Scientist skills and qualifications?

Question

What skillls and qualifications do scientists need in order to become scientists?

Answer 1

The kid in the mud is a scientist.  It just means exploring and gaining knowledge about the environment and things in it.

Answer 2

Depends on what you mean by scientist. A lab technician directed by a researcher dealing with scientific issues on a daily basis need only have GCSE's, but if you want to do research and original studies, you probably need to consider university and even a higher degree.

The skills you need - an enquiring mind, and plenty of patience - science is a lot of graft even for small results. (But what a career to choose!)

Answer 3

A strong knowledge of the scientific method and the means to conduct experiments. A scientist can be anyone from Einstein to the kid in the back yard who wants to know where sand comes from.

Answer 4

When we talk about professional scientists, we are talking about people who are actively doing new research in their field and publishing their results.  These people have PhDs in their fields.  A PhD is a research degree - it teaches you what's been done already, how to conduct research, how to test your results, how to check yourself, the methods and equipment necessary, and introduces you to the other people in the field.  People with bachelors or masters degrees in their field may be contributing to original research as well, and can be called scientists, but aren't leading their own projects - they are working on someone else's because they don't have the training to do their own.

So go for a PhD in whatever field of science you're interested in.