The field of statistics and the role of the statistician are largely misunderstood. I think some of this stems from an outdated notion of statistics (i.e. before data became “big”, before the advent of high-powered computing, before the proliferation of computer-intensive methods, etc.), and some of it stems from a simple lack of education about what statistics is and can do (and therefore about what statisticians do). The above link takes you to a campaign by the ASA to help demystify the discipline of statistics and debunk old myths about statisticians.
There are so many written pieces about the role of statistics in the modern (read: data science/big data/analytics) era, but one of my favorites is here.