Taxonomy of the Sciences

Yesterday I posted something on that great graphic of scientific literature and paradigm clustering, it reminded me of a serries of posts from last year on a taxonomy of scientists for the layman. I'll repost each entry and the author (below the fold):

THE LIFE SCIENCES

Biochemist:
Basically biochemists play with proteins. Usually this involves fancy machines that cost a ton of money. Proteins are subjected to centrifugation, electrophoresis, fast protein liquid chromatography, gel exclusion chromatography .... Incidentally these techniques are just sophisticated ways of pushing and shoving proteins around. If enough proteins clump together, biochemists get excited and call the clump a complex. If the complex is really big, the biochemist will call it the somethingosome. If you ask a biochemist to show you pretty data, he/she'll show you his/her bands. Biochemists kill cells for their precious bodily fluids.
(author: me)

Enzymologist:
This ancient breed of biologists, are the Greeks of the biomedical science world. Their tools of the trade are the secret ancient tools of kinetic measurement: specs, stop-flow devices, and the graph. Their forefathers are not Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, but Michaelis and Menten. This group sneer at the "neo-primitive" biochemists and molecular biologist with their puny gel derived bands. "A real scientist converts these raw, shadows of data, into platonic truths" (i.e. kinetic constants). While we are on the subject, enzymologists use Greek like lingo (i.e. Kcat, Km, Kd, Vmax and allostery). Beware! If enzymologists get really pissed they'll pull out Scatchard plots, Lineweaver-Burke plots and Hill coefficients. Recently enzymologists have discovered microscopy and are so full of themselves that they are now performing single molecule experiments. Enzymologists kill biochemists and molecular biologists, but fortunately this event is rare as the stuffing of lifeless bodies into homogenizers seems to be the rate limiting step in this reaction.
(author: me, inspired by Jim Hu)

Cell Biologist:
Cell biologists are the psychiatrists of the cellular world. They observe cell "behavior" through a microscope. They give cells drugs. They probe cells with microinjector needles. They shine big lasers ... well it's not always clear what they do with their lasers. A cell biologist asks big cellular questions like "How do cells crawl?" and "What is the meaning of dynamic instability?". At the end of the day, just before heading to the bar, cell biologists fix their subjects in either formaldehyde or a nice tall cool glass of methanol. These cells are then subjected to immunofluorescence and produce the dreaded colocalization death-trap-data ... beware if anyone gives you this type of data. When a cell biologist isn't killing cells, he/she is in a dark bar (cell biologists hate sunlight), getting wasted.
(author: me)

Molecular Geneticist:
Geneticists make mutants - that's it. You might think that this sounds boring, but you have to see it from their perspective. They're like the druids, or the freemasons ... in others words some club. Well really 3 or 4 clubs: fly geneticists, worm geneticists, yeast geneticists, and others. Incidentally this last group is the weirdest - they chant incantations such as "the awesome power of yeast genetics". And that's not to say that the others aren't weird. For example, fly geneticists torture the rest of the biological establishment by giving crazy names to their mutant flies (for example Sunday driver - whose neurons have aberrant vesicular traffic). The key to being a successful geneticist is to set up a good "genetic screen". If you ever meet geneticists, ask them about their screen; it'll make them happy. Using their powers, geneticists have probably had the most insightful discoveries of all the disciplines described here. Geneticists kill whole organisms, not only to find out what gene they've "knocked-out", but to see how their poor mutant creations look. Scary.
(author: me)

Structural Biologist:
These guys are strange hybrids of android-robots and neurotic psychopaths. Well actually, when they're not injecting themselves with caffeine (necessary to pipette one microliter aliquots a million times over), structural biologists are pretty nice guys. The key to structural biology is pick out a "hot" protein (or ribonucleic acid) and purify it. What is a hot protein? You know something to do with some disease, RNAi or anything that sounds hard to deal with (such as membrane proteins). Some structural biologists throw their protein sample in a big magnet; others spend three years in a vain attempt to crystallize it. After they figure out how to make crystals, the structural biologists fly over to the synchrotron in Chicago, blast their crystal with a monster X-ray beam and then race each other on tricycles. Structural biologists kill small furry animals, but only in their spare time. And they also like to write poetry.
(author: me)

Molecular Biologist:
Molecular biologists study things that end in NA. No, this is not an abbreviation for Not Applicable, but for Nucleic Acid, THE POLYMERS OF LIFE .... eh hem ... In a strange paradox, some molecular biologists perform biochemistry. And just like a biochemist, molecular biologists love bands. When they're not playing hookie with the cell biologists at the local pub, molecular biologists kill anything that have NAs in them, so beware.
(author: me)

Physiologist (Well actually this is a description of an electrophysiologist, but the the rest of us call them physiologists):
When you think of physiologists (or "molecular physiologists") think of one word ... electrodes. They stick electrodes everywhere, stimulating and measuring electric potentials as if tomorrow were the end of the world. If they are feeling good about themselves, physiologists will use the smallest darn instrument used on biological samples -- the PATCH CLAMP. This measures the current coming out of a single ion pore. Cell biologists with their puny microinjectors are jealous of physiologists' patch clamps. Electrophysiologists don't just kill animals, but will rip the beating heart out of their poor victims. Keep them away from your pets.
(author: me)

True Physiologist:
Not to be confused with their electrified robo-cousins (see electrophysiologist), they like meat, not just puny molecules or cells. Here is what one local expert has to say:

think of Knut Schmidt-Nielsen and integration of information about function across many levels - from molecules, through cells, tissues and organs, to organ systems and whole organisms, with quite a lot of mathematical and/or conceptual models borrowed from physics

Physiologists like body parts. If you're pet is missing a leg, you'll know where to look.
(author: me with help from coturnix)

Chronobiologist:
These long forgotten zombie-cousins of the physiologists, have a screwed up sense of timing and a totally messed up work-schedules. If you go in a lab at 4am and see a guy with big black bags under his eyes centrifuging yet another batch of blood samples in a semi-dark lab, with a sleeping bag on the floor in the corner, you are in a chronobiology lab. After about 36 hours of straight work, the guy dissappears for the rest of the week and the PI does not care about him missing at all. Chronobiologist kill time (and that's a good thing for your pets!)
(author: coturnix)

Developmental Biologist:
Developmental biologist are like geneticists, but even more specialized. If geneticists were the card carrying free masons, developmental biologists are their recluse hermit cousins. Each developmental biologist specializes in some arcane feature (for example the pancreas) and know every minutiae of their obsession. This leads them deeper into the darkest part of the forest. Eventually this trail leads to transcription factors and signaling pathways. Once they come back to civilization and discuss their findings, all the other biologists flee from their histological slides. Some of the scariest things you'll hear from a developmental biologist is the words "promoter bashing" (it's some satanic procedure that they picked up from the molecular biologists). Again instead of killing organisms like geneticists do, developmental biologists go one step further and kill fetuses.
(author: me)

Systems Biologist:
System biologists are the newest branch on the life-sciences tree. No one is sure who, or what they are, only that some of them are ex-string physicists, others are bioinformatics guys, and the rest are biologists who have spent too much time playing Simcity or Civilization. Systems biologists collect data from all the other disciplines and then build their own fancy computer generated models. When they're done they head over to the pub and show off their fancy flow diagrams to the other biologists. Those systems guys try hard to impress the others, using words like "in silico", but no one pays any attention. If they're really desperate, systems guys will start using words ending with 'omics. Since systems biologists would love to kill, but not sure how to do it, they are mostly harmless.
(author: me)

Big Biologists:
Big Biologists were once little biologists. Some have even called themselves Systems Biologists. They saw the physicists with their particle colliders and rocketships. They saw their computer scientists with their huge mainframes. The little biologist became envious and started to ask "why can't we do big things?" They then started using Chips to analyze every gene. They crossed every mutant they had. "Think huge" First came genomics, then proteomics, then kinomics, ubiquitomics, phosphomics, p53omics. But in the end most of it was artifactomics.
I'm not sure what big biologists would kill, probably something really big, like the entire field of Biology.
(author: Pip)

Microbiologist:
This is really a modifier, like "smelly". In a strange paradox, microbiologists use one of the approaches described above (such as biochemistry, genetics or molecular biology) but have their own society and meetings (I guess they want to feel good about themselves). Microbiologists kill bacteria OR yeast (for historic reasons only) ... however, many "yeast people" now deny that they had anything to do with microbiology. Thus microbiologists now are mostly prokaryote researchers. With all the funding to bioterrorism, some microbiologists are actually quite happy these days.
(author: me)

Ecologist:
Ecology has come a long way since the days of identifying and counting common things like lizards or trees. The introduction of mathematical theory, herald by the great Robert MacArthur in the early 60's was the turning point of the discipline. Ecologist now a day, mostly study a critter commonly known as the computer. Other equally studied organisms include nitrogen, phosphorus, and carbon. In fact, a colleague mentioned at a recent scientific conference where a renowned ecologist gave the plenary address, "that guy wouldn't recognize a lizard if it bit him in the a$$."
Ecologists kill ... yeah I know there is no way that some ecologist is going to kill anything ... I am now told that ecologists kill a wide diversity of things: fish, lizards, insects, birds, grasses (especially invasive ones), and more! But they do feel really bad about it. (See comments)
(author: TrekJunkie)

CHEMISTRY

Chemist:
(A little broad, I know but that's all I got)
You can recognize chemists by the pump oil stains, pocketful of Allen wrenches, and disdain for research that uses actual chemicals on a daily basis. Also, the alcoholism that comes with trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with an instrument that you built yourself. Chemists use poison their victims.
(autrhor: The Disgruntled Chemist)

PS: Chemists send in your definitions!

PHYSICS
(for more complete definitions see Chad Orzel's massive post)
PS: Physicists send in your definitions! (AND MKE THEM SNARKY!)

ANTHROPOLOGISTS
(ripped off Afarensis' great post)

Linguistic Anthropologists:
Very mysterious group that no one understands so we lock them in a closet with a copy of Grims' Fairytales.

Cultural Anthropologists:
Usually found in obscure and exotic locations talking about the self referential speaking of truth to power in the larger metanarrative of power relations between dialogues of ethnicity and gender. It's all rather complicated, and if they get recursive it can give you a headache. There is another group of cultural anthropologists who study geneaologies and spend a lot of time talking about crow kinship systems and cross cousin marriages and such. It's very abstract ...

Archaeologists:
Spend a lot of time digging holes and looking for old thingmajingies. Usually have long hair and such so an archaeology conference can be mistaken for a hippie get together. There are several types of archaeologists.
Bioarchaeologists, for example are the mutant offspring of archaeologists and osteologists (see below). They spend a lot of time crawling around in the dirt looking for bones to compare. In Harry Potter the main evil character is referred to by some euphism such as 'He-who-must-not-be-named" or some such, in anthropology this role is filled by the artifact typologist (really, don't talk to these people or your head will explode - fair warning) who spend a lot of time arguing over whether attributes of artifacts are real or just statistical associations. Another type of archaeologist is the experimental archaeologist - but don't be fooled by the name they don't use test tubes or particle accelerators or anything. Instead they try to recreate the lifestyle of the people (dead - so you'd think it would be easy) they study. So they spend a lot of time knapping flints and reassembling flint cores and stuff.

Physical Anthropologists:
There are a wide variety of physical anthropologists.
Paleoanthropologists - spend a lot of time in hot nasty locations being attacked by scorpions (although, oddly enough they tend to avoid Australia). Like all phsyical anthropologists, paleoanthropologists love bones (this is the primitive condition for physical anthropology - cladistically speaking) the older the better. The quickest way to tell if you are dealing with a paleo is to hand them a bone - if they dismissively toss it aside and say something like "recent Holocene" while they are doing it you know you are speaking to a paleo. Paleoanthropologist also love to name their bones with long unpronounceable names like "Wangapithecus inyoureyeieye"
Osteologists - Loooove bones! Give them a bone and they will happily sit in a corner and burble at it for days or even weeks...Legend has it Osteologists once mated with archaeologists and the result was the bioarchaeologist...
Human Variation - see just from the title you know they are non-conformists. Anthropologists who study human variation display the autapomorphic trait of not being totally mesmerized by bones - it's all very strange. Anyway, since they use a lot of concepts and math from genetics most consider them spies sent over by the biology department.
Forensic Anthropologists - these guys are kind of creepy. Usually don't show up unless the remains were in such bad condition that the coroner engaged in projectile vomiting for four hours. But at least they like bones. They are kind of like the osteologist and kind of like bioarchaeologists cause they like to compare bones so they learn about sex...of the bones, as well as ethnicity and height and stuff.

OK additions are more than welcome (and also spread the word ... I'd like a complete volume of the Taxonomy of Geeks ...)

UPDATE *****
(I'm trying to compile all these entries into one post - but maybe this should turn into a wiki)

Immunologists:
Rumor has it that these reclusive scientists are the result of physiology getting into an amorous fist-fight with molecular biology, then with cell biology, microbiology, epidemiology, and histology being later inadvertently drawn in. Recognizable by their hunched back from endless hood work and running nose from coating every thing around them, even paper, with bleach.
Not only will they kill small furry things, but they'll make them sick first as well. Keep those who talk about immune system programming away from small children.
(author:Toaster Sunshine)

Conservation Biologist:
A relatively new strain of biologist, some type of hybrid between and Ecologist and a Population Biologist, with a little Zoologist and Botanist thrown in for good measure. Typically found either hip deep in a swamp somewhere or covered in sweat in the rainforest. These -ists attempt to quantify the destruction of natural things by unnatural invaders. If you can get them out of their natural habitat, they will painstakingly explain to you why you need to be spending more money on conservation questions than anything else in the sciences, and why coal is bad. They usually drive hybrid cars or ride bicycles and dress in hemp. Conservation biologists would like to kill killers of endangered species but they honestly have better things to do.
(author: Jamie)

GENETICS
(all of which are ripped off of RPM's entry.)

Classical population geneticists:
These people are loyal to the early theory of Wright, Fisher, et al, and they still argue about it. They probably never stepped foot in a wet lab, or if they did it was to run an allozyme gel. They still have not caught wind of the molecular revolution. Chances are they are either emeritus, dead, or a historian/philosopher of biology. Talk to these guys if you want to know all of the theory that allows you to study evolutionary genetics.

Molecular ecologists:
These guys are really just ecologists (aka, people that like to count things) who have discovered that if they run a few PCRs they can infer population structure in their species of choice. They can easily be distinguished from other molecular population geneticists by their interest in non-model organisms and crappy molecular markers (microsatellites, mtDNA, rRNA).

Molecular population geneticists:
They have sequenced multiple alleles of some gene (probably Adh) from a single species (of Drosophila). They then ran it through the same stable of tests for selection that everyone else does. You can recognize the higher ranking members of this group by their knowledge of coalescent theory.

Human population geneticists:
They use the same data analysis techniques as the molecular population geneticists, but they don't do any of the sequencing themselves. Instead, they mine HapMap for SNPs to find out how humans migrated around the world and answer important questions like what genes make Scandinavians blonde.

Systematicists:
These guys are the taxonomists of evolutionary geneticists, only they study systematics and not taxonomy. Anyway, they basically try to find out how different species are related and they come up with phylogenies for a bunch of species. They may work with the molecular ecologists to do some phylogeography.

Evolutionary developmental biologists:
These guys study evo-devo, but calling them evo-devo-ers sounds like they're being labeled evildoers or they like guys in funny hats. They are characterized by their love of taking cis regulatory regions from one species and attaching them to a gene from another species. They are really no different from developmental biologists, except they incorporate something about evolution in the abstract of their paper.

Data miners:
Realizing that all of the genes they'll ever need have already been sequenced and deposited in the NCBI database, these guys' grant applications include requests for faster computers, bigger servers, and grad students from the computer science department. They have taken over many biology departments because they don't require any wet-lab space. Using their fancy computer programs, they compare genomes searching for highly conserved sequences, rapidly evolving sequences, and other things that some biologist told them are of interest. Chances are, they have never actually seen the organism they are studying.

Molecular evolutionists:
Every taxonomic group needs its own grab bag of species that do not fit in any other taxon. These guys may sequence genes from multiple species, but they aren't all that interested in systematics. They usually don't sequence enough individuals from a single species to be considered population geneticists. They employ many of the same analytical techniques that the data miners do, but they use their own data. They really like to compare synonymous and non-synonymous substitutions and rates of evolution along lineages.