Forum:wet-lab vs dry-lab scientists

Question

[igor]

This is slightly off-topic, but is there a good term to label and differentiate wet-lab and dry-lab workers? I have seen a few different options, but have not been very happy with any of them. It would be nice to have the various alternatives in a single thread.

For example: Probably a lot of members here have something like "helping biologists analyze big data" in their CV. This specific wording assumes that whoever doing the analysis is not a biologist (so computational biologist not a biologist).

Answer 1

[GenoMax]

Experimental/bench/field scientist/biologist = someone actually doing something at the bench/out in field
Computational/Bioinformatics/Informatics/Data Scientist = Everyone else not doing actual bench experiments but still contributing to data management/analysis

Many may wear both hats at different times.

Answer 2

[Jean-Karim Heriche]

While the distinction will persist for some time I believe the boundary is going to become more fuzzy as time passes. I already see more and more people writing code to acquire and/or work on their data (before anyone asks: yes, you may have to write code to acquire wet lab data, for example, building a classifier so that your microscope only acquires images of what you want) and while I now spend all my time on the dry side of things, I consider myself a biologist because I work on biological questions.