Forgive me Scientists (and physicists), I have sinned

This is a confession of mine, unashamedly based on Adam Ruben's  "Forgive Me, Scientists, for I Have Sinned" from Science Magazine. All words are his, except for those in green. Here goes -

There are some things I need to confess. Sometimes I don’t feel like a real scientist. Besides the fact that I do science every day, I don’t conform to the image—my image—of what a scientist is and how we should think and behave. Here’s what I mean:

I don’t sit at home reading journals on the weekend.

I have rarely gone to the library. I don't even know where the library of my current institution is.

I never got past the first two pages of Feynman's lectures. I have read very little of Landau and Lifshitz, even when I owned several volumes of the series.

I have skipped talks at scientific conferences for social purposes.

I remember about 1% of the Electrodynamics I learned in college. General Relativity? Even less.

I have avoided eye contact with eager grad students while walking past their poster sessions.

When someone describes research as “exciting,” I often don’t agree. Interesting, maybe, but it’s a big jump from interest to excitement.

Sometimes I see sunshine on the lawn outside the lab window and realize that I’d rather be outside in the sun.

I have gone home at 5 p.m.

I have asked questions at seminars not because I wanted to know the answers but because I wanted to demonstrate that I was paying attention.

I have never fabricated data or intentionally misled, but I have endeavored to present data more compellingly rather than more accurately.

I like the liberal arts.

I know next to nothing about the Higgs boson or any of particle physics. I read up news articles just so that I could explain the topic to family and friends. That the news articles were written for the general audience made my job easy.

When a visiting scientist gives a colloquium, more often than not I don’t understand what he or she is saying. This even happens sometimes with research I really should be familiar with.

I dread applying for grants. I resent the fact that scientists need to bow and scrape for funding in the first place, but even more than that, I hate seeking the balance of cherry-picked data, baseless boasts, and exaggerations of real-world applications that funding sources seem to require.

I have performed research I didn’t think was important. I have performed research I knew would likely be of little use.

Having spent most of my PhD building up lab skills and calling myself a "lab person", I didn't miss working in the lab when I spent most of my time doing data analysis.

I do not believe every scientific consensus.

I believe that peer review is of limited value.

When I ask scientists to tell me about their research, I nod and tell them it’s interesting even if I don’t understand it at all.

I was never interested in Star Wars.

I can’t get excited about the research to which some of my friends and colleagues have devoted their lives.

I can’t read most scientific papers unless I devote my full attention, usually with a browser window open to look up terms on Wikipedia.

I allow the Internet to distract me.

I have read multiple Michael Crichton novels.

I have mooched swag from vendors I did not talk to.

I own large science textbooks I have scarcely used. I have kept them “for reference” even though I know I’ll never use them again. I intend to keep them “for reference” until I die.

I want everyone to like me.

Sometimes science feels like it’s made of the same politics, pettiness, and ridiculousness that underlie any other job.

I decry the portrayal of scientists in films, then pay money to go see more films with scientists in them.

I have taught facts and techniques to students that I only myself learned the day before.

I know I have arrived where I am through privilege, good fortune, and circumstance. Anything I genuinely earned could not have been earned without those precursors.

I find science difficult.