific idea is born in solitude. But it becomes science only after meeting its equals. When objections are raised against it, when its weak point is noticed and when it is forced to search for a more precise answer. Science, in general, develops not from agreement, but from debate. This is exactly why conferences exist. Scientific thought does not go directly from the laboratory to the public. First, it passes through its own community. Only then does it become knowledge that can be trusted.

And this is not only about us. Where do you think science is trusted the most? The answer turns out to be unexpected. According to the largest international study, the top five countries in terms of trust in science included Egypt, India, Nigeria, Kenya and Australia[i]. The authors tested the most obvious explanations, such as levels of GDP, spending on education, scientific literacy and academic freedom. None of them explained why trust in science is higher in some countries than in others. This means that it is not only about money, education or the scale of the scientific system. Trust appears where people encounter science in their own lives. Where they understand why it is needed and what it does for them.

What, then, are people lacking? Openness. The same international study showed that people rate scientists lowest precisely in terms of their willingness to explain their work and be open to society. Thus, 83% of respondents believe that scientists should talk more with society about science. What does this mean? People are waiting for science to speak to them.

The pandemic became a moment when, in many countries of the world, science found itself at the center of public attention, and trust in scientists generally increased. But our region turned out to be an exception. According to the Wellcome Global Monitor[ii], in the ‘Russia, Caucasus and Central Asia’ region, attention to science practically did not increase, while trust in scientists from one’s own country even declined. While people in other countries were watching science in action, its voice sounded much quieter here. However public space is never empty. If it is not filled by scientific knowledge, it is filled by other explanations. Sometimes accurate. Sometimes not. But almost always louder and more confident.

In my own childhood, there was an answer to the question about a scientist. A scientist was someone who had discovered something. Someone who heals, someone who counts the stars, someone who knows how the world works. Every child had this answer; it did not need to be searched for. It simply sounded all around us. Now there is no answer. Not because scientists have disappeared. They exist, they work and they make discoveries. But the place where this answer used to sound have become empty. The channel is occupied by another voice. And the child who today asks who a scientist is will grow up with the answer he receives. If the only available answer is ‘science is being given money’, he will learn that science is about money. Trust is not inherited this way.

On June 24, a new Law on Science was signed, creating new conditions for the development of Kazakhstan’s science[iii]. Science cities, modern research centers, expanded rights and social guarantees for scientists, and a closer connection between research and production are important steps for the development of the scientific system. But trust has a different nature. Trust cannot be adopted together with a law or included in a state program. It arises when society knows its scientists, hears them and clearly understands why they are needed.

Evening. The television is on again. And again, the child asks: Mom, who is a scientist? The answer appears when science has its own voice. When a teacher returns from a conference not with a certificate, but with a new idea. When a journalist speaks not about the size of a grant, but about a discovery. When a neighbor says not ‘science has been given money again’, but ‘can you imagine, our scientists have discovered…’ This is why society needs the voice of science. Because one day it becomes the answer to the simplest question a child can ask. And as long as science reaches the screen as a single figure, the mother truly has nothing to answer. Not because there are no scientists. But because they are almost unheard.

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[i] Cologna et al. (2025). ‘Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries.’ Nature Human Behaviour.

[ii] https://wellcome.org/reports/wellcome-global-monitor-covid-19/2020

[iii] https://www.akorda.kz/ru/glavoy-gosudarstva-podpisan-zakon-respubliki-kazahstan-po-voprosam-nauki-naukoemkih-territoriy-socialnogo-obespecheniya-obrazovaniya-zdravoohraneniya-i-voinskoy-sluzhby-245557