Outlook is frosty for weather forecasters – our least-trusted scientists

MANY a countryside walk or barbecue has been scuppered by an inaccurate weather forecast, with a smiling TV presenter promising clear skies when a deluge proves the order of the day.

Now, years of ruined plans have taken their toll on the public perception, with meteorologists perceived as some of the least competent scientists by the general public.

Academics from the University of Amsterdam ran a study to learn what people thought of scientific professions.

More than 1,400 people from the UK and US filled in questionnaires and were asked to name as many scientific professions as they could in five minutes, leading to 35 answers, ranging from zoologists to data scientists.

This list was then shown to people who were asked to rank on a scale of one to seven how competent, intelligent, skilled, likeable, warm, friendly, honest, sincere and trustworthy a person who did each job was.

Meteorologists came third bottom for the competence metric, with an average score of just 5.66. Sociologists (5.46) and psychologists (5.55) were the only two to score worse in the study published in Scientific Reports.

Food scientists and climatologists round out the bottom five, while at the other end of the spectrum, nuclear sci- entists and nuclear physicists came joint top, with a grade of 6.33.

Mathematicians, rocket scientists and biochemists were the third, fourth and fifth most competent, respectively.

However, although the nuclear experts are seen as being the most intelligent and best at their jobs, they are also viewed as being the coldest, receiving the lowest “warmth” rating.

For morality, however, both meteorologists and nuclear physicists are in the bottom three, with reservations about their moral compass. Only computer scientists (5.10) scored worse than nuclear physicists (5.13) and meteorologists (5.24) for morality.

On the flip side, the most moral scientists, according to the study, are natureminded academics, with botanists, ecologists, zoologists, oceanographers and marine biologists scoring highest.

Mr Vukašin Gligorić, lead author of the study and a social psychologist PhD candidate, said there is no clear explanation as to why some professions are viewed differently to others.

“These perceptions could reflect some truth – maybe marine biologists are indeed warmer than computer scientists,” he said. “Another possibility could be perception of the field (which again begs the question of their cause).”

Other possibilities are that gender stereotypes play a role, or that people feel closer to some professions.

“Probably all play some role, but we would need more research,” he added.