system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Star Trek] Why doesn’t the Enterprise-D have a dedicated science officer?

Seems odd the most important ship in the Federation doesn’t have a chief science officer. The chief engineer and chief of ops have to double up and do that job in addition to their own whenever a big science issue arises. We know there are science officers and science departments - who does the biology officer report to?
gpt
I saw a good argument once that Picard himself was the senior Science Officer.  Each of the departments reports up through different senior staff because of the size of the -D's science efforts (astronavigation, biology, warp field physics, would report up through Ops, Medical, and Engineering respectively).  Picard and Riker act as the point people for questions that focus on running the ship, otherwise individual experiments are too varied for any one person to understand all of them.