The most ironical fact is to explain what it means to be a data scientist to almost everyone who think that it is Version 2.0 of reporting analyst or even worse a database administrator. Even the people who put money on these unusual professionals expect them to sort out the data shortcomings and produce reports every now and then !
Understanding data and being capable to make unruly data worthwhile for decision making does not necessarily mean that it’s a data scientist job to bring discipline to the data chaos. In fact it’s a virtue that often gets misread as the core capability of data scientists and the real benefits of using these minds and skills to solve business problems or identifying new business opportunities often take backseat.