There is a lot of mystery and ambiguity around the career of a researcher or scientist, and the general public often gets it wrong. Reporters and commenters talk about science in a certain way, but when you are in it, you know it does not work that way at all. Different domains are very different in how they operate in the scientific way, and there is a lot of nuance that people never see.

What the public thinks we actually do is striking, and these misperceptions pass to policymakers and government analysts. Even popular science shows report things like the number of citations, but that is one of the most meaningless things in terms of what good science really is. More citations does not mean better science.

Good work needs depth, nuance, and looking at the world in a different way. There are big differences in scientific effort across fields. Some work is very good, and some is easy to see as not very good at all. You see it fast when you look at abstracts, even my 13-year-old could spot it.

People also think science is full of facts, but real facts are very hard to come by in a world with so much uncertainty. Science is probabilistic, complex, and never as clear as it looks. Better understanding of probability, science, and even financial literacy would help people understand it all a lot more.

We need more clarity about how science actually gets done, why ideas repeat, why norms develop, and why science is not the simple story most people imagine.