"The scientist is an expert in multiple fields of study. Don’t get me wrong, most PhD scientists I know have a solid foundation in chem/physics/bio, but it’s not super common to find a person who has a PhD-level of understanding in all of those fields. I hate it in movies when the ecologist somehow develops a vaccine, or the meteorologist manages to predict an earthquake . Like, a PhD is so narrow in scope. A biologist who studies fish probably can’t answer s@#t about snakes... let alone create a vaccine for a novel virus."