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> In the past, science was an eccentric hobby, not particularly valued and certainly not a viable career option. Today it's all of these things - like becoming

by knzhou 7y ago

> In the past, science was an eccentric hobby, not particularly valued and certainly not a viable career option. Today it's all of these things - like becoming a doctor. Really! That's news to me. Are you aware of how much scientists are paid and their general career prospects?

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
The average tenured professor salary in the US is $141k. Star research directors with a proven record of bringing in grant money can easily earn two or three times that. In engineering, physics, med, and bio there are also lucrative consultancy opportunities. The average scientist outside academia is probably doing grunt work and is paid badly - unless they're working in fintech, or something with an obvious financial upside. The reality is that the entire research system is optimised for direct and indirect cash accumulation, not for genuine innovation or invention. There's some interest in blue sky funding, but if you're a fresh postgrad no grant body is going to give you a lot of money to go off and design a working warp drive unless you also have the bureaucratic skills to make your project sound like something they want to fund - probably for other reasons. Researchers with good bureaucratic skills and genius-level scientific insights are exceptionally rare. And the publishing system isn't welcoming to talented semi-outsiders Newton, Einstein, Darwin, and Ramanujan would really struggle in today's environment. Newton might be okay if he managed to get tenure, but the others not so much.
PeterisP 7y ago
The big difference is that currently scientists are paid and their research equipment funded by someone else; contrasting to the earlier times where usually you could be a scientist if and only if had "passive income" (usually, inherited wealth), so that you would not need to work to earn money and could instead study (and pay for studies in a world without student loans) and research instead of that.

by knzhou 7y ago

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago

The average tenured professor salary in the US is $141k. Star research directors with a proven record of bringing in grant money can easily earn two or three times that. In engineering, physics, med, and bio there are also lucrative consultancy opportunities. The average scientist outside academia is probably doing grunt work and is paid badly - unless they're working in fintech, or something with an obvious financial upside. The reality is that the entire research system is optimised for direct and indirect cash accumulation, not for genuine innovation or invention. There's some interest in blue sky funding, but if you're a fresh postgrad no grant body is going to give you a lot of money to go off and design a working warp drive unless you also have the bureaucratic skills to make your project sound like something they want to fund - probably for other reasons. Researchers with good bureaucratic skills and genius-level scientific insights are exceptionally rare. And the publishing system isn't welcoming to talented semi-outsiders Newton, Einstein, Darwin, and Ramanujan would really struggle in today's environment. Newton might be okay if he managed to get tenure, but the others not so much.

PeterisP 7y ago

The big difference is that currently scientists are paid and their research equipment funded by someone else; contrasting to the earlier times where usually you could be a scientist if and only if had "passive income" (usually, inherited wealth), so that you would not need to work to earn money and could instead study (and pay for studies in a world without student loans) and research instead of that.