[HN Gopher] To get kids into science, just do it
___________________________________________________________________
To get kids into science, just do it
Author : prostoalex
Score : 79 points
Date : 2022-11-05 23:11 UTC (23 hours ago)
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| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Those jobs are gone and now those people drive ubers and and
| barely scrape by
| granshaw wrote:
| 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.
| onos wrote:
| 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.
| sfpotter wrote:
| 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.
| pjbeam wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| fastneutron wrote:
| 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.
| lordnacho wrote:
| How about a virtual chemistry set? Saves me from cleaning up.
| Plus the kid can do dangerous stuff.
|
| Does it exist?
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I think that 1990 is probably pretty close to the point where
| chemistry sets finally got safe(r).
|
| I was born in the early 80s and my older brother was born in
| the mid 70s, and I distinctly remember preferring to play with
| his old hand-me-down chemistry set rather than mine. One like
| his could not be found in stores anywhere by the time I was old
| enough to be interested in a chemistry set.
|
| But I also never gave myself any horrible chemical burns
| playing with my own chemistry set. So it's probably a decent
| trade-off, all told.
| ehBut wrote:
| To these people as well; cooking is chemistry. Making household
| cleaners is chemistry.
|
| To do chemistry with kids all one needs is a grocery store, an
| herb shoppe, and the right explanations for what's going on.
|
| But instead there's bunch of waxing poetic about how the world
| has changed. It's rather pathetic to think science should come
| neatly labeled in a box. The lack of individual creativity and
| imagination in our culture is stunning.
| analog31 wrote:
| Both of my parents are chemists. My brothers and I never had
| a chemistry set. There was plenty to learn about chemistry,
| and science, just doing regular household things, outdoors,
| etc.
| antasvara wrote:
| As a child, a lot of innovation comes from riffing on things
| you see/learn from the world around you.
|
| When you talk to people that had scientific experiences as a
| child, a significant component of the learning comes from
| tinkering with already built devices, seeing an experiment
| and thinking "what else would work in this," etc.
|
| Science isn't neatly labeled in a box. However, a decent
| chunk of it is using previously done research to guide new
| questions, a process that is emulated on a smaller level by
| chemistry sets.
| ehBut wrote:
| What you said isn't unreasonable but so generic it hardly
| says "must buy chemistry set".
|
| "Previously done research" like "these things taste good
| together" and "add this to cleaner to get a nice smell."
| Sounds like riffing on the world right around them. You're
| not going to get functionally fixed on when and where to
| use generic language like "previously done research" are
| you?
|
| The rigor can come in when the work demands it. Kid's
| chemistry sets are not saving lives or unlocking new
| truths. The industrial pipeline to produce them hardly
| seems worth it.
|
| You do you. Personally, I prefer the path of least
| resistance for myself; buying less, dealing with less mess,
| and using the immediate environment to explore the same
| language and ideas. Of course it means having an
| imagination. Something adults often lack, seeing the path
| of least resistance as living in their memory, behaving
| literally in lock step with it.
| yCombLinks wrote:
| In the 90's my aunt bought an old chemistry set from a yard
| sale and it was amazing! From the 60s or 70s I think. Had all
| kinds of crazy stuff you'd never get (even then) off a big box
| store shelf.
| n0tth3dro1ds wrote:
| 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.
| hnews_account_1 wrote:
| Are .. are you saying it's a bad thing children can't handle
| dangerous chemicals anymore? Wut?!
| n0tth3dro1ds wrote:
| Yeah, a little bit. It's not just kids that can't get their
| hands on stuff. Even trained adults have to jump through
| regulatory and legal hoops. Schools face tons of liability.
| Mass market chemistry sets are lame now.
| fastneutron wrote:
| If you want to buy _anything_ from Alfa Aesar, Fisher
| Scientific or any similar "real" supplier, you need to be
| a corporation or educational institution and have a
| purchasing account or p-card. Even if it's distilled
| water or sodium chloride. Find a kid who can jump through
| those hoops and you'll have someone who'd probably make a
| decent cofounder
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >are you saying it's a bad thing children can't handle
| dangerous chemicals anymore?
|
| well, yes.
|
| I think it was much safer when kids in general were more
| well qualified across-the-board.
| strken wrote:
| I mean, yes? Our threshold for what's dangerous is very
| sensitive and our trust in kids is very low.
|
| A ten year old raised to understand danger can be capable
| of using bleach safely, operating a lawnmower, or carrying
| out fun exothermic reactions in the backyard.
| fastneutron wrote:
| There weren't exactly mass casualties resulting from the
| chemistry sets being mentioned by the other posters in this
| thread either. We just got more afraid of being sued.
|
| Snark aside, where is the middle ground? Fizzing and food
| coloring is interesting to a 5 year old, but that's about
| all you can get as a consumer these days. There's likely a
| vast gulf of squandered opportunity between that and what
| can genuinely be done safely and still be inspiring.
| fastneutron wrote:
| 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.
| II2II wrote:
| > 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.
| malux85 wrote:
| 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
| bergenty wrote:
| Well now information is so accessible that with access to
| those chemicals you would have degenerate kids blowing up
| schools instead of just shooting them up.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| 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.
| rdtwo wrote:
| 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
| Nursie wrote:
| 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.
| rcxdude wrote:
| 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).
| aqsalose wrote:
| 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.
| europeanguy wrote:
| Because it's interesting.
| lawn wrote:
| 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.
| OgAstorga wrote:
| 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-
| distri...
| TexanFeller wrote:
| 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.
| rdtwo wrote:
| 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.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| 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.
| scrappyjoe wrote:
| 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.
| watwut wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| tenpies wrote:
| 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".
| mcculley wrote:
| 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.
| trashface wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| dislikedtom2 wrote:
| I'm not able to tell if this comment is satire and it worries
| me.
| auxym wrote:
| 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.
| jleyank wrote:
| 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.
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| 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.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| What moral implications? Quants at RenTech are basically
| just card counters in the biggest casino in the world.
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| I came to the conclusion that most likely, taking the job
| was morally neutral- barely hurting nor helping anyone
| outside the firm (not specifically RT- don't want to out
| myself); but that on a larger scale our country is
| rotting because our most capable thinkers are doing this
| instead of anything morally positive (solving healthcare,
| solving the climate crisis, leading the country), and I
| didn't want to participate in that brain drain.
|
| Looking at my own motivations, one of the big draws of
| the position was that everyone I talked to at the firm
| was competent and pleasant, while in domains solving real
| problems (again for example healthcare and climate) 70%
| of people I've interacted with are stupid, petty, or
| both. But stepping back, isn't that state of affairs
| existentially horrifying? If that status quo persists,
| will we even survive as a species?
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Fair. It's really a shame that society incentivizes its
| smartest to go into finance rather than a positive-sum
| endeavor. If it's any reassurance, the world has pretty
| much always been this way.
|
| And I'm pretty surprised everyone you met was pleasant --
| that was certainly not my experience at a hedge fund.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Had to look it up.
|
| The starting salary for a research scientist is $170 -
| $205K.
|
| https://www.rentec.com/Careers.action?researchScientist=t
| rue
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| 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.
| vasco wrote:
| At those places the real money is made by being allowed
| to participate in the employee-only investment funds.
| pdpi wrote:
| 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".
| [deleted]
| cercatrova wrote:
| The NSA doesn't pay that much compared to the opportunity
| cost of the wage lost getting that PhD. Their salaries
| are capped by government standards, they can't pay above
| that.
| auxym wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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).
| wbl wrote:
| GS pay isn't that competitive
| 4ad wrote:
| > NSA
|
| > finance
|
| You're not selling it.
| annyeonghada wrote:
| Yeah, I remember my Physics degree: "With a Physics
| degree you will have lots of employment opportunities...
| but not in Physics!"
| mcculley wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| runeblaze wrote:
| 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.
| chriskanan wrote:
| 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.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Probability distributions are the difference.
|
| There are people earning $200k, $500k, and $1M+ in many
| fields.
|
| The probability of getting there (and quality of life while
| getting there and after you get there), are the important
| bits of information.
|
| For example, if you have to grind out my whole 20s (some of
| the best years for the human body) doing dissertations and
| working 80+ hour weeks for near minimum wage (per hour
| worked), only for a 10% chance to make it to $200k per year
| or more, maybe it is not worth it.
|
| Especially if other options exist that provide much higher
| probabilities of attaining an income you want with similar
| levels of dedication.
| chriskanan wrote:
| Unfortunately, in the USA that's true across PhDs and MDs.
| It requires about 10-15 years post high school to make more
| than a living wage.
|
| At least for everyone I know, they all ended up with
| comfortable salaries after finishing their PhDs. Most
| people spend our best years spending the majority of our
| time working, and at least for me, scientific research
| makes it not feel like work. Not everything is about money
| and a professor can live well in many places on a $90K
| salary, speaking from past experience.
|
| The biggest cost is probably the impact it has on trying to
| have a family since one doesn't typically have much salary
| or time until around age 35 with the typical trajectory.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Yeah that can be an issue since you basically only have
| 2-3 years left to have kids if you want them and are a
| woman.
|
| Also 90k ain't what it used to be. It's probably
| equivalent to 60k 3-4 years ago.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| While the ROI on MD has gone down quite a bit, it is not
| as volatile as PhD. The floor for MDs is quite a bit
| higher, and the path to high income is well defined (less
| random to achieve it if you go through the steps).
|
| https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2022-compensation-
| overvie...
| JamesianP wrote:
| grad school wasn't a grind in my experience. Definitely
| easier and more fun than a real job, apart from the sparse
| high-stress deadlines of course. I think that's generally
| the norm in the US (except in chemistry I hear?)
| jbsimpson wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| siver_john wrote:
| In my time as a PhD student (granted still there
| currently just at the finishing things up stage) I was
| actually part of founding an organization for students to
| basically do this. We invited speakers from different
| fields and had them talk about "alternative" career paths
| considering the current system basically assumes you want
| to become a professor. We also included a workshop every
| year where we would build in career skills and have
| professionals come and speak. You learn very quickly that
| there is an incredible range of activities one can do
| with a PhD.
| counters wrote:
| Absolutely. There have always been domains where industry
| roles have been just as sought after as academic ones -
| think Computer Science broadly, and all the opportunities
| one has with a PhD there. Other domains have been slow to
| catch on to this, but it seems like there has been an
| inflection point over the past 10 years where we're just
| so grossly overproducing PhDs in so many domains relative
| to academic jobs that there is mounting pressure on
| degree programs to revamp their training/prep for
| "alternative" career paths.
|
| Myself and colleagues are definitely trying to encourage
| our alma mater to have more support for externships other
| opportunities in industry. I think things will continue
| to change - for the better, for early career scientists -
| over the next 5-10 years. If only because there is a
| workforce crisis in my field where skills like AI and
| software engineering are in extremely high demand, but
| even 3-4 years ago we actively discouraged PhD students
| from pursuing this type of work!
| [deleted]
| insightcheck wrote:
| > "You give up salary for huge amounts of autonomy."
|
| I heard otherwise from a staff scientist at a university in
| biological sciences, though I'm not sure how representative
| his view is. He said that non-professors lack research
| autonomy, and even then, there are limitations of what one
| can fund due to grants (though I'm not sure how accurate this
| is, as I used to assume that academic grants generally had
| fairly flexible conditions for using the funding).
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| This is all accurate. There is flexibility in funding, but
| if you use your grant money for a completely different
| project than you proposed, you better hit an absolute home
| run or you won't get any more grants.
| btrettel wrote:
| > You give up salary for huge amounts of autonomy.
|
| The "autonomy" is a facade in many instances. Professors have
| to do what can be funded. For a lot of professors that means
| doing what's trendy or what panders to moneyed interests
| rather than what they'd actually like to do and what would be
| more valuable.
|
| Read chapter 4, titled "Assignable Curiosity", in the book
| Disciplined Minds for more detail.
|
| https://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/
|
| (Note: There's a lot I disagree with in this book, but I
| think this particular chapter is accurate.)
| [deleted]
| chriskanan wrote:
| This is true if you need large amounts of resources ($) to
| achieve your research goals. At least for me, I have not
| found this to be true.
|
| However, what I was thinking about when I wrote that was
| that I control my schedule, calendar, research objectives,
| and have a yearly check in on my performance. In contrast,
| my experience in industry was VERY different across the
| board.
| btrettel wrote:
| > This is true if you need large amounts of resources ($)
| to achieve your research goals.
|
| My experience is that the quoted situation is the
| exception in US academia. Despite paying a pittance,
| graduate students are expensive enough to make professors
| dependent on the approval of funders. And that's where
| the loss of autonomy comes from.
|
| It seems to me that certain parts of academia that are
| more funded by teaching like pure math may be more immune
| to this, but STEM broadly seems accurately described by
| the chapter I recommended.
|
| > However, what I was thinking about when I wrote that
| was that I control my schedule, calendar, research
| objectives, and have a yearly check in on my performance.
| In contrast, my experience in industry was VERY different
| across the board.
|
| I agree with what you said, aside from that I don't think
| you have full autonomy over your research objectives. If
| you think you control your own research objectives, I
| recommend reading the chapter I mentioned. As far as I
| can tell, your interests are well aligned with what's
| supported. I looked you up, and was not surprised to see
| that you work in deep learning, one of the most supported
| and hyped fields around today. People (like myself) whose
| interests aren't aligned with what's supported often find
| academia to be quite hostile. The _relative_ research
| autonomy you feel is real, but if you decide to move
| outside of deep learning, you may no longer find the same
| sense of research autonomy.
| Forge36 wrote:
| This is a pretty techy group. Out of curiosity what do you do
| and what was your major?
| pvaldes wrote:
| The correct answer for solving the wrong problem
| flybrand wrote:
| What's the right problem?
| O__________O wrote:
| Related paper:
|
| https://www.princeton.edu/~sjleslie/Subtle%20Linguistic%20Cu...
| black_13 wrote:
| potatototoo99 wrote:
| 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.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/M7JzV
| toddm wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| What do you do now?
| toddm wrote:
| 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.
| JamesianP wrote:
| In my experience it's almost always the case with industry
| that you end up in some adjacent niche that isn't quite
| exactly what you want to do, even if you never leave the
| field of your schooling. By that I mean it may be a lot
| easier to get into computational chemistry for something
| other than drug design.
|
| It's a weird time now with software eating everything and
| many science jobs asking for PhD in <our science branch> or
| Computer Science (!) as requirements. So I'd assume there's
| some angle in which your experience provides an advantage.
| toddm wrote:
| @JamesianP - You're exactly right about the heady
| requirement lift. And there are plenty of widely-defined
| computational chemistry jobs, especially when you throw
| in the bio- prefix.
|
| As for the adjacent niche bit, right again as you are
| about experience. My time as a so-called "data scientist"
| was never really the best fit, and I could never compete
| with the folks who do Kaggle competitions and have a real
| passion for AI/ML (which, to me, is one of the defining
| points of "data science" today).
|
| However, I've logged a lot of time over the past 30+
| years in front of the terminal, so fingers crossed!
| deskamess wrote:
| What are the requirements (degree, etc) for computational
| chemistry and drug design? I have a young one who is
| looking at medicine in general.
| toddm wrote:
| @deskamess - I believe a Master's is the minimum buy-in,
| and Ph.D. is preferred. My Ph.D. area is quite narrowly
| in theoretical chemical physics, but was all heavy
| computation and focused on quantum and classical
| dynamics.
|
| The areas of study are going to be computational
| chemistry, pharmaceutical chemistry, cheminformatics, or
| something closely related to those. Whether you work in a
| lab or in front of a computer depends on what you study
| and whose lab you study it in. You can't go wrong with a
| Ph.D. from UCSF, I can tell you that (I was a postdoc
| there), so browse the faculty pages.
|
| Have a look at some of the open positions at, say,
| Roche/Genentech. There are some great open source
| resources and some industry-dominant ones with which
| you'll be expected to have some experience in
| (Schrodinger's software is one of them). Domain
| knowledge, of course. QSAR/ADME and similar acronyms.
| Docking, free energy perturbation, bioinformatics.
| Python/R/SQL.
|
| AI/ML is of course hot in pharma but not necessarily
| useful for all situations - I happen to not be much of an
| AI/ML guy and won't be penalized for that, which I cannot
| say about almost every job I've had or applied for.
|
| What got my foot in the door with drug design was
| postdoctoral work on molecular dynamics simulations of
| large systems that are physiologically relevant - motor
| proteins - and I was teamed-up with experimentalists who
| were studying the same systems.
|
| More than happy to share more, my contact info is in my
| profile.
| anpat wrote:
| Not exactly same fields but folks over at
| https://citrine.io might interest you given your interest +
| background.
| toddm wrote:
| @anpat - Thank you for that, looks interesting!
| dislikedtom2 wrote:
| 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.
| eimrine wrote:
| > 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.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Which chemistry kit do you wish you'd received?
| retrac wrote:
| 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.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| granshaw wrote:
| That's a separate, more recent problem IMO. Mistrust of
| experts and lazy self-affirmation
| Metacelsus wrote:
| I'm very glad for my parents for getting me an actually good home
| chemistry set and then letting me experiment with it.
| ourmandave wrote:
| 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-wor...
|
| https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...
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