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As a mid-90s Westinghouse winner weird nerd who never ended up in academia because of a desire to be left alone to do my research thing this hits hard: "Biolog
by jshaqaw 3y ago
As a mid-90s Westinghouse winner weird nerd who never ended up in academia because of a desire to be left alone to do my research thing this hits hard:
"Biology Professor Jason Sheltzer has an interesting thread today that points in this direction. Through an ad hoc analysis, Jason discovered that while 66% of the top national winners at the Intel/Westinghouse Science Fair from 1990 to 2002 pursued careers in academia, this number dropped to less than a third for winners from 2003 to 2014. Now, for this to support my and Nate’s observations, you have to assume the Science Fair winners are good representations of the Weird Nerd. I personally think that’s a valid assumption! If you scroll down in his thread, you will see indeed some illustrious names of current academics among these winners. I’ll add to this list recent Nobel Laureate Katalin Kariko, who describes in her book having scored 3rd in her country in the Biology Olympiad. This is the closest thing Eastern European countries have to a Science Fair."
* Finalist but not top 10 which is what the data here was about.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago> If you scroll down in his thread, you will see indeed some illustrious names of current academics among these winners. I’ll add to this list recent Nobel Laureate Katalin Kariko It should be noted here that she was denied tenure at Penn for the same research that eventually won her the Nobel Prize. Anecdotal? Sure. But still supportive of the idea that there is something very, very wrong with modern academia.