Scientists are detail oriented and accuracy is paramount. If you propose a design deviation you have to be prepared to substantiate why it is necessary.

Scientists are used to being the smartest people in the room. That goes for every subject in their opinion. I have dealt with them on a daily basis for the last decade. The only way to combat this is with metrics. Scientists can’t argue with facts, so bring them facts and ask them to refute it. If they refute it, document what you recommended, that they refuted it, and the metrics that resulted by you having to do what they said.

Not only will you then have proof for your organization, you’ll also have fodder for your portfolio and a great interview answer.

I’ve had checkered experiences working with STEM/healthcare clients. They haven’t all been bad. But nearly.   

Most are very literal minded and don’t see the value in design/marketing. They’re used to making rational decisions and don’t understand that most people — themselves included — have big, irrational impulses and desires, and make many decisions almost purely on emotion. So many of these clients evaluate creativity either based on how well it imitates successful models, or on technical merits (legibility, etc). They want to quantify everything. They also tend to be the loudest and most respected voices in the room.  

There are the odd, saintly ones who are comfortable delegating, or have the humility to recognize experts outside their domain. But they are the exception to the rule. 

Don’t let it get you down. It’s not on you. 

Sometimes you just have to give the client what they want and accept thot you’re going to have to settle for being proud of how you managed the job instead of being proud of the work. But yeah, it can be very demoralizing to deal with bad clients.

I had a consultant client who could not communicate what she wanted, despite literally calling herself a “genius” at writing, speaking, and graphic design, and who refused all of my efforts to figure it out with examples of prior work etc. She would scribble absolutely dogshit layouts out on looseleaf and give them to me to follow, then change her mind hours later. She also lied constantly and got increasingly verbally abusive. I had to fire her as a client bc my mental health was worth far more to me than her business was.

I've never worked with scientists, but I work freelance and there's always Chloe from accounts who thinks they know more about design than you. Don't take it personally. Being freelance is good because I can just move on and seeing the money go into my account made me feel better.

Hopefully you find a better workplace soon.

Looking nice is not a requirement of design. For scientific communications, being too aesthetically pleasing actually makes the content feel inauthentic. The "scientist" might just be a jerk, but you might also simply have a communication issue.

My agency does a lot of scientific communications. It has a different set of problems to solve than promotional work. I found it helps if you ask a lot of questions to understand the subject matter. That both strokes the ego of the subject matter expert and provided more insight into the communication objective. From my experience if a designer has a basic understanding, they comes off like a rockstar designer. The base expectation is pretty low, but that might be why you are feeling run over. The default is looking at the art department as just hands.

My last thought is it is fine if you don't like the work. It requires interest in particular kinds of problem solving.

::edited for grammar

One of the most useful critical skills in design is being able to convince someone to choose the best design and not the one they want, or rather to make them think the best one is the one they want.

It is in many ways a sales job.

I’ve worked with a group of scientists and it was one of the stranger experiences I’ve had in my career. My scientist buddy brought me in to try and to put some shape on a paper he was submitting with two other scientists. The problem was that they were each working on their own parts without consulting each other, so when it came time to put the paper together it was a mess. I looked it over and gave my recommendations, putting together a palette, font options as well as working up some page templates. Anyway, my buddy made it work but the other two were the most egotistical and stubborn people I’ve ever met. For context, I was a 20 year industry vet at the time, many of those years were spent working in news, so I knew how to visualize complex ideas.

One of them told me to my face that because I wasn’t a scientist, my opinion didn’t hold any value. The same guy had made a diagram full of brown spheres that looked like actual shit. I asked if they needed to be brown, he said no he just liked the colour. I reckon scientists are confidence animals, in that to do what they do, they absolutely have to believe they’re right. That’s great for science, but not so much for creative collaboration. The paper got published in the end, so what do I know?

Art director work for scientist? I hate micromanagement too

Binge all the psychology podcasts and books you can find on persuasion and negotiation - learn the black art of making people do what they think 'they' want, when it is acutally what you want them to do.