I know we have our Marxist definition and all that, but it seems to be a really pervasive 
, everywhere I go. Some people I've talked to think for instance, all scientists are silver spooned and never worked a day in their life because they don't do construction, or whatever.
How do you argue with people like this? Can you?
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Do they think barbers are working class?
Scientists are kinda hard case, they are state's "venture" capital (low chance of high reward) worker, with relatively unpredictable results. Private scientists are absolutely workers, government's ones also have some leeway due to patents/"starting their own firm"(tm)
But then again, they aren't paid shit unless they are big boss
Scientists still sell their labour for some form of compensation/wage even when employed by the government. It’s not like they own any means of production which they can let others work on and extract the surplus value they produce.
I mean in casual conversation i assume people are talking non-marxist, cultural signifiers, definitions, so gotta meet them where they are at. E.g. shit salary, need to rent, shit healthcare, shit job security
The scientist one is so weird to me, as a scientist, because there I see no other way to describe us than working class, aside from professors specifically.
I get paid shit, own nothing, and it’s not even a cushy do nothing email job, I do a lot of physical labor. It may not be construction worker level of physical labor, but I regularly get over 15,000 steps a day walking around the facility, I constantly have to move heavy shit around, deal with dangerous chemicals, clean gross messes, shit like that, and all of that was worse when I worked in an agriculture lab where half the time it was literally just working in a corn field.
Do mean that, very rarely, they can get lucky with a product/new science thing and potentially make some good cash from a firm/create their own?
From state point of view investments in science are small and very wide, sometimes (most of the times) you get knowledge that bugs do be like that, but sometimes you get atom bomb or genetically modified organisms.
People financing science can't know where this shit will come from, so state usually casts wide net across all fields and hope for the best.
The funded organizations also will give funding to the best projects. Does that mean most interesting? Most likely to succeed? Biggest potential commercial/industrial application? It obviously depends.
Scientists employed by the government (or by anyone else) don't reap the profits of their research. They're just another worker on the grindstone, usually without full control over what they research and how.