Almost everyone knows what to say when asked what an architect is for or what a doctor's job entails. The answer is usually less clear if asked about a politician: someone who "does politics" or who "is involved in politics" will probably be the answer, leaving aside other less pleasant qualifiers. Even less obvious is the role of political scientists: a group that is little recognized but has been acquiring greater public prominence in recent years. In this essay, Josep Maria Vallès takes a broad tour of the profession: how political scientists come to be considered as such, what positions they occupy in the world of work and what functions they perform. But is their work socially useful? Not much if they only add to the political-media hubbub, feeding the inflation of occasional comments. But they are when they carry out rigorous studies and get involved with their specialized knowledge in the critical analysis of the most pressing collective problems —growth of inequality, gender discrimination, public corruption, environmental depredation or erosion of rights and social policies— trying to achieve better living conditions for society. The same usefulness to which those who began to reflect and debate about politics in classical Greece of the 5th century BC aspired. c.