After 25 years collecting, analysing, reporting, and translating environmental data, I faced an identity crisis when I started a PhD and was told that I wasn’t a scientist without a doctorate. So, what have I been doing all these years? Who is a scientist and who says? Science may be as old as society but somewhere it shifted from survival to status. The origin story of science that starts with Aristotle completely ignores the observation and inquiry conducted by First Nations and women over millennia. Farmers, midwives, hunters, and herbalists were scientists before science. Even scientific researchers once equated the term ‘scientist’ with ‘sell-out’…