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The Broken U.S. Jobs Factory: Too Many Athletes, Too Few Scientists?

24 points by cwan 16y ago

bhousel 16y ago
> How would society, or more specifically government, even go about inspiring a cultural change to value scientists? Any ideas? "Too many athletes, too few scientists" is a broken premise: Elite athletes are valuable only because they are scarce. Government is doing plenty to make scientists scarce as well, so perhaps we will get our wish granted, in a perverse way.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Government is doing plenty to make scientists scarce as well... Like what?
  - tdrgabi 16y ago
    salaries. I guess an academic career is not a highly payed one.
    - CWuestefeld 16y ago
      If the government is determining the salaries of more than a small minority of scientists, then we've got other problems too. Shouldn't most scientists be getting their pay from universities, or the R&D departments of corporations? I mean, the CDC and NASA don't employ that many people in the grand scheme of things.
      - kd0amg 16y ago
        Shouldn't most scientists be getting their pay from universities, or the R&D departments of corporations? I mean, the CDC and NASA don't employ that many people in the grand scheme of things. You don't have to be an employee of CDC or NASA to get your pay via government funding. The university signs my paychecks, but the money comes from an NSF research grant to my co-advisor.
    - deleted 16y ago
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    - deleted 16y ago
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    - yummyfajitas 16y ago
      Salaries are low because supply greatly exceeds demand.
      - xiaoma 16y ago
        That still doesn't mean that the nation or world is better off, even economically, with the current number of scientists. The problem with using simplistic economic models when talking about scientific research is that it's extremely hard to quantify its value. Basic research has made tremendous advances in our health, standard of living and general wealth. It's also very difficult to determine how much each person's contribution was worth. I've read that surveys of late 19th industrialists and leaders who voted steam engine improvements as the most critical field for technological advancement for the next 100 years. It's an amusing idea in retrospect, but who would have paid for research that would lead to flight or electric rail? CDs, lasers, integrated circuits, etc... are great! But what kind of "demand" was there for research into quantum mechanics 80 years ago? Even if the demand were quantified, how much would each scientists contribution be rewarded? Surely, Feynman and other scientists building upon Einstein and Heisenberg's ideas created something of great wealth for us! But for the most part, those scientists won neither fame nor riches. As long as the focus is on simple short-term supply and demand, this is how it works. The scientist makes a clean pass, but it's the businessman or the engineer who takes the ball the last few paces, scores and gets all the glory. I for one believe that China is doing it right in this regard. The government is taking the lead in subsidising and investing in technological infrastructure as well as basic research to create more opportunities for private entrepreneurs in the long run.
  - CWuestefeld 16y ago
    Well, limiting the areas that can be researched might have some effect. We've all heard the horror stories about IT research being shut down because, e.g., various security problems "need" to be kept hidden. And direct regulation affects research into medical marijuana, or stem cell treatments. If the government is limiting research, then they're lowering the demands for scientists (or lowering the pay of a fixed pool of scientists). And if I can broaden your question to engineers as well, there's some reason to think that our patent regime may be stifling innovation, which similarly decreases the demand for engineers.
  - bhousel 16y ago
    Well, my main concerns are: Cuts in spending on education, politicization of primary school curricula, immigration and travel policies that discourage talented scientists from working here, and general anti-intellectualism in politics. But maybe I was a bit harsh. The government does fund a lot of research..
    - yummyfajitas 16y ago
      Apart from immigration/travel policies, how does this stuff affect science at all? Lets take anti-intellectualism in science. It's true that a few high profile intellectuals (e.g. James Watson) have lost their jobs do to this and that there are certain questions you Just Can't Ask (e.g., "would climate change be a good thing?"). But do you really think anyone will avoid a career in science for fear of that happening? I mean, it might scare me away from psychometrics of race/gender as a field, but it wouldn't prevent me from working on quantum mechanics. As for reducing the cost of k-12 education closer to the OECD average, why would I avoid physics as a result?
- deleted 16y ago
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  - CWuestefeld 16y ago
    People only watch them on TV because of their super-human performance. They achieve that through a mixture of hard training and innate ability. I mean, it doesn't matter how hard I train. I'm never going to play like Michael Jordan, or drive like Michael Schumacher. So this avenues for greatness are closed to me. EDIT: I hate when people delete a comment, leaving a reply orphaned. I was replying to a comment that said that these sports stars got there through hard work.
    - jamesbritt 16y ago
      EDIT: I hate when people delete a comment, leaving a reply orphaned. I was replying to a comment that said that these sports stars got there through hard work. Not to get too meta, but that's one reason I've taken to including a quote from most comments I reply to.
      - CWuestefeld 16y ago
        Even more meta: I've taken to including a quote When you quote by indenting, as you have above, it forces some layout decisions on the browser. Frequently this style results in the page rendering wider than the browser window, so I need to deal with the horizontal scroll bar. I wish people would always quote with asterisks, or that pg would give us a BLOCKQUOTE mechanism.
- manvsmachine 16y ago
  Elite athletes are valuable only because they are scarce. That statement is vacuous in regards to the argument he's trying to make. Anyone who is elite at what they do is scarce, regardless of occupation; that's essentially the meaning of being elite. What sets athletes apart is the degree to which society rewards that eliteness.
jswinghammer 16y ago
When you're a kid being an athlete seems like a great job but almost no one I've met tried to go professional. This is a pretty silly premise. Scientists seem to be in good supply given that they don't seem to make very much money-at least in the circles I run in here in Boston.
CWuestefeld 16y ago
We respect elementary school teachers, but their starting salary is squat. Conversely auditors and accountants are considered mind-numbing jobs, but they're paid nicely. This is false. I just checked average salaries (see http://www.salarylist.com/all-accountant-real-jobs-salary.htm http://www.salarylist.com/all-accountant-real-jobs-salary.ht... and http://www.salarylist.com/all-teacher-real-jobs-salary.htm http://www.salarylist.com/all-teacher-real-jobs-salary.htm ). The difference is less than 10%. The average accountant job listed is $40,461. The average teacher job listed is $37,200. (in my area of NJ, even a entry-level teacher makes more than that) There really seems to be a whole mythology about low teacher pay, but this just isn't true. It's not true on a nominal scale, and it's even less true when you factor in the days off and other benefits.
- loganfrederick 16y ago
  Might just be me, but those numbers just make me feel bad for accountants too, as opposed to thinking teachers are getting great pay.
  - tshauck 16y ago
    Don't feel too bad, this probably considers all accountants... had they stayed in school an extra year for the CPA, they probably make twice that.
- tokenadult 16y ago
  Yes, the big fallacy about teacher compensation is to take compensation as consisting only of nominal salary, and not also of employer-funded (that is, taxpayer-funded) benefits and working conditions. Schoolteachers are well compensated in relation to barriers to entry to the occupation and in terms of performance standards imposed on the occupation. (I am a teacher in private practice. I have to convince my clients to pay out of pocket for my services after their children have already attended tax-subsidized classes at other hours of the day.)
- smanek 16y ago
  The problem is that a teacher's salary is weighted more towards the tail end of their career than most other professions. In my high school, we had gym teachers who had been there for 30 years earning well over a $100K. And we had an ingenious (new) Math teacher earning $40K. Over his career, the new Math teacher will probably earn reasonably well (especially when you take into account the extraordinarily generous pension and benefits, 3 months of vacation time a year, etc). But, the first 10 years (which is probably the time of his life that he's getting married, having young kids, trying to buy a house, etc) are going to be pretty tough.
tomjen3 16y ago
Not just scientists, but everybody who uses their minds at their job. And the solution? Simple, in High School Nerds needs to go at the absolute top of the hierarchy. That will encourage more people to end up there.
- dagw 16y ago
  Wouldn't it be much better to make science and math less 'nerdy' and wash away the stigma that only nerds can be good at it.
tokenadult 16y ago
"Why are we so good at building athletes and not so good at producing, say, writers?" Perhaps because almost any member of the general public, even someone like me with a low interest in most sports, is aware of who is the best in a sport. I may not play much baseball, but I know in general which teams are at the top of the league tables in the professional leagues, and I can identify a difficult, skillful play when I watch it on television even if I can't perform it. Professional sports have entertainment value for almost everyone. By contrast, writing (a career I have long aspired to pursue) is completely opaque to the many members of the general public who never, ever read a book after they complete their secondary schooling. It's harder to tell who is the best writer (there are published best-seller lists, but those include books by celebrities who are writing through unnamed ghostwriters) and it's harder for someone uninterested in writing to appreciate a well crafted story or even a well turned written phrase. The biggest rewards at the top of the distribution of developed ability go to performers whose performances are appealing to and appreciated by nearly all consumers. The article has a too-brief discussion about its main point (rather than the illustrative question quoted above), how to encourage young people to pursue careers in science. This is of deep interest to me, as my third son is deeply interested in biology and wants to know all about science in general. Young people develop an interest in baseball, football, and soccer (my son's sport) partly by early pleasant experiences in playing backyard games with siblings or neighbors and perhaps by participating in organized youth sports programs. Many fewer young people have pick-up opportunities to engage in science and especially few have opportunities as early and as often to engage in thoughtfully organized science programs. (My son travels fifty minutes each way once a week to go across our metropolitan area for a joint science class for homeschoolers arranged by a friend of mine. He finds that experience highly motivational. We drive past tens of thousands of children his age languishing in public schools at the same hour as we travel to those weekly classes.) More needs to be done for the young to get them good instruction at young ages in science and math. http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf And, yes, helpful comments like President Obama's comment on science fair winners in the State of the Union address need to be made more often by national leaders, and more press coverage of top scientists would be very welcome. But it would be enough simply to instruct young people well in mathematics and science and nurture their curiosity about those subjects through extracurricular activities as they grow up. That's mostly what works for the countries that do better than the United States in bringing up new generations of scientists. http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2009highlights_4.asp http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2009highlights_4.asp After edit: I have opened a separate Ask HN thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2396184 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2396184 to ask HNers for specific suggestions to encourage interest in science among young people. Thanks for any suggestions you have.
xiaoma 16y ago
The whole prestige issue is a tough one. From what I've seen in Chinese schools it's just completely different from what I remember from American schools. The girls tend to like really smart guys. Testing into a top high school or college means you're a winner and you're going somewhere. In the US, being a somewhat dense football player bound for a blue-collar life will get far more respect than just about any level of academic achievement. Of course some remarkable people get into the sciences later, like Craig Venter did. It's still a huge loss to lose all those who would have gotten a solid foundation in their teen years if only it were valued in high school, though. Edit: This is a lot of downmods... and it's a little hard to understand. Any of you care to voice counter-arguments?
- api 16y ago
  Watch Rocky II, the one with Rocky fighting the almost-robotic Russian. That movie explains a lot about the American myth-of-itself. (And it is rubbish, of course. During the cold war the USA was far more high-tech-- far closer to the robot-Russian-- than the Russians were.)
  - adestefan 16y ago
    That's Rocky IV. Dolph Lundgren who plays the robotic Russian in that film has a MSc in chemical engineering and had a Fullbright Scholarship to MIT. He dropped out of the program to pursue acting.
    - xiaoma 16y ago
      If he were Chinese instead of a westerner and had a full scholarship to Qinghua, he'd be a chemical engineer now! :)
  - reddot 16y ago
    Wasn't that Rocky IV?
    - deleted 16y ago
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triviatise 16y ago
turn science into a game at the national level. The X prize and other contests capture the attention of the american people as well as generating a ton of private investment. Create prizes in the 100MM or even billion dollar range for milestones in green tech. Create a national contest for scientists for invention with huge multi million $ prizes. That would create news and generate respect and interest in the profession.
- xiaoma 16y ago
  I love the idea. Prizes are great in so many ways. They legitimize the task, which helps cut red tape involved with bio-engineering or launching small shuttles, etc... Prizes also cause a lot more development than just the winning design. It's also common for close runner-ups to also have learned and built things of value.
api 16y ago
Raising the social status of scientists is one of the most important things the U.S. can do to shake off our 30 year slump... I think part of the problem is how we've deified the MBA/"executive" as a fundamentally higher class of being. I am not knocking what such people do. Surely it can be very difficult, demanding, time consuming, etc. But it is not the only job that is such, and it is not the only job that is of such high value. I would argue that many surgeons, doctors, engineers, etc. create far more value than many businessmen. (In many cases they make more too! It's a myth that "suits" make all the money. The distribution of incomes in business is highly asymptotic. Top executives make ungodly money, but the average "suit" does not.) What the hell am I talking about? Case in point: It used to be called "first class." A few airlines still call it this, but I usually see it called "business class." First class carries the connotation of prestige. Business class carries the connotation that business is prestige and everyone else sits in the back of the plane. In working with MBA types, there has been a palpable sense that I am of lower status because I am a doer-- because I am doing the "details" (like making things work) and this is for "little people." We have elevated athletes, politicians, and alpha front-men (and they are usually male) to the absolute pinnacle of status in our society. Meanwhile we have actually demoted everyone else.
- secretasiandan 16y ago
  First class and business class are different things. You don't always simultaneously have both, but you can. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_class_travel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_class_travel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_class
  - api 16y ago
    Well then I'm mistaken about that, but I don't think the cultural trend that I'm talking about is vapor. I sometimes feel like an idiot for spending my life getting good at doing things, when I should have spent my life getting good at self-promotion and manipulating people.
- dagw 16y ago
  It used to be called "first class." A few airlines still call it this, but I usually see it called "business class." Most airlines offer three levels of service. First class, business class and coach/tourist class. However not all routs have enough demand for the highest level of service, so they simply don't offer first class seats on all flights. First class, on the flights that have it, is of a significantly higher standard than business class.
colomon 16y ago
I think the "Jobs Factory" metaphor is a sign of how messed up the thinking involved is. There isn't a jobs factory, there's a marketplace; and the marketplace right now is very clearly saying that scientists just aren't that valuable, in the grand scheme of things. If you really think this is something that needs fixing, the most direct and blunt fix would just to be to create a government subsidy for scientists. For example, instead of making them pay income tax, you might give scientists 100% matching pay from the government. That would mean that a company might hire a scientist at $80,000, but for the scientist it would be the equivalent of a normal $220,000 job. Put that lay into effect, and I guarantee you'll see a lot more scientists 20 years down the line.
PaulHoule 16y ago
It's not just "social status", it's the fact that science sucks as a career. Physics is a particularly pathological field, but to take my own example, I got a PhD in 1998 when the American Physical Society estimated that about 3% of physics PhDs minted that year would ultimately get a permanent job in that field. Now, one day I realized I could work for two years doing some obscure math and one or two people in the world might care, or I could spend three weekends developing a Java applet and then get 50,000 hits to my web site and offers of consulting work. Moving to computing was an easy decision, but I still felt a lot of anguish giving up something that I really loved. The people who stayed in the field, however, all suffered devastation in their personal lives. I saw one postdoc, who is one of the most brilliant physicists of his generation (or just one of the few?) and who had an excellent publication record, in agony for two years because he had no idea how he was going to get his next job. Somebody like that ought to be focusing on their research, not suffering like that. My thesis advisor and his female partner got professorships in places that were across the U.S. so he basically abandoned his son. Another professor who was very helpful to me wanted to have children very badly but waited until his wife got tenure and had become infertile. Another one commuted across Germany by train every weekend so he could see his family once in a while. I can think of many physicists who are very pleasant people (particularly those who entered the field in the 1960s and before) but too many successful physicists are miserable emotional basket cases who've been scared for life by the process of getting a PhD, getting a tenure track position, and getting tenure. Writers like Freud and Bly write about how people get abused, come to identify with the abusers, and then become like the abusers, transmitting their trauma to the next generation. The physics community is a clear example of this. Now, I know not all academic fields are this bad. The supply of PhDs and jobs for PhDs is usually better in math and computer science, two fields I have a little contact with. The structure of biology research groups where professors sometimes supervise 10-20 students and postdocs suggests that the biology PhD may be, like the physics PhD, a form of exploitation rather than an apprentenceship. Clearly the U.S. produces more scientists than their are jobs for scientists and anybody who says we need more is an ass. If working conditions became more attractive, however, we might have a science community that attracts emotionally healthy people who will be, in the long run, more productive.
RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
Related: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2389474 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2389474
TomOfTTB 16y ago
Were scientists paid more than professional athletes in the 50s and 60s? I somehow doubt it. There's a lot that's ridiculous about this article (His "30 year slump" completely dismisses information technology for example). But with such a clear fallacy at the very core of his argument it seems unproductive to debate points that support that flawed argument.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  I can't check this right now, but I don't think athletes were paid nearly as much in the 50's and 60's. TV hadn't entered the picture in a big way. Even in the 80s NBA conference championship were tape delayed and played at midnight. The SuperBowl in the 60s was preempted by Heidi.

24 points by cwan 16y ago

> How would society, or more specifically government, even go about inspiring a cultural change to value scientists? Any ideas? "Too many athletes, too few scientists" is a broken premise: Elite athletes are valuable only because they are scarce. Government is doing plenty to make scientists scarce as well, so perhaps we will get our wish granted, in a perverse way.

yummyfajitas 16y ago
Government is doing plenty to make scientists scarce as well... Like what?
- tdrgabi 16y ago
  salaries. I guess an academic career is not a highly payed one.
  - CWuestefeld 16y ago
    If the government is determining the salaries of more than a small minority of scientists, then we've got other problems too. Shouldn't most scientists be getting their pay from universities, or the R&D departments of corporations? I mean, the CDC and NASA don't employ that many people in the grand scheme of things.
    - kd0amg 16y ago
      Shouldn't most scientists be getting their pay from universities, or the R&D departments of corporations? I mean, the CDC and NASA don't employ that many people in the grand scheme of things. You don't have to be an employee of CDC or NASA to get your pay via government funding. The university signs my paychecks, but the money comes from an NSF research grant to my co-advisor.
  - deleted 16y ago
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  - deleted 16y ago
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  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    Salaries are low because supply greatly exceeds demand.
    - xiaoma 16y ago
      That still doesn't mean that the nation or world is better off, even economically, with the current number of scientists. The problem with using simplistic economic models when talking about scientific research is that it's extremely hard to quantify its value. Basic research has made tremendous advances in our health, standard of living and general wealth. It's also very difficult to determine how much each person's contribution was worth. I've read that surveys of late 19th industrialists and leaders who voted steam engine improvements as the most critical field for technological advancement for the next 100 years. It's an amusing idea in retrospect, but who would have paid for research that would lead to flight or electric rail? CDs, lasers, integrated circuits, etc... are great! But what kind of "demand" was there for research into quantum mechanics 80 years ago? Even if the demand were quantified, how much would each scientists contribution be rewarded? Surely, Feynman and other scientists building upon Einstein and Heisenberg's ideas created something of great wealth for us! But for the most part, those scientists won neither fame nor riches. As long as the focus is on simple short-term supply and demand, this is how it works. The scientist makes a clean pass, but it's the businessman or the engineer who takes the ball the last few paces, scores and gets all the glory. I for one believe that China is doing it right in this regard. The government is taking the lead in subsidising and investing in technological infrastructure as well as basic research to create more opportunities for private entrepreneurs in the long run.
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  Well, limiting the areas that can be researched might have some effect. We've all heard the horror stories about IT research being shut down because, e.g., various security problems "need" to be kept hidden. And direct regulation affects research into medical marijuana, or stem cell treatments. If the government is limiting research, then they're lowering the demands for scientists (or lowering the pay of a fixed pool of scientists). And if I can broaden your question to engineers as well, there's some reason to think that our patent regime may be stifling innovation, which similarly decreases the demand for engineers.
- bhousel 16y ago
  Well, my main concerns are: Cuts in spending on education, politicization of primary school curricula, immigration and travel policies that discourage talented scientists from working here, and general anti-intellectualism in politics. But maybe I was a bit harsh. The government does fund a lot of research..
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    Apart from immigration/travel policies, how does this stuff affect science at all? Lets take anti-intellectualism in science. It's true that a few high profile intellectuals (e.g. James Watson) have lost their jobs do to this and that there are certain questions you Just Can't Ask (e.g., "would climate change be a good thing?"). But do you really think anyone will avoid a career in science for fear of that happening? I mean, it might scare me away from psychometrics of race/gender as a field, but it wouldn't prevent me from working on quantum mechanics. As for reducing the cost of k-12 education closer to the OECD average, why would I avoid physics as a result?
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- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  People only watch them on TV because of their super-human performance. They achieve that through a mixture of hard training and innate ability. I mean, it doesn't matter how hard I train. I'm never going to play like Michael Jordan, or drive like Michael Schumacher. So this avenues for greatness are closed to me. EDIT: I hate when people delete a comment, leaving a reply orphaned. I was replying to a comment that said that these sports stars got there through hard work.
  - jamesbritt 16y ago
    EDIT: I hate when people delete a comment, leaving a reply orphaned. I was replying to a comment that said that these sports stars got there through hard work. Not to get too meta, but that's one reason I've taken to including a quote from most comments I reply to.
    - CWuestefeld 16y ago
      Even more meta: I've taken to including a quote When you quote by indenting, as you have above, it forces some layout decisions on the browser. Frequently this style results in the page rendering wider than the browser window, so I need to deal with the horizontal scroll bar. I wish people would always quote with asterisks, or that pg would give us a BLOCKQUOTE mechanism.
manvsmachine 16y ago
Elite athletes are valuable only because they are scarce. That statement is vacuous in regards to the argument he's trying to make. Anyone who is elite at what they do is scarce, regardless of occupation; that's essentially the meaning of being elite. What sets athletes apart is the degree to which society rewards that eliteness.

jswinghammer 16y ago

When you're a kid being an athlete seems like a great job but almost no one I've met tried to go professional. This is a pretty silly premise. Scientists seem to be in good supply given that they don't seem to make very much money-at least in the circles I run in here in Boston.

CWuestefeld 16y ago

We respect elementary school teachers, but their starting salary is squat. Conversely auditors and accountants are considered mind-numbing jobs, but they're paid nicely. This is false. I just checked average salaries (see http://www.salarylist.com/all-accountant-real-jobs-salary.htm http://www.salarylist.com/all-accountant-real-jobs-salary.ht... and http://www.salarylist.com/all-teacher-real-jobs-salary.htm http://www.salarylist.com/all-teacher-real-jobs-salary.htm ). The difference is less than 10%. The average accountant job listed is $40,461. The average teacher job listed is $37,200. (in my area of NJ, even a entry-level teacher makes more than that) There really seems to be a whole mythology about low teacher pay, but this just isn't true. It's not true on a nominal scale, and it's even less true when you factor in the days off and other benefits.

loganfrederick 16y ago
Might just be me, but those numbers just make me feel bad for accountants too, as opposed to thinking teachers are getting great pay.
- tshauck 16y ago
  Don't feel too bad, this probably considers all accountants... had they stayed in school an extra year for the CPA, they probably make twice that.
tokenadult 16y ago
Yes, the big fallacy about teacher compensation is to take compensation as consisting only of nominal salary, and not also of employer-funded (that is, taxpayer-funded) benefits and working conditions. Schoolteachers are well compensated in relation to barriers to entry to the occupation and in terms of performance standards imposed on the occupation. (I am a teacher in private practice. I have to convince my clients to pay out of pocket for my services after their children have already attended tax-subsidized classes at other hours of the day.)
smanek 16y ago
The problem is that a teacher's salary is weighted more towards the tail end of their career than most other professions. In my high school, we had gym teachers who had been there for 30 years earning well over a $100K. And we had an ingenious (new) Math teacher earning $40K. Over his career, the new Math teacher will probably earn reasonably well (especially when you take into account the extraordinarily generous pension and benefits, 3 months of vacation time a year, etc). But, the first 10 years (which is probably the time of his life that he's getting married, having young kids, trying to buy a house, etc) are going to be pretty tough.

tomjen3 16y ago

Not just scientists, but everybody who uses their minds at their job. And the solution? Simple, in High School Nerds needs to go at the absolute top of the hierarchy. That will encourage more people to end up there.

dagw 16y ago
Wouldn't it be much better to make science and math less 'nerdy' and wash away the stigma that only nerds can be good at it.

tokenadult 16y ago

"Why are we so good at building athletes and not so good at producing, say, writers?" Perhaps because almost any member of the general public, even someone like me with a low interest in most sports, is aware of who is the best in a sport. I may not play much baseball, but I know in general which teams are at the top of the league tables in the professional leagues, and I can identify a difficult, skillful play when I watch it on television even if I can't perform it. Professional sports have entertainment value for almost everyone. By contrast, writing (a career I have long aspired to pursue) is completely opaque to the many members of the general public who never, ever read a book after they complete their secondary schooling. It's harder to tell who is the best writer (there are published best-seller lists, but those include books by celebrities who are writing through unnamed ghostwriters) and it's harder for someone uninterested in writing to appreciate a well crafted story or even a well turned written phrase. The biggest rewards at the top of the distribution of developed ability go to performers whose performances are appealing to and appreciated by nearly all consumers. The article has a too-brief discussion about its main point (rather than the illustrative question quoted above), how to encourage young people to pursue careers in science. This is of deep interest to me, as my third son is deeply interested in biology and wants to know all about science in general. Young people develop an interest in baseball, football, and soccer (my son's sport) partly by early pleasant experiences in playing backyard games with siblings or neighbors and perhaps by participating in organized youth sports programs. Many fewer young people have pick-up opportunities to engage in science and especially few have opportunities as early and as often to engage in thoughtfully organized science programs. (My son travels fifty minutes each way once a week to go across our metropolitan area for a joint science class for homeschoolers arranged by a friend of mine. He finds that experience highly motivational. We drive past tens of thousands of children his age languishing in public schools at the same hour as we travel to those weekly classes.) More needs to be done for the young to get them good instruction at young ages in science and math. http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf And, yes, helpful comments like President Obama's comment on science fair winners in the State of the Union address need to be made more often by national leaders, and more press coverage of top scientists would be very welcome. But it would be enough simply to instruct young people well in mathematics and science and nurture their curiosity about those subjects through extracurricular activities as they grow up. That's mostly what works for the countries that do better than the United States in bringing up new generations of scientists. http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2009highlights_4.asp http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2009highlights_4.asp After edit: I have opened a separate Ask HN thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2396184 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2396184 to ask HNers for specific suggestions to encourage interest in science among young people. Thanks for any suggestions you have.

xiaoma 16y ago

The whole prestige issue is a tough one. From what I've seen in Chinese schools it's just completely different from what I remember from American schools. The girls tend to like really smart guys. Testing into a top high school or college means you're a winner and you're going somewhere. In the US, being a somewhat dense football player bound for a blue-collar life will get far more respect than just about any level of academic achievement. Of course some remarkable people get into the sciences later, like Craig Venter did. It's still a huge loss to lose all those who would have gotten a solid foundation in their teen years if only it were valued in high school, though. Edit: This is a lot of downmods... and it's a little hard to understand. Any of you care to voice counter-arguments?

api 16y ago
Watch Rocky II, the one with Rocky fighting the almost-robotic Russian. That movie explains a lot about the American myth-of-itself. (And it is rubbish, of course. During the cold war the USA was far more high-tech-- far closer to the robot-Russian-- than the Russians were.)
- adestefan 16y ago
  That's Rocky IV. Dolph Lundgren who plays the robotic Russian in that film has a MSc in chemical engineering and had a Fullbright Scholarship to MIT. He dropped out of the program to pursue acting.
  - xiaoma 16y ago
    If he were Chinese instead of a westerner and had a full scholarship to Qinghua, he'd be a chemical engineer now! :)
- reddot 16y ago
  Wasn't that Rocky IV?
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]

triviatise 16y ago

turn science into a game at the national level. The X prize and other contests capture the attention of the american people as well as generating a ton of private investment. Create prizes in the 100MM or even billion dollar range for milestones in green tech. Create a national contest for scientists for invention with huge multi million $ prizes. That would create news and generate respect and interest in the profession.

xiaoma 16y ago
I love the idea. Prizes are great in so many ways. They legitimize the task, which helps cut red tape involved with bio-engineering or launching small shuttles, etc... Prizes also cause a lot more development than just the winning design. It's also common for close runner-ups to also have learned and built things of value.

api 16y ago

Raising the social status of scientists is one of the most important things the U.S. can do to shake off our 30 year slump... I think part of the problem is how we've deified the MBA/"executive" as a fundamentally higher class of being. I am not knocking what such people do. Surely it can be very difficult, demanding, time consuming, etc. But it is not the only job that is such, and it is not the only job that is of such high value. I would argue that many surgeons, doctors, engineers, etc. create far more value than many businessmen. (In many cases they make more too! It's a myth that "suits" make all the money. The distribution of incomes in business is highly asymptotic. Top executives make ungodly money, but the average "suit" does not.) What the hell am I talking about? Case in point: It used to be called "first class." A few airlines still call it this, but I usually see it called "business class." First class carries the connotation of prestige. Business class carries the connotation that business is prestige and everyone else sits in the back of the plane. In working with MBA types, there has been a palpable sense that I am of lower status because I am a doer-- because I am doing the "details" (like making things work) and this is for "little people." We have elevated athletes, politicians, and alpha front-men (and they are usually male) to the absolute pinnacle of status in our society. Meanwhile we have actually demoted everyone else.

secretasiandan 16y ago
First class and business class are different things. You don't always simultaneously have both, but you can. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_class_travel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_class_travel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_class
- api 16y ago
  Well then I'm mistaken about that, but I don't think the cultural trend that I'm talking about is vapor. I sometimes feel like an idiot for spending my life getting good at doing things, when I should have spent my life getting good at self-promotion and manipulating people.
dagw 16y ago
It used to be called "first class." A few airlines still call it this, but I usually see it called "business class." Most airlines offer three levels of service. First class, business class and coach/tourist class. However not all routs have enough demand for the highest level of service, so they simply don't offer first class seats on all flights. First class, on the flights that have it, is of a significantly higher standard than business class.

colomon 16y ago

I think the "Jobs Factory" metaphor is a sign of how messed up the thinking involved is. There isn't a jobs factory, there's a marketplace; and the marketplace right now is very clearly saying that scientists just aren't that valuable, in the grand scheme of things. If you really think this is something that needs fixing, the most direct and blunt fix would just to be to create a government subsidy for scientists. For example, instead of making them pay income tax, you might give scientists 100% matching pay from the government. That would mean that a company might hire a scientist at $80,000, but for the scientist it would be the equivalent of a normal $220,000 job. Put that lay into effect, and I guarantee you'll see a lot more scientists 20 years down the line.

PaulHoule 16y ago

It's not just "social status", it's the fact that science sucks as a career. Physics is a particularly pathological field, but to take my own example, I got a PhD in 1998 when the American Physical Society estimated that about 3% of physics PhDs minted that year would ultimately get a permanent job in that field. Now, one day I realized I could work for two years doing some obscure math and one or two people in the world might care, or I could spend three weekends developing a Java applet and then get 50,000 hits to my web site and offers of consulting work. Moving to computing was an easy decision, but I still felt a lot of anguish giving up something that I really loved. The people who stayed in the field, however, all suffered devastation in their personal lives. I saw one postdoc, who is one of the most brilliant physicists of his generation (or just one of the few?) and who had an excellent publication record, in agony for two years because he had no idea how he was going to get his next job. Somebody like that ought to be focusing on their research, not suffering like that. My thesis advisor and his female partner got professorships in places that were across the U.S. so he basically abandoned his son. Another professor who was very helpful to me wanted to have children very badly but waited until his wife got tenure and had become infertile. Another one commuted across Germany by train every weekend so he could see his family once in a while. I can think of many physicists who are very pleasant people (particularly those who entered the field in the 1960s and before) but too many successful physicists are miserable emotional basket cases who've been scared for life by the process of getting a PhD, getting a tenure track position, and getting tenure. Writers like Freud and Bly write about how people get abused, come to identify with the abusers, and then become like the abusers, transmitting their trauma to the next generation. The physics community is a clear example of this. Now, I know not all academic fields are this bad. The supply of PhDs and jobs for PhDs is usually better in math and computer science, two fields I have a little contact with. The structure of biology research groups where professors sometimes supervise 10-20 students and postdocs suggests that the biology PhD may be, like the physics PhD, a form of exploitation rather than an apprentenceship. Clearly the U.S. produces more scientists than their are jobs for scientists and anybody who says we need more is an ass. If working conditions became more attractive, however, we might have a science community that attracts emotionally healthy people who will be, in the long run, more productive.

RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago

Related: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2389474 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2389474

TomOfTTB 16y ago

Were scientists paid more than professional athletes in the 50s and 60s? I somehow doubt it. There's a lot that's ridiculous about this article (His "30 year slump" completely dismisses information technology for example). But with such a clear fallacy at the very core of his argument it seems unproductive to debate points that support that flawed argument.

kenjackson 16y ago
I can't check this right now, but I don't think athletes were paid nearly as much in the 50's and 60's. TV hadn't entered the picture in a big way. Even in the 80s NBA conference championship were tape delayed and played at midnight. The SuperBowl in the 60s was preempted by Heidi.