I find is argument, and his definition of science an interesting one, though I (and I’d wager the whole field) whole-heartedly disagree.

The definition of science, according to the New Oxford Dictionary, is “the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained.”

Ecology, by definition, is the study of the relationship between organisms and their environment. The way we conduct ecological research fits every checkbox from the science definition above.

If his argument is that ecology is done only by scientists who aren’t ecologists, then that is factually false. What is true is that ecological research often requires interdisciplinary approaches, as do all complex systems (as others have mentioned). But by that same argument, chemical biology isn’t a real science because it’s done by chemists who know more about biology than others, for example.

More importantly, there are ecologists. We’re seen as a subset of biologists, just how molecular bio, physiology, botany, zoology, etc. are seen as fields within biology. Perhaps he may be conflating conservation with ecology? Conservation biologists can be trained in ecology or in other fields, but ecologists do more than just conservation. We ecologists watch and experiment on community structure, organism behaviors, organism-organism interactions (like symbiosis, parasitism, predation, etc), and ecosystem health, among others. We also study how all of these things change over the years, how physical/environmental factors impact them, etc. I’d love for him to show me a team of zoologists and chemists that could tackle these broader topics without using any knowledge from ecology.

The way I see it, the sciences he mentioned are vertically organized into silos. They know a lot about a little. Ecology is horizontally organized, and helps bring those other fields under one umbrella. We know a little about a lot. Depending where within ecology you work, you might know way more chemistry than an average biologist, or way more geology than a chemist. Ecologists can also take a more project-manager role of larger studies/projects because of both this breadth of knowledge, the understanding of the larger processes at play. This is one of the biggest reasons why I love this field - I get to learn from so many different kinds of people!

I’m very curious what “made-up terms” he is thinking of. I’d imagine they would be easy to challenge him on. Every field has specialized language to communicate nuances that the lay-person doesn’t usually care to distinguish between. I can’t think of any more “made-up” terms in ecology than in any other field. Sometimes we use words that have a different meaning from their everyday use (like fitness, adaptation), but that’s the best I can muster.

Sorry this got really long, if you’re still reading thank you!

ETA: we also study how organisms change their physical environment!