9 ms·

To get kids into science, just do it

88 points by lxm 4y ago

rdtwo 4y ago
Why would you want to get kids into science? It don’t pay for shit and career/life prospects are grim. Grind out a phd for 80k starting salary? Hard pass
- dislikedtom2 4y ago
  I'm not able to tell if this comment is satire and it worries me.
  - auxym 4y ago
    I don't think it's satire. STEM is pushed hard, but realistically, science and math dont have that great career prospects. For one thing, a PhD, and the 4-7 year opportunity cost that comes with it, is pretty much required to get anything more than a lab tech job. After that PhD, where do you go? You can try for an insanely competitive tenure track faculty position. Or a very limited number of industry researcher jobs. The E in STEM (traditional engineering) isn't exactly tech in terms of salaries and job availability, but it mostly guarantees paying the bills with a decent WLB after "just" a bachelor's.
    - QuadmasterXLII 4y ago
      I mean, usually you just end up trading stonk at Renaissance Technologies or PanAgora. I'm not studying anything finance related and haven't even finished my phd and they've still been actively after me to sell my soul for mid six figures. The worst part was, I did the interviews to get an offer and everyone I talked to was tangibly brilliant- like could really be changing the world instead of this. I almost did it for the money + chance to work with a bunch of actually smart people, but the moral implications barely won out.
      - karmakurtisaani 4y ago
        Knowing what I know now, I would have jumped ship in your shoes in an instant. After 5 years of that work you could be free from working ever again and do whatever you feel like. I've heard that RT for example can pay you up to 1M per year for entry level, and looking at their profit margins I don't really doubt it.
        ourmandave 4y ago
        Had to look it up. The starting salary for a research scientist is $170 - $205K. https://www.rentec.com/Careers.action?researchScientist=true https://www.rentec.com/Careers.action?researchScientist=true
        vasco 4y ago
        At those places the real money is made by being allowed to participate in the employee-only investment funds.
        karmakurtisaani 4y ago
        RT has a yearly return averaging around 40%, and the employees only portfolio averages around 70% per year (at least this was the case a few years ago still). I would imagine the major part of the compensation comes from bonuses and the opportunity to invest in the employees only fund. 170k-200k is not that different from ordinary banks, I can't imagine it's all RT would pay. Edit: had to look up the annual returns and they seem to be a bit different depending on where you look, so take those numbers with a grain of salt. In any case they're consistently the most profitable hedge fund out there.
      - ProjectArcturis 4y ago
        What moral implications? Quants at RenTech are basically just card counters in the biggest casino in the world.
        QuadmasterXLII 4y ago
    - mcculley 4y ago
      The current labor market is paying much better than before for scientists with just a B.S. I do agree that there is little economic value in most Ph.D. programs.
      - Avicebron 4y ago
        From my experience working in biotech I would say certainly a B.S. in a scientific field (like biochemistry, etc.) There is often a hard cap in the career trajectory without a PhD. Often there are enough PhDs out there that moving into management in industry often requires this vs. Stagnating as a lab scientist without a huge upward spike in income/responsibilities.
    - pdpi 4y ago
      A PhD in maths is _incredibly_ valuable. Anything abstract algebra related, and the likes of the NSA are all over you. Anything numerical analysis related will find plenty of opportunities in finance, and the industry just calls statistics specialists "Data Scientists".
      - 4ad 4y ago
        > NSA > finance You're not selling it.
        annyeonghada 4y ago
        Yeah, I remember my Physics degree: "With a Physics degree you will have lots of employment opportunities... but not in Physics!"
      - auxym 4y ago
        Yeah, to be fair, my perspective is from Canada, which I probably should have mentioned. I mean, we do have the RCMP and Bay Street, but I don't think it's comparable (in number of positions, salaries offered, etc) to NSA and Wall Street.
        insightcheck 4y ago
        I heard that if you studied math with applications to computer science, you can find great opportunities with technology too (if not moving to the US for places like Google, there are quantum computing startups like Xanadu in Canada, along with other technology startups in Canada’s big cities too). In addition, outside of the RCMP, various ministries of the Canadian government could need the skillset too (Statistics Canada being the one that first comes to mind, though any teams that do economic analyses could benefit from someone with the background).
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - wbl 4y ago
        GS pay isn't that competitive
    - jleyank 4y ago
      There are a fair number of phd’s employed in biotech/pharma. Who do you think makes the stuff? Bs/ms are their techs. The ads in the states publishes salary history every year for those who care. It’s not SV salary but it’s way more useful than selling ads and scarfing data - you can actually end up curing a cancer or other diseases… And before you go about just curing symptoms, remember that many real cures would require gene modification and people aren’t all that interested in being a gmo. Ask RA sufferers about drugs like Humera re curing symptoms.
  - runeblaze 4y ago
    Definitely not a satire but the hard truth. Your kid might end up having a strong existential crisis about why pursuing a "science" field ends up with 80k salary jobs when with that effort you could just go to FAANG as a SWE with a much higher salary with a bachelor's degree. If you don't get there as a bachelor's, just go there with a master's. The "strategy" is to get your kid interested in science enough so that they make a strong resume to a good college and have a strong foundation, then sway them to learn CS and get a SWE job.
- europeanguy 4y ago
  Because it's interesting.
- karmakurtisaani 4y ago
  This is a very much valid point. Science is amazingly cool, but gives you a pretty shit life. I'll encourage my kids towards science as much as needed and let their develop their thinking while they're at it, and congratulate them for the enlightenment when they come tell me that working as a scientist sucks. It's still really good for them to pursue that career early, if it's what they enjoy.
- mcculley 4y ago
  I think your assessment is not based on the current labor market. I am aware of scientists with a fresh B.S. making that much. I do agree that there is little economic value in most Ph.D. programs.
- chriskanan 4y ago
  As a scientist, I'd say this claim doesn't hold true for many scientific disciplines. I know scientists working in biopharma earning over $1M per year. That said, I do think the salary mentioned is accurate as a starting salary in academia for a research faculty position (tenure track starting salary in USA is ~50% higher though), but academia pays much worse than industry. You give up salary for huge amounts of autonomy.
  - jbsimpson 4y ago
    You also have to factor in how terrible post-doc pay and job security is, just to have a shot at getting on the tenure track. In the US it's half of that 80k number in bio research.
    - counters 4y ago
      We also need to dispel the myth that tenure track academic roles are the only jobs for scientists. In my field, one can have a wonderful, decently-paying career working in some of the most desirable places in the US if they go the national lab route. There's also a thriving private sector which will just get bigger. This doesn't even factor in the exit ramp careers if, late in the game, a student realizes that "science" isn't quite what they want to do for their 9-5 - e.g., trading in all of those hundreds or thousands of hours grinding data analyses for their Masters/PhD for a career in data science or software engineering. We should make sure that folks understand a modern career in science may look, from a salary and QoL perspective, quite like a doctor or other professional. High-stress, relatively low-pay, challenging from your late teens to late twenties, then a rapid increase in earning power and opportunity into your early thirties.
      - insightcheck 4y ago
        I completely agree, but I think most people who arrive at this perspective only reach this view after spending time in industry or adjacent to people working there. A lot of the focus on tenure track jobs comes from professors and academics who dedicate their life almost solely in academic environments (so in their view, it’s a rather unhealthy attitude of academic tenure or bust). I’m not sure how feasible this is, but perhaps a work-study private sector summer internship could be an encouraged part of certain PhD, to widen perspectives and help both students and professors better understand the possibilities out there, which someone can be motivated to strive for, rather than settle for.
- rcxdude 4y ago
  An understanding of and willingness to do science is a broadly applicable skill across many different disciplines (even if you don't get a degree in it), as well as being a useful life skill. It's something kids absolutely should be exposed to even if it's not their passion nor do they wind up doing something as an adult which would be generally labelled 'science' (which is a shorthand usually meaning natural sciences specifically).
- Forge36 4y ago
  This is a pretty techy group. Out of curiosity what do you do and what was your major?
- Nursie 4y ago
  Because it gives them tools to understand the world. Because not everything you teach kids has to lead to a PhD or a specific career? Because 'science' plays into engineering, finance and tech sector careers? This has got to be some sort of satire.
- lawn 4y ago
  To me, getting kids into science is not just a path to PhDs, but to engineering and technology in general, and that is a very lucrative area money wise.
- scrappyjoe 4y ago
  This is the sort of comment that makes me really take a hard look at capitalism. The way I see it, scientific work is rewarding in and of itself. I don’t _need_ to make huge amounts of money if I’m doing something intellectually rewarding that contributes to our collective knowledge. Sure, add monetary compensation to your list of optimising constraints. But to make it the SOLE optimising constraint in your life? That’s tragic, IMO. Make enough. Do interesting things. Cultivate rewarding relationships. Be happy.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - watwut 4y ago
    PhDs are massively taken advantage of. The whole "do it for passion" thing is literally used as argument to abuse them. Little money, long hours, effectively up or out pyramid where most people gonl out, expectation that you will move in few years and partner will follow.
- OgAstorga 4y ago
  More than half the American families earn less than 75k household income[1]. So the career/life prospects are grim either way. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distribution-of-household-income-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distri...
  - rdtwo 4y ago
    They won’t be Able to make it to a career in science. Since you need a PHD or at least a masters to do it you need to go through some top tier universities and invest some serious $$ into it. Science is for love is only a marginally better career choice than art.
  - TexanFeller 4y ago
    My family made noticeably less than that, even considering inflation since then. In my home town the average family income is around half that in today’s dollars. I’m a high income SWE now. Growing up in a <$75k HH income family doesn’t imply grim prospects, that’s typical middle class. Everyone I grew up with would consider $75k high income bordering on rich.
- tenpies 4y ago
  I had the same question, but my response was: "at the end of the day, authoritarian politicians will order you what to think, and their media/technology lackeys will enforce those orders".
- trashface 4y ago
  Its probably more reliable income though. Screw up in tech (not even big tech), or have some kind of life misfortune, and your salary can pretty quickly go to zero. Knowing how to reverse a tree on a whiteboard is not some kind of important skill that employers want.
- analog31 4y ago
  Not all people have the motivation and self discipline to force themselves through a career in something that they hate, solely for the money. I learned programming as a kid in 1981 and fell in love with it. I knew about the demand for programmers, as my mom was teaching programming at a nearby tech school. My college internship was at a large computing facility, which employed a number of programmers. I formed the impression that programming as a job was incredibly repetitive, stressful, and boring. I majored in math and physics, and ended up with a PhD in physics. I do plenty of programming today, but on my own terms. I work at a place that has a large programming department, and my opinion of programming as a job has not changed. On the other hand, if someone loves that kind of work, or can at least grind their way through it, they're welcome to the money. It may have taken me a bit longer to reach a decent salary level. Today, I'm the highest ranking "technical track" worker in one division of a F500. Had I gone into programming, I might have reached a plateau, or burnt out.
- aqsalose 4y ago
  I suspect interacting with the real physical world and its realities and to realize one can affect it would be good, no matter what career they'd pick later. Picking a career in software development has been a good choice for bright kids for several decades now. In the long term view, the past is full of "good career choices for bright kids" that at some point no longer were not. The physical world is not going anywhere.
- walleeee 4y ago
  an 80k starting salary is hardly grim and if you happen to become a decent scientist or technician along the way there is usually work to be found, but yes, the phd mill incentive matrix is a blight and demonstrates broader misalignments in microcosm
dislikedtom2 4y ago
I remember being interested in sciences as a kid, but every time I asked for a chemistry kit or anything practical, I just got books and documentaries. Don't be those parents.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  Different strokes I guess? I was always much more into the books and was put off by having to experiment. (Then I did go on to study theoretical physics ...)
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    For sure. I switched from E.E. into Math/CS partly because no lab experiments that you can't get to "work." It's all in your brain. I chalk that up to immaturity. Or maybe the way labs were run back then; not sure.
- flybrand 4y ago
  Which chemistry kit do you wish you’d received?
  - dislikedtom2 4y ago
    https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/a-requiem-for-amateur-chemistry https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/a-requiem-for-amateur-chemist...
- eimrine 4y ago
  > but every time I asked for a chemistry kit or anything practical, I just got books and documentaries. In my first day at school and at school library I have asked some books about physics or chemistry. My ask was refused and all books I was allowed to take were fiction books for children.
Metacelsus 4y ago
I'm very glad for my parents for getting me an actually good home chemistry set and then letting me experiment with it.
- ourmandave 4y ago
  For birthdays and Christmas were you always asking for chemicals from the "Things I Won't Work With" list? https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-dioxygen-difluoride https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor... https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...
pvaldes 4y ago
The correct answer for solving the wrong problem
- flybrand 4y ago
  What’s the right problem?
O__________O 4y ago
Related paper: https://www.princeton.edu/~sjleslie/Subtle%20Linguistic%20Cues.pdf https://www.princeton.edu/~sjleslie/Subtle%20Linguistic%20Cu...
scotty79 4y ago
> As many other studies have shown, when children hear descriptions of categories, whether “apples are red” or “scientists are smart,” they infer that members of those categories have special, exclusive characteristics. My friend in college had a mannerism that when he was about to give up on understanding something he was saying "it's for smart people to figure out". It always elicited visceral reaction from me "No, eff that. We are the smart people. We can figure this out." I guess our upbringing was somewhat different.
- granshaw 4y ago
  This is so common in the current anti-intellectual American mindset... other forms it takes: - I wouldn't know, X person is way smarter than me - (Try to discuss how something might work...) This was made by really smart people, I'll leave it to them! - (learns you're doing an Engineering degree) Wow, you must be really smart! - The "for science!!" trope
  - onos 4y ago
    That sounds more like “avoidance of personal engagement in intellectual pursuit” rather than anti-intellectual - if anything these suggest complete deference to supposed experts.
  - hahaxdxd123 4y ago
    Interesting. My impression of American anti-intellectualism is that it more often takes the opposite form: "X person is by all measures more educated than me on this topic, but I did own research! (on Youtube and Facebook)"
    - JamesianP 4y ago
      I'd say it's a suspicion of the values and political agendas/biases of intellectuals as a social class. I know professionals living in other countries who believe every silly conspiracy theory they see on youtube too. That part is a universal problem.
    - 4y ago
fastneutron 4y ago
To the people posting about having good chemistry sets as a kid: what were these sets and where did you/your parents get them? Where are the good sources today? Everything I remember growing up in the 90s was pretty dumbed down at best, and if you wanted to order any of the interesting chemicals or equipment, you needed a company or school letterhead with a PO account. Things got better in the 00s when eBay was still pretty open in terms of what you could find, but that seems to have been clamped down on more recently. Fear of litigation most likely.
- n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
  Ever hear Kary Mullis (PCR inventor / Nobel prize) talk about his childhood? He could basically buy whatever chemical he wanted. Definitely did dangerous stuff and got into trouble, but it’s hard to imagine children today having similar ability to hone skills with brains still spungey and time still abundant.
  - fastneutron 4y ago
    I believe it. In the 50s You used to be able to get chemistry sets with potassium chlorate and mail-in coupons for radioisotopes. Now it’s all the same cheap, uninspiring crap for making glue slime or vinegar/baking soda fizzes. I had sympathetic parents with chemistry degrees, and we were able to find ways to get the cool stuff when I was a teenager, but for the vast majority, it’s no surprise that kids lose interest in STEM fields as they reach their teens.
    - malux85 4y ago
      Yea, when I was a teenager I had a key to my high school chemistry lab, and would go do experiments on my liquid mercury resonance reactor in the weekend. How wild is that?! Can’t imagine it happening today
    - II2II 4y ago
      > I had sympathetic parents with chemistry degrees In other words, you were able to access the cool stuff because someone in your life knew how to handle it. That is probably the way it should be. Now consider all of the families where the parents do not have chemistry degrees, do not work in industries where they regularly handle hazardous materials, or even have to take general workplace safety seriously. You pretty much have to hope the teenager instilled a sense of respect for safety in themselves.
black_13 4y ago
c7DJTLrn 4y ago
To get kids into science, make the education system better. Less memorisation, more practical work. Accelerate things for those interested and remove those that aren't. I wanted to be a chemical engineer or pharmacologist but got so bored that I moved on to something else. Now I fiddle with code and do nothing of real value to society. At least I get paid well I supppose.
- humanrebar 4y ago
  Lots of code is valuable to society. Find a product you believe in more if that's the problem. And a lot of software is very valuable but taken for granted. To pick an arbitrary example, word processing removed all sorts of even less "valuable" work from the world: mailing thing around, extra printing, photocopying, physical filing, transcription services, and all sorts of related rote secretarial duties. Those jobs are gone and people do other things now... maybe they work in healthcare.
  - eggsmediumrare 4y ago
    Those jobs are gone and now those people drive ubers and and barely scrape by
- granshaw 4y ago
  I'm sorry, but this is somewhat playing the victim. If you really felt strongly about being a a chemical engineer or pharmacologist and benefitting society through that, the schoolwork being uninteresting doesn't sound like a big hurdle to overcome. We can't expect "the system" to solve everything.
neonate 4y ago
https://archive.ph/M7JzV https://archive.ph/M7JzV
AlbertCory 4y ago
My friend Jerry and I and some friends have done a whole set of experiments on various aspects of making coffee, and if I can ever get him off the dime we'll be publishing them here. So yeah, we Did Some Science. So can you. You can stop reading all these "experts recommend" stories about, e.g. not keeping your beans longer than two weeks, and just carry out a proper experiment on whether you can tell the difference. Who cares if the general population can tell if you can't? "Doing science" means applying some basic techniques that anyone can learn. Especially the kids.
toddm 4y ago
My parents were both elementary school teachers. I was born in 1969. My dad had a 40-year career teaching science to 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. Think model rockets, aquariums, microscopes, chemistry sets, rock collections, and all the wide-eyed kids being exposed to that (myself included). We'd play a card game called Space Race, and I had a really cool model of the spaceship from Space: 1999. It was all quite wonderful. My dad would bring home copies of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics from the school library at lunch (yes, we walked/rode our bikes to and from school and went home for lunch back then). The chemistry sets were insanely cool and dangerous at the same time, and my dad would bring home vials of poorly-labeled powders for me to experiment with. I made gunpowder. I blew fuses in the basement by shorting a cobalt chloride-soaked cork in an electrical outlet (I don't know why I did that). Phenolphthalein came with my kit, as did an alcohol burner. At least half the stuff was carcinogenic. Needless to say, gloves and safety glasses were not in use in the basement :) I was exposed to that at home, and I wanted nothing more than to be a chemistry professor from a very young age when I learned about the degrees and higher education. So I earned an M.A. in geology and a Ph.D. in chemistry and was briefly a professor. The research years in academia leading up to that point were certainly the highlight of my working years. I published. I worked for and with brilliant people. I played with high explosives (Master's work) like HMX, RDX, and TNT. I had access to great facilities and instrumentation. I worked on a Cray Y-MP and every system that came along. Anyway, just a walk down memory lane and a nod to the title of the post/article. I certainly had a predilection for science, but being thrown into it certainly pushed me in that direction. Thanks dad (and mom, who tolerated this)!
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  What do you do now?
  - toddm 4y ago
    I'm trying to get back into my chosen field, specifically in computational chemistry and drug design. It's rough sledding as they say, since I am an older candidate who is hardly up to speed on where things are now vs. circa 2005. For the past 18 years - since I left academia - I've been bouncing around as a "data scientist," working in many fields but not what I really want to do and/or am actually good at doing.
potatototoo99 4y ago
We shouldn't push kids into science if that's not their interest in the first place - just saying it since apparently some people need to hear it.
onos 4y ago
My hot take: early science classes are almost completely useless, infotainment-type courses. Much better to engage the interested young with math. Then they can get into real science courses when in highschool.
- pjbeam 4y ago
  A little bit of wow factor from infotainment at an impressionable age can lead to lifetime interest that is far, far more impactful than the "educational" quality or content of these classes. Not always of course but this kind of thing can definitely be valuable.
  - onos 4y ago
    I suppose you are right. I didn’t get any of that in any of my science classes before highschool, but I guess it’s possible.
- sfpotter 4y ago
  You can easily get kids engaged with both math and science. They aren't mutually exclusive. There's nothing wrong with "infotainment". Some of the things which I experienced in elementary school which stuck with me the longest were when our gym teacher would play educational videos about human anatomy. A lot of these videos featured "Osmosis Jones"-style flythroughs of different organs. "Here's the stomach, it's filled with acid, etc." Netflix has The Magic Schoolbus right now. My wife and I were amusing ourselves by watching it for a few minutes last night, and I realized that the first episode (they visit each planet in the solar system on their bus, which had transformed into a space ship) had stuck with me almost verbatim, even though I haven't seen it in over 20 years. There are basic concepts that are quickly and easily imparted in this form (the sun is huge, the planets are very far apart, etc.) because of the visual format. Nothing wrong with this. All this "infotainment" really helped develop my imagination and powers of visualization, both of which have paid dividends for me in the long run. How "useful" a class is has as much to do with the instructor and the resources available to them as it does the particular pedagogical style. Should also be kept in mind that not everyone is going to become a scientist or use math on the job. The solution here isn't to eliminate "useless" subjects from school, but to focus on how to give people a broad education so that they can become informed and critical thinkers.
retrac 4y ago
I remember my first "real" science experiment in school. We determined the saturation point of salt in water depending on temperature. Our teacher somehow managed to get us into a spirit where it was as if we were the first people to attempt to measure this. Nature would reveal its secrets to us! It was just about the perfect experiment for 11 year olds, probably. We could understand what we were trying to find out and it seemed something that might actually be worth knowing! At the end of the class, would our measurements correspond with the figures in the book? If not, why might they not? And the Bunsen burner gets to come out, too! Very exciting. I think it might have been the first time I realized, oh, I could actually determine this myself, if I had to, using a scientific approach.

88 points by lxm 4y ago

Why would you want to get kids into science? It don’t pay for shit and career/life prospects are grim. Grind out a phd for 80k starting salary? Hard pass

dislikedtom2 4y ago
I'm not able to tell if this comment is satire and it worries me.
- auxym 4y ago
  I don't think it's satire. STEM is pushed hard, but realistically, science and math dont have that great career prospects. For one thing, a PhD, and the 4-7 year opportunity cost that comes with it, is pretty much required to get anything more than a lab tech job. After that PhD, where do you go? You can try for an insanely competitive tenure track faculty position. Or a very limited number of industry researcher jobs. The E in STEM (traditional engineering) isn't exactly tech in terms of salaries and job availability, but it mostly guarantees paying the bills with a decent WLB after "just" a bachelor's.
  - QuadmasterXLII 4y ago
    I mean, usually you just end up trading stonk at Renaissance Technologies or PanAgora. I'm not studying anything finance related and haven't even finished my phd and they've still been actively after me to sell my soul for mid six figures. The worst part was, I did the interviews to get an offer and everyone I talked to was tangibly brilliant- like could really be changing the world instead of this. I almost did it for the money + chance to work with a bunch of actually smart people, but the moral implications barely won out.
    - karmakurtisaani 4y ago
      Knowing what I know now, I would have jumped ship in your shoes in an instant. After 5 years of that work you could be free from working ever again and do whatever you feel like. I've heard that RT for example can pay you up to 1M per year for entry level, and looking at their profit margins I don't really doubt it.
      - ourmandave 4y ago
        Had to look it up. The starting salary for a research scientist is $170 - $205K. https://www.rentec.com/Careers.action?researchScientist=true https://www.rentec.com/Careers.action?researchScientist=true
        vasco 4y ago
        At those places the real money is made by being allowed to participate in the employee-only investment funds.
        karmakurtisaani 4y ago
        RT has a yearly return averaging around 40%, and the employees only portfolio averages around 70% per year (at least this was the case a few years ago still). I would imagine the major part of the compensation comes from bonuses and the opportunity to invest in the employees only fund. 170k-200k is not that different from ordinary banks, I can't imagine it's all RT would pay. Edit: had to look up the annual returns and they seem to be a bit different depending on where you look, so take those numbers with a grain of salt. In any case they're consistently the most profitable hedge fund out there.
    - ProjectArcturis 4y ago
      What moral implications? Quants at RenTech are basically just card counters in the biggest casino in the world.
      - QuadmasterXLII 4y ago
  - mcculley 4y ago
    The current labor market is paying much better than before for scientists with just a B.S. I do agree that there is little economic value in most Ph.D. programs.
    - Avicebron 4y ago
      From my experience working in biotech I would say certainly a B.S. in a scientific field (like biochemistry, etc.) There is often a hard cap in the career trajectory without a PhD. Often there are enough PhDs out there that moving into management in industry often requires this vs. Stagnating as a lab scientist without a huge upward spike in income/responsibilities.
  - pdpi 4y ago
    A PhD in maths is _incredibly_ valuable. Anything abstract algebra related, and the likes of the NSA are all over you. Anything numerical analysis related will find plenty of opportunities in finance, and the industry just calls statistics specialists "Data Scientists".
    - 4ad 4y ago
      > NSA > finance You're not selling it.
      - annyeonghada 4y ago
        Yeah, I remember my Physics degree: "With a Physics degree you will have lots of employment opportunities... but not in Physics!"
    - auxym 4y ago
      Yeah, to be fair, my perspective is from Canada, which I probably should have mentioned. I mean, we do have the RCMP and Bay Street, but I don't think it's comparable (in number of positions, salaries offered, etc) to NSA and Wall Street.
      - insightcheck 4y ago
        I heard that if you studied math with applications to computer science, you can find great opportunities with technology too (if not moving to the US for places like Google, there are quantum computing startups like Xanadu in Canada, along with other technology startups in Canada’s big cities too). In addition, outside of the RCMP, various ministries of the Canadian government could need the skillset too (Statistics Canada being the one that first comes to mind, though any teams that do economic analyses could benefit from someone with the background).
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - wbl 4y ago
      GS pay isn't that competitive
  - jleyank 4y ago
    There are a fair number of phd’s employed in biotech/pharma. Who do you think makes the stuff? Bs/ms are their techs. The ads in the states publishes salary history every year for those who care. It’s not SV salary but it’s way more useful than selling ads and scarfing data - you can actually end up curing a cancer or other diseases… And before you go about just curing symptoms, remember that many real cures would require gene modification and people aren’t all that interested in being a gmo. Ask RA sufferers about drugs like Humera re curing symptoms.
- runeblaze 4y ago
  Definitely not a satire but the hard truth. Your kid might end up having a strong existential crisis about why pursuing a "science" field ends up with 80k salary jobs when with that effort you could just go to FAANG as a SWE with a much higher salary with a bachelor's degree. If you don't get there as a bachelor's, just go there with a master's. The "strategy" is to get your kid interested in science enough so that they make a strong resume to a good college and have a strong foundation, then sway them to learn CS and get a SWE job.
europeanguy 4y ago
Because it's interesting.
karmakurtisaani 4y ago
This is a very much valid point. Science is amazingly cool, but gives you a pretty shit life. I'll encourage my kids towards science as much as needed and let their develop their thinking while they're at it, and congratulate them for the enlightenment when they come tell me that working as a scientist sucks. It's still really good for them to pursue that career early, if it's what they enjoy.
mcculley 4y ago
I think your assessment is not based on the current labor market. I am aware of scientists with a fresh B.S. making that much. I do agree that there is little economic value in most Ph.D. programs.
chriskanan 4y ago
As a scientist, I'd say this claim doesn't hold true for many scientific disciplines. I know scientists working in biopharma earning over $1M per year. That said, I do think the salary mentioned is accurate as a starting salary in academia for a research faculty position (tenure track starting salary in USA is ~50% higher though), but academia pays much worse than industry. You give up salary for huge amounts of autonomy.
- jbsimpson 4y ago
  You also have to factor in how terrible post-doc pay and job security is, just to have a shot at getting on the tenure track. In the US it's half of that 80k number in bio research.
  - counters 4y ago
    We also need to dispel the myth that tenure track academic roles are the only jobs for scientists. In my field, one can have a wonderful, decently-paying career working in some of the most desirable places in the US if they go the national lab route. There's also a thriving private sector which will just get bigger. This doesn't even factor in the exit ramp careers if, late in the game, a student realizes that "science" isn't quite what they want to do for their 9-5 - e.g., trading in all of those hundreds or thousands of hours grinding data analyses for their Masters/PhD for a career in data science or software engineering. We should make sure that folks understand a modern career in science may look, from a salary and QoL perspective, quite like a doctor or other professional. High-stress, relatively low-pay, challenging from your late teens to late twenties, then a rapid increase in earning power and opportunity into your early thirties.
    - insightcheck 4y ago
      I completely agree, but I think most people who arrive at this perspective only reach this view after spending time in industry or adjacent to people working there. A lot of the focus on tenure track jobs comes from professors and academics who dedicate their life almost solely in academic environments (so in their view, it’s a rather unhealthy attitude of academic tenure or bust). I’m not sure how feasible this is, but perhaps a work-study private sector summer internship could be an encouraged part of certain PhD, to widen perspectives and help both students and professors better understand the possibilities out there, which someone can be motivated to strive for, rather than settle for.
rcxdude 4y ago
An understanding of and willingness to do science is a broadly applicable skill across many different disciplines (even if you don't get a degree in it), as well as being a useful life skill. It's something kids absolutely should be exposed to even if it's not their passion nor do they wind up doing something as an adult which would be generally labelled 'science' (which is a shorthand usually meaning natural sciences specifically).
Forge36 4y ago
This is a pretty techy group. Out of curiosity what do you do and what was your major?
Nursie 4y ago
Because it gives them tools to understand the world. Because not everything you teach kids has to lead to a PhD or a specific career? Because 'science' plays into engineering, finance and tech sector careers? This has got to be some sort of satire.
lawn 4y ago
To me, getting kids into science is not just a path to PhDs, but to engineering and technology in general, and that is a very lucrative area money wise.
scrappyjoe 4y ago
This is the sort of comment that makes me really take a hard look at capitalism. The way I see it, scientific work is rewarding in and of itself. I don’t _need_ to make huge amounts of money if I’m doing something intellectually rewarding that contributes to our collective knowledge. Sure, add monetary compensation to your list of optimising constraints. But to make it the SOLE optimising constraint in your life? That’s tragic, IMO. Make enough. Do interesting things. Cultivate rewarding relationships. Be happy.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- watwut 4y ago
  PhDs are massively taken advantage of. The whole "do it for passion" thing is literally used as argument to abuse them. Little money, long hours, effectively up or out pyramid where most people gonl out, expectation that you will move in few years and partner will follow.
OgAstorga 4y ago
More than half the American families earn less than 75k household income[1]. So the career/life prospects are grim either way. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distribution-of-household-income-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distri...
- rdtwo 4y ago
  They won’t be Able to make it to a career in science. Since you need a PHD or at least a masters to do it you need to go through some top tier universities and invest some serious $$ into it. Science is for love is only a marginally better career choice than art.
- TexanFeller 4y ago
  My family made noticeably less than that, even considering inflation since then. In my home town the average family income is around half that in today’s dollars. I’m a high income SWE now. Growing up in a <$75k HH income family doesn’t imply grim prospects, that’s typical middle class. Everyone I grew up with would consider $75k high income bordering on rich.
tenpies 4y ago
I had the same question, but my response was: "at the end of the day, authoritarian politicians will order you what to think, and their media/technology lackeys will enforce those orders".
trashface 4y ago
Its probably more reliable income though. Screw up in tech (not even big tech), or have some kind of life misfortune, and your salary can pretty quickly go to zero. Knowing how to reverse a tree on a whiteboard is not some kind of important skill that employers want.
analog31 4y ago
Not all people have the motivation and self discipline to force themselves through a career in something that they hate, solely for the money. I learned programming as a kid in 1981 and fell in love with it. I knew about the demand for programmers, as my mom was teaching programming at a nearby tech school. My college internship was at a large computing facility, which employed a number of programmers. I formed the impression that programming as a job was incredibly repetitive, stressful, and boring. I majored in math and physics, and ended up with a PhD in physics. I do plenty of programming today, but on my own terms. I work at a place that has a large programming department, and my opinion of programming as a job has not changed. On the other hand, if someone loves that kind of work, or can at least grind their way through it, they're welcome to the money. It may have taken me a bit longer to reach a decent salary level. Today, I'm the highest ranking "technical track" worker in one division of a F500. Had I gone into programming, I might have reached a plateau, or burnt out.
aqsalose 4y ago
I suspect interacting with the real physical world and its realities and to realize one can affect it would be good, no matter what career they'd pick later. Picking a career in software development has been a good choice for bright kids for several decades now. In the long term view, the past is full of "good career choices for bright kids" that at some point no longer were not. The physical world is not going anywhere.
walleeee 4y ago
an 80k starting salary is hardly grim and if you happen to become a decent scientist or technician along the way there is usually work to be found, but yes, the phd mill incentive matrix is a blight and demonstrates broader misalignments in microcosm

dislikedtom2 4y ago

I remember being interested in sciences as a kid, but every time I asked for a chemistry kit or anything practical, I just got books and documentaries. Don't be those parents.

marginalia_nu 4y ago
Different strokes I guess? I was always much more into the books and was put off by having to experiment. (Then I did go on to study theoretical physics ...)
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  For sure. I switched from E.E. into Math/CS partly because no lab experiments that you can't get to "work." It's all in your brain. I chalk that up to immaturity. Or maybe the way labs were run back then; not sure.
flybrand 4y ago
Which chemistry kit do you wish you’d received?
- dislikedtom2 4y ago
  https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/a-requiem-for-amateur-chemistry https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/a-requiem-for-amateur-chemist...
eimrine 4y ago
> but every time I asked for a chemistry kit or anything practical, I just got books and documentaries. In my first day at school and at school library I have asked some books about physics or chemistry. My ask was refused and all books I was allowed to take were fiction books for children.

Metacelsus 4y ago

I'm very glad for my parents for getting me an actually good home chemistry set and then letting me experiment with it.

ourmandave 4y ago
For birthdays and Christmas were you always asking for chemicals from the "Things I Won't Work With" list? https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-dioxygen-difluoride https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor... https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...

pvaldes 4y ago

The correct answer for solving the wrong problem

flybrand 4y ago
What’s the right problem?

O__________O 4y ago

Related paper: https://www.princeton.edu/~sjleslie/Subtle%20Linguistic%20Cues.pdf https://www.princeton.edu/~sjleslie/Subtle%20Linguistic%20Cu...

scotty79 4y ago

> As many other studies have shown, when children hear descriptions of categories, whether “apples are red” or “scientists are smart,” they infer that members of those categories have special, exclusive characteristics. My friend in college had a mannerism that when he was about to give up on understanding something he was saying "it's for smart people to figure out". It always elicited visceral reaction from me "No, eff that. We are the smart people. We can figure this out." I guess our upbringing was somewhat different.

granshaw 4y ago
This is so common in the current anti-intellectual American mindset... other forms it takes: - I wouldn't know, X person is way smarter than me - (Try to discuss how something might work...) This was made by really smart people, I'll leave it to them! - (learns you're doing an Engineering degree) Wow, you must be really smart! - The "for science!!" trope
- onos 4y ago
  That sounds more like “avoidance of personal engagement in intellectual pursuit” rather than anti-intellectual - if anything these suggest complete deference to supposed experts.
- hahaxdxd123 4y ago
  Interesting. My impression of American anti-intellectualism is that it more often takes the opposite form: "X person is by all measures more educated than me on this topic, but I did own research! (on Youtube and Facebook)"
  - JamesianP 4y ago
    I'd say it's a suspicion of the values and political agendas/biases of intellectuals as a social class. I know professionals living in other countries who believe every silly conspiracy theory they see on youtube too. That part is a universal problem.
  - 4y ago

fastneutron 4y ago

To the people posting about having good chemistry sets as a kid: what were these sets and where did you/your parents get them? Where are the good sources today? Everything I remember growing up in the 90s was pretty dumbed down at best, and if you wanted to order any of the interesting chemicals or equipment, you needed a company or school letterhead with a PO account. Things got better in the 00s when eBay was still pretty open in terms of what you could find, but that seems to have been clamped down on more recently. Fear of litigation most likely.

n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
Ever hear Kary Mullis (PCR inventor / Nobel prize) talk about his childhood? He could basically buy whatever chemical he wanted. Definitely did dangerous stuff and got into trouble, but it’s hard to imagine children today having similar ability to hone skills with brains still spungey and time still abundant.
- fastneutron 4y ago
  I believe it. In the 50s You used to be able to get chemistry sets with potassium chlorate and mail-in coupons for radioisotopes. Now it’s all the same cheap, uninspiring crap for making glue slime or vinegar/baking soda fizzes. I had sympathetic parents with chemistry degrees, and we were able to find ways to get the cool stuff when I was a teenager, but for the vast majority, it’s no surprise that kids lose interest in STEM fields as they reach their teens.
  - malux85 4y ago
    Yea, when I was a teenager I had a key to my high school chemistry lab, and would go do experiments on my liquid mercury resonance reactor in the weekend. How wild is that?! Can’t imagine it happening today
  - II2II 4y ago
    > I had sympathetic parents with chemistry degrees In other words, you were able to access the cool stuff because someone in your life knew how to handle it. That is probably the way it should be. Now consider all of the families where the parents do not have chemistry degrees, do not work in industries where they regularly handle hazardous materials, or even have to take general workplace safety seriously. You pretty much have to hope the teenager instilled a sense of respect for safety in themselves.

black_13 4y ago

c7DJTLrn 4y ago

To get kids into science, make the education system better. Less memorisation, more practical work. Accelerate things for those interested and remove those that aren't. I wanted to be a chemical engineer or pharmacologist but got so bored that I moved on to something else. Now I fiddle with code and do nothing of real value to society. At least I get paid well I supppose.

humanrebar 4y ago
Lots of code is valuable to society. Find a product you believe in more if that's the problem. And a lot of software is very valuable but taken for granted. To pick an arbitrary example, word processing removed all sorts of even less "valuable" work from the world: mailing thing around, extra printing, photocopying, physical filing, transcription services, and all sorts of related rote secretarial duties. Those jobs are gone and people do other things now... maybe they work in healthcare.
- eggsmediumrare 4y ago
  Those jobs are gone and now those people drive ubers and and barely scrape by
granshaw 4y ago
I'm sorry, but this is somewhat playing the victim. If you really felt strongly about being a a chemical engineer or pharmacologist and benefitting society through that, the schoolwork being uninteresting doesn't sound like a big hurdle to overcome. We can't expect "the system" to solve everything.

neonate 4y ago

https://archive.ph/M7JzV https://archive.ph/M7JzV

AlbertCory 4y ago

My friend Jerry and I and some friends have done a whole set of experiments on various aspects of making coffee, and if I can ever get him off the dime we'll be publishing them here. So yeah, we Did Some Science. So can you. You can stop reading all these "experts recommend" stories about, e.g. not keeping your beans longer than two weeks, and just carry out a proper experiment on whether you can tell the difference. Who cares if the general population can tell if you can't? "Doing science" means applying some basic techniques that anyone can learn. Especially the kids.

toddm 4y ago

My parents were both elementary school teachers. I was born in 1969. My dad had a 40-year career teaching science to 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. Think model rockets, aquariums, microscopes, chemistry sets, rock collections, and all the wide-eyed kids being exposed to that (myself included). We'd play a card game called Space Race, and I had a really cool model of the spaceship from Space: 1999. It was all quite wonderful. My dad would bring home copies of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics from the school library at lunch (yes, we walked/rode our bikes to and from school and went home for lunch back then). The chemistry sets were insanely cool and dangerous at the same time, and my dad would bring home vials of poorly-labeled powders for me to experiment with. I made gunpowder. I blew fuses in the basement by shorting a cobalt chloride-soaked cork in an electrical outlet (I don't know why I did that). Phenolphthalein came with my kit, as did an alcohol burner. At least half the stuff was carcinogenic. Needless to say, gloves and safety glasses were not in use in the basement :) I was exposed to that at home, and I wanted nothing more than to be a chemistry professor from a very young age when I learned about the degrees and higher education. So I earned an M.A. in geology and a Ph.D. in chemistry and was briefly a professor. The research years in academia leading up to that point were certainly the highlight of my working years. I published. I worked for and with brilliant people. I played with high explosives (Master's work) like HMX, RDX, and TNT. I had access to great facilities and instrumentation. I worked on a Cray Y-MP and every system that came along. Anyway, just a walk down memory lane and a nod to the title of the post/article. I certainly had a predilection for science, but being thrown into it certainly pushed me in that direction. Thanks dad (and mom, who tolerated this)!

selimthegrim 4y ago
What do you do now?
- toddm 4y ago
  I'm trying to get back into my chosen field, specifically in computational chemistry and drug design. It's rough sledding as they say, since I am an older candidate who is hardly up to speed on where things are now vs. circa 2005. For the past 18 years - since I left academia - I've been bouncing around as a "data scientist," working in many fields but not what I really want to do and/or am actually good at doing.

potatototoo99 4y ago

We shouldn't push kids into science if that's not their interest in the first place - just saying it since apparently some people need to hear it.

onos 4y ago

My hot take: early science classes are almost completely useless, infotainment-type courses. Much better to engage the interested young with math. Then they can get into real science courses when in highschool.

pjbeam 4y ago
A little bit of wow factor from infotainment at an impressionable age can lead to lifetime interest that is far, far more impactful than the "educational" quality or content of these classes. Not always of course but this kind of thing can definitely be valuable.
- onos 4y ago
  I suppose you are right. I didn’t get any of that in any of my science classes before highschool, but I guess it’s possible.
sfpotter 4y ago
You can easily get kids engaged with both math and science. They aren't mutually exclusive. There's nothing wrong with "infotainment". Some of the things which I experienced in elementary school which stuck with me the longest were when our gym teacher would play educational videos about human anatomy. A lot of these videos featured "Osmosis Jones"-style flythroughs of different organs. "Here's the stomach, it's filled with acid, etc." Netflix has The Magic Schoolbus right now. My wife and I were amusing ourselves by watching it for a few minutes last night, and I realized that the first episode (they visit each planet in the solar system on their bus, which had transformed into a space ship) had stuck with me almost verbatim, even though I haven't seen it in over 20 years. There are basic concepts that are quickly and easily imparted in this form (the sun is huge, the planets are very far apart, etc.) because of the visual format. Nothing wrong with this. All this "infotainment" really helped develop my imagination and powers of visualization, both of which have paid dividends for me in the long run. How "useful" a class is has as much to do with the instructor and the resources available to them as it does the particular pedagogical style. Should also be kept in mind that not everyone is going to become a scientist or use math on the job. The solution here isn't to eliminate "useless" subjects from school, but to focus on how to give people a broad education so that they can become informed and critical thinkers.

retrac 4y ago

I remember my first "real" science experiment in school. We determined the saturation point of salt in water depending on temperature. Our teacher somehow managed to get us into a spirit where it was as if we were the first people to attempt to measure this. Nature would reveal its secrets to us! It was just about the perfect experiment for 11 year olds, probably. We could understand what we were trying to find out and it seemed something that might actually be worth knowing! At the end of the class, would our measurements correspond with the figures in the book? If not, why might they not? And the Bunsen burner gets to come out, too! Very exciting. I think it might have been the first time I realized, oh, I could actually determine this myself, if I had to, using a scientific approach.