Why did the social prestige of science and engineering decline in the US? | Hacker News Reader

Why did the social prestige of science and engineering decline in the US?

cogsciresearch.blogspot.com

57 pointsscritic96 comments

Read Anti-Intellectualism in America by Richard* Hofstadter; it's as true and relevant today, as it was back then.

The decline, if any, probably has to do with the fact that there wasn't a Cold War where scientists could participate directly against a tangible threat and common purpose:

“The Sputnik was more than a shock to American national vanity: it brought an immense amount of attention to bear on the consequences of anti-intellectualism in the school system and in American life at large. Suddenly the national distaste for intellect appeared to be not just a disgrace but a hazard to survival. After assuming for some years that its main concern with teachers was to examine them for disloyalty, the nation now began to worry about their low salaries. Scientists, who had been saying for years that the growing obsession with security was demoralizing to research, suddenly found receptive listeners. Cries of protest against the slackness of American education, hitherto raised only by a small number of educational critics, were now taken up by television, mass magazines, businessmen, scientists, politicians, admirals, and university presidents, and soon swelled into a national chorus of self-reproach. Of course, all this did not immediately cause the vigilante mind to disappear, nor did it disperse anti-intellectualism as a force in American life; even in the sphere most immediately affected, that of education, the ruling passion of the public seemed to be for producing more Sputniks, not for developing more intellect, and some of the new rhetoric about education almost suggested that gifted children were to be regarded as resources in the cold war. But the atmosphere did change notably. In 1952, only intellectuals seemed much disturbed by the specter of anti-intellectualism; by 1958, the idea that this might be an important and even a dangerous national failing was persuasive to must thinking people.”

Correction: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter

Thanks. Those pesky, prolific Hofstadters.

Part of the problem is that the American distrust of intellectualism is itself not the irrational thing that those sympathetic to intellectuals would like to think. Intellectuals killed by the millions in the 20th century, and it actually takes the sophisticated training of "education" to work yourself up into a state where you refuse to count that in the books. Intellectuals routinely declared things that aren't true; catastrophically wrong predictions about the economy, catastrophically wrong pronouncements about foreign policy, and just generally numerous times where they've been wrong. Again, it takes a lot of training to ignore this fact. "Scientists" collectively were witnessed by the public flipflopping at a relatively high frequency on numerous topics; how many times did eggs go back and forth between being deadly and beneficial? Sure the media gets some blame here but the scientists played into it, each time confidently pronouncing that this time they had it for sure and it is imperative that everyone live the way they are saying (until tomorrow). Scientists have failed to resist politicization across the board, and the standards of what constitutes science continues to shift from a living, vibrant, thoughtful understanding of the purposes and ways of science to a scelerotic hide-bound form-over-substance version of science where papers are too often written to either explicitly attract grants or to confirm someone's political beliefs... and regardless of whether this is 2% or 80% of the papers written today it's nearly 100% of the papers that people hear about.

I simplify for rhetorical effect; my point is not that this is a literal description of the current state of the world but that it is far more true than it should be. Any accounting of "anti-intellectualism" that fails to take this into account and lays all the blame on "Americans" is too incomplete to formulate an action plan that will have any chance of success. It's not a one-sided problem.

If you want to fix anti-intellectualism, you first need to fix intellectualism and return it to its roots of dispassionate exploration, commitment to truth over all else and bending processes to find truth rather than bending truth to fit (politicized) processes, and return to great, foundational humility that even the press could not overplay into hubris. And they need to drop their blinders whereby they excuse away the damage that intellectuals have done while ignoring these ancient precepts and only crediting themselves their successes, because it cuts themselves off from the very object lessons that could help them return to this time-tested approach to science, which they still flatter themselves that they follow. If you fail to fix the intellectuals first, then all your effort to fix "Americans" is going to fail; you'll bend your efforts towards getting them to look at intellectuals seriously, but they'll end up coming to the same conclusions they already have about the value of intellectuals and you'll have wasted your shot.

I'm not holding my breath.

Its not so much that mistaken intellectuals declare things that aren't true, but that those incapable of thinking for themselves use the power of government to impose these ideas on the rest of us that is the problem.

For example, Keynesian economic theory. How many of its advocates can actually explain it, let alone question its precepts. This even after trillions of dollars in destruction, all because they gave up on trying to grasp it in college.

Wait a second. Maybe I need some reeducation myself here, but you're pinning the mass-murders of the 20th century on "intellectuals"? And then saying that's the explanation for the present day trend of distrust in science? (Well, that plus the egg flip-flop.) I'm not granting the premise, but even if I did, it's quite a non-sequitur.

You blame scientists for "fail[ing] to resist politicization" without mentioning that one of our major political parties and it's major financial backers hate the policy implications of some important scientific conclusions. The coal lobby, etc. have to attack science as a discipline precisely because the science is so clear. (Part of that is of course claiming that those nasty scientists are raking in the big grant $$$ as a reward for their dishonesty.)

(Re: the murdering, I think it's giving the murderers way too much credit to take whatever intellectual justifications they offer at face value. Sure Stalin claimed to be furthering the revolution or whatever, but he exterminated an awful lot of non-Russians who had traditionally resisted the central Russian state. The rise of the modern state enabled ideological mass-killing, but that just added another reason to all the other ones - ethnic, religious, colonial conquest, etc. - that predate a literate class, let alone an "intellectual" one.)

'but you're pinning the mass-murders of the 20th century on "intellectuals"?'

Intellectuals provided the impetus and moral theory for the revolutions, started the revolutions, enabled the continuation of them, and in the non-Communist countries flew active cover for them. We still have intellectuals today like Friedman who fly as much cover for murderous totalitarian regimes as they can; it hasn't even stopped. Intellectuals are yet to give up Marxism, despite what it actually does. It flatters them so, a toxic meme that can only strike the smart.

It wasn't every last person everywhere who might have called themselves an intellectual, but it sure wasn't "the common man" reading Marx and deciding to break out the pitchforks. "I am a barely literate peasant and I demand the immediate centralization of all power into the government so it can be run by the intellectual elite, create a single central bank, eliminate my religion, abolish my private property, remove my means of communication into centralized control of the state, and write glorious Five Year Plans so I can stop farming potatos!" They provided a driving force for change, but the change itself was controlled by intellectuals.

"Intellectuals" may not be solely responsible, but they weren't even remotely innocent, and it is entirely irrational to pretend that intellectual ideas not accompanied by humility and an intense effort made to discover whether those ideas are actually true before making grand pronouncements that move countries have not had massive negative impacts in our world today.

"one of our major political parties and it's major financial backers hate the policy implications of some important scientific conclusions"

I assure you Democrats are equally prone to it. If you think the Democrats have been some great boon to true science it's only because you're a Democrat yourself. As neither Republican nor Democrat, neither political party (emphasis "political") has particularly impressed me with their devotion to scientific truth. Though I will concede the Democrats have done a great deal better job pretending in the past decade, at least inasmuch as it was politically convenient.

And remember perception really matters here. You may refuse to chalk up these actions to "intellectualism" no matter what contortions you have to go through to account only good to its cause and discard the evil, but those of a "simpler, less intellectual" bent won't go through those contortions, and that's not necessarily irrational. It's no great wonder "I'm an intellectual and I'm here to give you the answer!" isn't something that makes an American drop everything to listen.

(And they have done great good, too. One Norman Borlaug can offset an awful lot. But it's not a path to an accurate picture of the intellectual history of the 20th century to take credit for Norman but dance away from, for example, Eugenics, to name just one problematic entirely-intellectual idea, and what it wrought.)

I think you need to take another look at the connection between western intellectuals and communism. They defended it and, for decades, denied the abuses and murders committed in the Soviet Union and in communist China.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot

Quote: ‘(Stalin) exterminated an awful lot of non-Russians who had traditionally resisted the central Russian state’

Yes, he did but not because they were non-Russians and the Soviet Union was not a "central Russian state". Stalin’s power was centered in the power of the Communist Party that by design (and ideology) spanned all nationalities.

Quote: ‘The rise of the modern state enabled ideological mass-killing, but that just added another reason to all the other ones - ethnic, religious, colonial conquest, etc.’

Yes, exactly, "ideological mass-killing". Of course there was plenty of other killing all along but I am sure you’d agree that’s irrelevant to the thesis. I assume, of course, you were not trying to say that since people were killing each other before we should not try to understand the causes of 20th century atrocities.

So back to the obvious question:

Who developed the ideas of the ideologies that are at the root of ideological mass-killing?

Just consider your own words (and the ideas behind them). I don’t think you need reeducation. You went straight to the core, quite intuitively.

Here's the thing about the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming. It rests on the assumption that uniformitarianism (the doctrine that is the basis for the entire science of Geology) is false. It does not attempt to prove this, it merely assumes it. Much like the Young Earth Creationists.

All the CO2 currently sequestered in fossil fuels used to be part of our atmosphere. We know what the climate was like before this happened through fossils, changing sea levels, and evidence of glaciation, all recorded in the rock. The climate has followed a predictable and remarkably constant warming/cooling cycle as far back as we can reliably measure. If the sequestration of CO2 in fossil fuels had an impact, it's below our level of precision.

Could the release of CO2 make a slight difference at the margins? Sure it could. The ice age we've got coming down the pike in a few thousand years could possibly be partially mitigated. But the sackcloth, ashes, and cries of "The End is Nigh! Repent, Ye Sinners!" is stuff and nonsense.

Many of the highest profile advocates of AGW are charlatans. This has been demonstrated time and time again.

Let's take a look at the IPCC report that was so loudly praised by AGW supporters. There are any number of problems with it, but for argument's sake, we'll accept it at face value as the worst-case scenario. It concluded that over the course of several decades that the globe had warmed 0.8 degrees, and stated with 90% confidence that man's influence was responsible for (wait for it) less than one tenth of one degree. That's not a sound basis for wailing and rending of clothes.

Like it or not, CO2 is a trace gas that comprises significantly less than 0.1% of our atmosphere, and will remain so in any realistic projection. Ice cores have shown little or no correlation between CO2 and temperature. AGW proponents state that this will change soon. But this is a statement based upon faith, not one based on evidence.

Of course, I could ramble on at more length about the difficulties in finding an extremely faint signal amongst mind-boggling amounts of noise. The pretense of a precision that does not exist. The claims of knowledge that is not actually known. And the perfidy of the vocal AGW proponents. (The last one is especially fun.) But I don't think I'd be adding much by doing so. All of that is easily addressed with simple search strings.

> All the CO2 currently sequestered in fossil fuels used to be part of our atmosphere.

That's an interesting assertion. I'm not a biologist, but I suspect quite a lot of the carbon in hydrocarbons was locked into other carbon compounds before being taken up by plants and animals.

Consider: the carbonaceous compounds in the shells of mollusks do not come from C02 but from other disolved carbon compounds in the water.

You could just as easily argue that all the carbon in limestone used to be in the atmosphere.

Perhaps science was once like this, when it was practiced only by a monied elite at their leisure. But if science, or intellectual life broadly, is important and consequential, it necessarily will not be dispassionate.

Science is a human endeavor, practiced by humans. Scientists aren't Vulcans, and efforts to "fix" them will be as problematic as other social engineering efforts. To get the outcomes desired, one has to change the incentives; changing people doesn't work.

That's all true - but we frequently pretend that it isn't. How often do we read or see someone push themselves forward as the Voice of Dispassionate Truth, when the reality they are as much a "true believer" as any other partisan?

How often to we entrust the role of Gatekeeper to someone only to discover they've been using their position to engage in insider trading?

As long as we allow people to put themselves forth as harbingers of Truth, nothing will change.

But the "monied elite" of earlier science were human, too. So are those who determine which outcomes are desired and what incentives will achieve that. Why should the overall result of that be any better?

"Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so."

Ronald Reagan

But what exactly is the definition of an "intellectual"? It's certainly not a synonym for "scientist". The best definition I've encountered is that an intellectual tries to find solutions to the world's problems through cogitation alone, without reference to experiment or other experience. (Think, say, Karl Marx.) In other words, an Aristotelian. But certainly not a scientist. (Of course, some people working today as "scientists" are not very scientific, but that's not exactly the same problem.)

A characteristic and illustrative Aristotlean idea is the teaching that heavy objects fall faster than light ones. People for many centuries believed Aristotle about this, probably because it seemed sensible. But "sensible" just means according to the evidence provided to us by our senses. It also, in this case, means "wrong". Many people have "sensible" ideas about modern policy issues, such as the way that taxes generate revenue, or the efficacy of gun control laws. Most of these ideas, "sensible" or not, are also wrong, some demonstrably so, others a bit more subtly. But evidence is not terribly important to an Aristotelean, or to an intellectual.

Interestingly, Galileo disproved the incorrect doctrine that, ceteris paribus, heavy objects fall faster than light ones not just with “reference to experiment or other experience” but by logically refuting Aristotle’s reasoning:-

SALVIATI: If then we take two bodies whose natural speeds are different, it is clear that, [according to Aristotle], on uniting the two, the more rapid one will be partly held back by the slower, and the slower will be somewhat hastened by the swifter. Do you not agree with me in this opinion?

SIMPLICIO: You are unquestionably right.

SALVIATI: But if this be true, and if a large stone move with a speed of, say, eight [units] while a smaller move with a speed of four, then when they are united, the system will move with a speed less than eight; but the two stones when tied together make a stone larger than that which before moved with a speed of eight. Hence the heavier body moves with less speed than the lighter; an effect which is contrary to your supposition. Thus you see how, from your assumption that the heavier body moves more rapidly than the lighter one, I infer that the heavier body moves more slowly.

Two books I've recently read are The Age of American Unreason by Jacoby [1] and Unscientific America by Mooney & Kirschenbaum [2]. Both are worth reading, but Jacoby gives a deeper and more thoughtful analysis and spends considerable time on historical roots and trends.

This topic is tied heavily to politics, and I hesitate to get into that here. I will say this: science is about exploring, like math is about exploring. Viewing science and math as pragmatic skills reduces them to engineering and accounting. Now there's nothing wrong with engineers and accountants and we desperately need and value their skills. But we also need scientists and research mathematicians who explore mysteries for the sake of discovery. There are a lot of subtle implications of that which are completely lost on people who think of science and math as purely functional, vocational pursuits. The benefits of science and math that have been capitalized on by engineers are spin-offs of people with curiosity exploring for exploration's sake. When exploration for its own sake is devalued, the engineers of the world find once fertile ground growing barren.

1. http://www.amazon.com/Age-American-Unreason-Susan-Jacoby/dp/...

2. http://www.amazon.com/Unscientific-America-Scientific-Illite...

Thanks for the book recommendations, dwc!

From the synopses and the comments of those two books, here is a summary: "It is all the dumb people that won't accept the One Truth of atheism that are to blame!"

I'm not sure where you got that idea[1]. There was a time several decades ago when the Christian proletariat majority widely supported science, read popular periodicals about science, and aspired to educate their children in science and engineering. There was also a time when conservatives were far more pro-science than liberals. This is why it's important to know some of the history here. Today's anti-science sentiment is surely rooted in right wing Christian factions, and that needs to be fought. But there's absolutely no reason to think that conservative Christians can't endorse and value science, since they have in the past.

The acknowledgement of past conservative/religious alignment with science comes from Jacoby. Decrying the current state is not the same as a summary dismissal.

Mooney and Kirschenbaum are what the "New Atheists" call accommodationists. Atheists themselves, they believe in embracing and working with religious people to find common ground. They're looking to bond with the "sane" religious moderate majority and fight the Luddite, anti-science extremists.

EDITED to add:

1. Ok, you got that idea from comments, obviously. Beware comments on such things. They probably say more about the commenter than about the book.

"Where I got the idea" is the synopses and comments of the two books as I said. Your comment seems to confirm that you agree that religion is to blame for science illiteracy.

Perhaps some people will be interested in a study with empirical data regarding the alleged american adult science illiteracy: http://mailer.fsu.edu/~slosh//PCST90578.pdf

I believe my comment took account of the role that some extreme religious viewpoints play, while stating that the moderate majority is capable of accepting science.

It seems no matter what I write you are blaming me for having an extreme stance. I do not. There is no reason for me to give all religion viewpoints a pass. I will not. There's no reason to take criticism of any religious sect as a criticism of all religion. That's not the argument I'm making, nor am I implying it.

I don't know what your stance is and I don't know the book's stance is.

All I know is what the synopsis and the comments state its primary arguments are - that religion is the cause of trouble with scientific literacy of the US public. Beyond that I have made no comments, but I see a lot of downvoting and feather ruffling in response to simple statement of facts. I did show with a link that the premise of the argument, that there is trouble with scientific literacy in the US, is questionable.

I responded to the question "where did you get that idea" and was downvoted when I answered the question. I find that interesting.

Just FYI, I didn't downvote you.

You were downvoted because your response so completely misinterpreted the parent's comment that the most generous interpretation was that you didn't read it carefully. While rational argument is good, one-way arguments are bad.

We have a government that generally believes we can legislate our problems away and that most people are incapable of taking care of themselves. When you start from that premise, everything that you do "for the good of society" or "because it's fair" ends up stepping on someone, usually those closer to the top. Alternatively, when you have leadership coming from fields where reason and making things better by creating are valued, you get a different result.

Oddly enough, I'll cite China as an improving example of this and I think it's due to the make up of their leadership:

* In the US, the top of the Obama Administration is mostly lawyers and/or mostly from Harvard. Over half the Senators were/are lawyers. The last President with technical/scientific training past Chem 101 was Herbert Hoover.. 80 years ago.

* On the other hand, China's president was a hydraulic engineer and the Communist Politburo is eight engineers and a lawyer. Their previous president was an electrical engineer.

Source: http://www.economist.com/node/13496638

Which country do you think values scientists and engineering more? Which country do you think understands science and engineering better and pushes to strengthen those fields or at least gets the hell out of the way?

(Now I feel dirty for celebrating something about China's political leadership.)

No, Jimmy Carter was a nuc. Navy, selected by Rickover, etc.

Which just goes to to prove that technical or scientific knowledge is not a good indicator of political effectiveness. Carter's presidency was a disaster.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter#Naval_career

Steven Chu?

It makes sense that Energy Secretaries would have a scientific background.. but then when you look into the past 6 or so, Chu and Bodman are the only ones.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secretary_of_Ener...

Hoover was our only engineer president... and I wouldn't exactly cite him as an excellent example of presidential leadership.

I didn't say that he was a good example.. just noting that it's been 80 years since any engineer, scientist, etc was in the role. No wonder they're disconnected.

A little more grist for your mill... the former president of India, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._P._J._Abdul_Kalam , aeronautical engineer.

I would never want an engineer as a president for fear that they would try to engineer our lives.

And pushing to strengthen those fields. That can be really bad. When I read the literature, my default attitude to when I read an article published by a chinese research lab is, "it's probably fraud, if you're dying to believe the result, try at least a simple experiment to make sure it's real first". I am not the only one. China may have a "good reputation" on the face of things, but theirs is not the sort of reputation I would want to have among the people in the know.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8448731.stm

a top-down approach to acting on fraud, in my opinion, just results in people trying to figure out how to game the system to not get caught. To fix fraud, you have to improve the culture, and remove the incentives to fraud. That's really hard when you have people competing for a small number of tenured positions which attract increasing amounts of funding.

My pediatric surgeon dad who deals with kids everyday loves to chat with kids about their aspirations. In the US, vast majority of the kids want to become firefighters or cops. In contrast, when my dad practiced in India, majority of kids wanted to become doctors or engineers.

It's probably hard to tell the cause from the effect. May be they both have a little bit to do with each other. But in Indian movies, for example, the doctor and engineer or businessman usually gets the hot chick--not the macho cop or firefighters.

Heh. Some thoughts on this: http://cogsciresearch.blogspot.com/2010/04/math-phobia-pedag...

Excellent read! Here's the author's own summary:

> To sum up, my point in this post was to posit an "internal" explanation, rooted in styles of pedagogy, for why the best and the brightest high school students in the US do not opt for technical majors/careers in college, while those in India do so overwhelmingly. My explanation for this was that, in the US, it is the authoritarian nature of science education, especially when compared with the "creative" way other disciplines (like history or literature) are taught, that is responsible for the math-phobia. On the other hand, in India, the cultural logic of the same authoritarian style of science education works out differently because students can discern a "method" in it, and they can discern no such method in the other disciplines, just a series of facts. Consequently, the best and the brightest high school students in India are less likely to suffer from math-phobia.

In the US, vast majority of the kids want to become firefighters or cops. . . . It's probably hard to tell the cause from the effect.

I think it's easy: jobs as scientists in the U.S. suck relative to other jobs. See here: http://www.miller-mccune.com/science/the-real-science-gap-16...? for more. Basically, if you have the chops to get a job in science, you're probably better off doing something else (like med school; lots of people want to be doctors).

Consider that firefighters or cops get paid reasonably well; effectively can't be fired after a short probationary period unless they do something incredibly egregious because they're protected by unions; have jobs that demand physical activity, so they aren't just sitting in front of a screen all day; and, in the case of firefighters, have a level of social prestige that means (male) firefighters are almost universally admired by women.

Wanting to be a cop or firefighter requires a two-year degree, if that. Wanting to be a pediatric surgeon takes a minimum of 12 (four for undergrad, four for med school, four for residency, although I think it's more than four). Wanting to be an engineer takes at least four.

> I think it's easy: jobs as scientists in the U.S. suck relative to other jobs. Consider that firefighters or cops get paid reasonably well; effectively can't be fired after a short probationary period unless they do something incredibly egregious because they're protected by unions; have jobs that demand physical activity, so they aren't just sitting in front of a screen all day; and, in the case of firefighters, have a level of social prestige that means (male) firefighters are almost universally admired by women.

But do you think the "vast majority of kids" take that as their main reason? Do you think they know the labor market dynamics? That the job is incredibly secure? Not so mentally demanding? Requires only a two-year degree?

I think that kids in majority think mostly about the act of being a police officer, rather than the auxiliary benefits of being one (financial security being one). Perhaps they are drawn by the power, the apparent admiration, or some desire to "serve his/her country."

But do you think the "vast majority of kids" take that as their main reason?

No, but many adults take it as their main reason, which leads to more potential "role-models" becoming police officers/fire fighters, which leads to more kids wanting to be like these particular role models. Example: kid grows up admiring his uncle the fireman, who has nice things (always employed) and makes a difference in his community. His uncle might have simply taken the job because of the benefits mentioned in the grandparent post.

Kids don't necessarily need to know the labor benefits of a job, but (I think) they know the types of people that take these jobs, and want to be like them. Of course, it doesn't mean that they'll actually become firemen, but we're talking about the "what do you want to be when you grow up" question, not necessarily what they end up doing.

> apparent admiration

This. Kids don't know what power is. Desire to serve the country is not going to play a role here either. It's the cultural programming targeting kids: "oh, cool, look, a firetruck!" Same with sports. It's somewhat ironic that many blue-collar jobs are probably more glorified in the mainland U.S. than they are in former Soviet countries. Though this illusion disappears as soon as you realize that jobs where the majority of the workforce are immigrants immediately lose the "cool" status.

It may depend on the area, but becoming a firefighter is unbelievably difficult these days. The competition is very intense.

My brother spent close to ten years applying to every firefighting job he could find. He has a four-year degree, a diploma from fire-fighting school, years of experience as a private firefighter on a military base and as an EMT, and he's a competitive bodybuilder. He finally gave up this year and went back to school to get his teaching certificate.

Very, very true. A friend of mine is considering the military, largely so he gets more experience and a better shot at a firefighting job.

> I think it's easy: jobs as scientists in the U.S. suck relative to other jobs.

Hmmm... I'm making 6 figures as an engineer. I really doubt my brother the heavy equipment operator can say the same.

I don't know about heavy equipment operators, but I know a welder without any sort of college education who easily clears 6 figures a year. If you know how to weld under water you can apparently make even more.

Scientist != engineer; the parent to whom your replying is just talking about scientists as is the mostly good essay he links to (the author is quite wrong about this state of affairs "just happening", but maybe he wasn't looking at the situation in the '80s when the NSF (most particularly) started the big campaign for cheap scientific labor).

This may be regional - in the midwest, "doctor's wife" and, hence, "doctor", are still very prestigious.

(Perhaps you can tell that it isn't my favorite region of the country)

I also suspect that corruption in India plays a role - if policemen are constantly hassling people you know and extorting bribes it may change your outlook on that particular profession. I don't think the respect we have for law enforcement in this country is unwarranted.

I also suspect that corruption in India plays a role - if policemen are constantly hassling people you know...

This also probably explains the low respect the police get in certain communities in the US - cops harass black Americans a lot and get very low respect in the black community.

Add college kids to that as well.

About a year ago I was in a coffee shop and a firefighter walked in to the room. He had the firefighter pants on, with the suspenders down, and a back fitted t-shirt with his unit's logo on the left breast. He was pretty built, well over six feet tall, extremely handsome, soot on his face, and an absolute air of confidence.

As he walked through the room, the energy shifted in a way I have never felt in my 30 years of life. Everyone stopped and stared at him. Gay women. Straight men. Everyone. It was electric.

I've seen extremely attractive women have a similar effect on a room, but to a much lesser extent. Super attractive women often create in a room a mixture of intimidation and resentment along with the admiration and captivation. The firefighter gave this air of "it's OK, I am here to protect" along with his "look at me I am pure beauty". It was wild.

He kept walking up to the counter and I left and went about my day. But I will never forget the feeling. I had no idea a man could do that.

So, firefighters. I understand why kids want to be one.

Read iTulip.com / the book "The post-castastrophy economy"

I'd argue it was the rise of the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) economy that grew very rapidly over the past 30 years. The FIRE economy is opposite to the classical producer - consumer economy.

There's plenty of times I sometimes wish I just made money like my friends doing trading/finance/etc. instead of studying electrical engineering. I'd get to work downtown instead of in a far away suburb too.

I think the rise of the FIRE economy definitely has a role, I agree!

There are people with strong scientific, mathematical, and technological backgrounds working in the FIRE space. This is directly the result of a lack of funding for traditional science. FIRE didn't take people from traditional science. FIRE absorbed scientifically-inclined people who otherwise wouldn't have a place to put their background to use.

Fund traditional science more, and the prestige will come back. Traditional scientific research is expensive.

EDIT: Here's a recent link (a few months ago) that illustrates my point:

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-tevatron-is-shutting-down...

I don't see any reason to believe the social prestige of science and engineering is actually declining. It's never been very high. You can go back to popular culture references in the '50s to see that.

People aren't avoiding STEM majors in college because of a lack of prestige. It's because science and technology is hard work and there's not a lot of money in it. If you're willing to put in that kind of time there are other, easier ways to make more money.

Outside of a small slice of the population in media and entertainment, "social prestige" is nothing more than how much money you make . Investment bankers don't get a lot of interest from women because investment banking is interesting or investment bankers are seen to be somehow better than other people.

Study Suggests U.S. Could Use Fewer, Not More Science Students http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/10/study-argu...

This is a crucial point. "More is better" is a naive notion, but it's easier to promote than "quantity over quality."

When mathematicians get jobs in Wall Street by the thousands, there are either too many mathematicians churned out by the education system, too few problems or both. They're not getting those jobs to work on theories about complex systems like a few physicists did in the 1980's. The new generation is there to get respectable wages.

The ending is gold:

"claims of shortage are "often issued by parties of interest" such as employer associations. In the past, some U.S. businesses have been accused of using the shortage argument to justify outsourcing and hiring of foreign workers.

Susan Traiman of the Business Roundtable criticizes the new study, saying that it gives an illusion of a robust supply because it bundles all STEM fields together. There may be an oversupply in the life sciences and social sciences, she argues, but there is no question that there are shortages in engineering and the physical sciences. The findings "are not going to make us go back and re-examine everything we've been been calling for," she says."

I thought about the same question before, or in particular the social prestige of computer scientists. My best shot is: because you cannot make cool TV shows about computer scientists.

There are lots of shows in which specific professions come across as cool - doctors, cops, lawyers (of all things)... on the other hand, whenever a computer scientist is portrayed in a show or a movie, what you get is the stereotypical nerd. And there are some good shows, too - but they're mostly funny shows, not cool as in "I want to be like that".

And what's better suited to shape the youth's role models than the media they consume? And I don't blame the networks or screenwriters or anything - I've tried to come up with a good concept for a show myself and couldn't do it.

Yet I've always found it puzzling that the person who simply buys the latest iPhone is considered hip, while the people who actually build and program them are looked down on...

Doctors, cops, and lawyers interact with other people in interesting ways. Scientists and engineers generally interact with machines in interesting way. Much more difficult to make a story about that.

I'm sorry, I can't do that, Dave.

I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

Except science and engineering is as much about people as it is about machine. Look at the most succcessful scientists and engineers: a lot of what they accomplished they owe to the other people who collaborated and worked with them. The amount of politics and interaction that goes in the higher levels of these professions is also something that can't be ignored.

My best shot is: because you cannot make cool TV shows about computer scientists

It's not that you CAN'T make shows like this, it's that producers/writers project their own stereotypes into figuring out what shows will work or not. Thus, the cycle continues. It's sad when hackers can't even imagine ways to make it look cool though..

Japanese Dramas can be cheesy by American standards but I liked this one as an example:

http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Bloody_Monday After a biological terrorist attack kills off the population of a Russian town; Japan's Public Safety Special Third unit, code name THIRD-i, believes that the terrorist organization responsible plans to unleash the same virus known as Bloody X into Tokyo. Subsequently, THIRD-i recruits the help of genius hacker Takagi Fujimaru to find out what happened in the Russia. However, as Fujimaru becomes involved, he soon finds out that he is in over his head and that the terrorist groups influence reaches not only his school but even the police. Fujimaru must now rely on his skill as a hacker to unravel the organizations sinister plot and find out the truth behind "Bloody Monday."

This is exactly what I was thinking, while reading through the comments, the phrase "Neeerds!" kept playing in my head from the Revenge of the Nerds movie. The American culture has not been favorable to intellectuals socially, at least in my life time, 36 years. I believe most people tend to gravitate to what is socially acceptable. Also there is a sense I get from the political media, that intellectuals are to be demonized. Intellectuals generally seem to speak of complex problems, with complex solutions. Which are a hard sell in a form that seems to live off the 30 second sound clip, not to mention any ideological conflicts. And then there is the part where being an intellectual is hard work, it takes dedication, sometimes a complete lifestyle to gain, and maintain. Something that you'd have to put down the remote control, get off the sofa and go get. Its an up hill battle, TV, which is the most powerful form of dispersing to the people, what their culture is and thus, what they should be doing, to maintain their social status, is easy to do, more so than learning about a topic. Also the people making it, want to do what ever it takes, to make sure you keep watching instead. Then the people through ratings, tell the producers what they want to watch. So it is rather easy for this process to spiral out of control. The race to the bottom if you will. The internet has changed things a bit, it brought fame and glory to some smart people, the innovators and the builders, but I would still wager the vast majority is still tied up in social networking. Recently getting a twitter account I've noticed whats on TV tonight, seems to trend quite often.

Lawyers and MBAs made twice to 10x the money for the same or less amount of work.

"The Big Bang Theory" is your best choice to understand how scientists come off as. I have had myself my work-life priorities misplaced and have had my burnouts.

I had BS and I had enrolled in an PhD engineering degree. One of the departments have had people working and living in the lab. Those were 25-year old dedicated professionals. One of my friends was getting married. When we asked him when was the engagement party, he said he "had not time for it." Good for him. That was not the job for me. I want to experience my life. My roommate works in an electrical engineering company. He plans to move to another place - the work hours that the workers attend to there are 8 am to 8 pm. For, well, 40 years? That is nowhere near normal-life-ish.

You also forgot other jobs also offer sunlight-filled offices and certainly more common human contacts. I do not want to spend my life in an isolated place or holed up in a windowsless lab. It sometimes happens in some science jobs.

I think the scientists have been resilient folks, when we put the settings that they have had to survive in. They have not been taught some social skills as much. Which you do not teach - you just let the people play them out. I am reading an IT-job interview book, which I quote: "however, like the engineers, many computer scientists have sub-standard communications skills."

I don't think lawyers do the same or less amount of work than scientists and engineers. I've watched up close a big patent suit (I was one of the inventors named on the patent, and the only one available for the trial), and at least in that area of law, the lawyers worked more hours sustained than any scientist or engineer I've known.

When I was in my early 30's I got burned out on programming, and went to law school with the intent of going into patent and copyright law. However, after the third year, when I had one paper to write to graduate, I went back to my old job for the summer. I was no longer burned out on programming, and I also had the worst case of writers block in the history of the universe, so never got around to writing that last paper.

Having watched the lawyers during the patent suit, I am pretty sure I dodged a bullet by not becoming a lawyer.

Having family members who are/were high powered lawyers (working for international firms, taking home 300K UKP per year or more), they certainly spend very long hours and lots of time in meetings, and certainly have to read a great deal in order to review carefully very long documents.

However I would make a distinction between hours spent in meetings, talking, and reviewing documents, vs. bringing as much brainpower as you can to solve a problem and do something new. Somehow the job of the scientist or engineer seems much harder - perhaps this is just my perception however.

Tyler Cowen's essay was mentioned here before and I think it's a pretty good way to frame your thinking about the subject. The reason the prestige of science and engineering declined is because the direct and visible impact on every day life of those professions has also declined. A lot of technical areas have matured since the 1950's and are offering mostly incremental improvements.

Not to say that the 'actual' impact has declined, but people in the United States are no longer impressed by a greener plastic or a slightly newer satellite being lofted into space. Compare that to places like China or even India that are somewhat behind in bringing industrialization to the entire population and you have engineers make visible impact to every day life and therefore rationally have more importance and thereby prestige. I'm sure that in a few decades once they start catching up, engineering will also start declining as a prestigious profession.

There are lots of other intellectually demanding professions such as law, medicine and even finance that have droves of bright students signing up. I think that while they attract students, and are useful at all stages of development, they really come up to the top once you have a stable political system, and a relatively wealthy population. Once technical change stops being radical you enter a maintenance phase. If you have basic health needs met you start trying to squeeze out more and more advances in medicine to prolong the life of a relatively healthy population. Once new products become mostly enhancements of old ideas, trying to compete using the law can be more efficient in terms of effort expanded to results achieved.

I think that trying to use marketing or propaganda to try and raise the prestige of scientists can only go so far. Technology needs to offer radical and easily visible everyday impact to outshine the other intellectual professions.

Interesting. So the decline of the "low-hanging fruits" of technology is the cause, and not the effect, of the decline in the social prestige of science and technology, if I'm understanding you right.

Why? Too many scientists. Federal funding (and funding of other nations seeking to improve prestige) has inflated a science bubble. naturally, the number of mediocre scientists has increased like crazy. The low reputation of scientists is well deserved. In fact, I believe it should be even lower. Having many non-science friends, they are very surprised when I inform them that there actually is a ton of fraud and misconduct in science.

Other side effects: Being a scientist is awful. Right now, I've got a PhD, I get paid $20/hour for 40 hours of work a week (I actually put around 70 hours of work in the lab). I don't have health insurance (the irony, I'm being paid by the DOE) and this job actually pays better than the last. I don't have time to date. I want to start a company but I can't because I don't have the finances to do simple experiments at home. My life is basically being deferred.

That seems more like the result of too little funding than too much. I don't understand how you square these too statements.

Too many scientists. Federal funding (and funding of other nations seeking to improve prestige) has inflated a science bubble.

Being a scientist is awful.

To me it seems that the more likely explanation is that people who would have made great scientists aren't attracted to the profession.

The percentage of smart people working in finance trended much higher then science and engineering. Fake disciplines like "Financial Engineering" thus became paramount. Institutions supported these changes.

Speculative fields have became more noticeable. Though, can you tell me what is not speculative in social culture?

If one were to push it, what you call "fake disciplines" can extend to most of human society. Don't go there.

My fake discipline comment is a direct response to the havoc wrought by attempting to place a normal distribution, which worked so nicely in insurance when dealing with things like lifespan, on top of a chaotic system like finance. Long Term Capital Management, Value at Risk, and other models from very, very smart quantitative minds who simply misunderstood the problem space and almost took down the world economy. I call that a "fake discipline".

Hehe. Yes, I appreciate your clarification. That is true - especially as LTCM was full with PhDs. Though it also extends to a multitude of "empty suits" positions. These bright minds needed to think in that structured fashion in order for them to have the world make sense to. It is an excellent point. Nevertheless, with experience and ambition judgement becomes better.

I would like to point out research in low-probability events, response to too-big-to-fail, fat tails and black swans in defense of emerging Financial Engineering and Risk Management. The best defense of it that I have ever seen was in the book "The Black Swan".

Though - come on. Do not run into the cognitive framework where you start to compare disciplines. Viewing disciplines along ranks can start messing with you.

When I said I have read about FE and LTCM in the "Black Swan", I meant that the people working there are not complacent. The author of that book for example seems genuinely active - though might not be considered likeable. The virtue of the author's criticism to the field that he belongs, he shows the fluidity adherent to him and others within finance.

Let's compare it to an example from the automotive industry. Companies out of Detroit have been complacent, which had run into serious design troubles. They were in the business of making mediocre cars. When faced with the prospect of bankruptcy, Ford had the chance to reform before the financial crisis hit. GM and Chrysler - which was owned by Benz earlier - leadership flew to Washington to ask for unspecified amount of money. I cannot assign causality of badness in the current networked world, but the physical/manufacturing car guys seemed to be worse than LTCM. And they had the nerve to face California in court over car emission requirements. So, there are other people that have not acted with diligence to the community.

It is about people though. It is not about disciplines. It is all about people.

I don't understand. A fake discipline is a field that is complicated, important, and one where even smart people have difficulty understanding/modelling?

Is environmental engineering also a fake discipline since it's difficult to model and various disasters have resulted?

fake discipline might have been a poor choice of words. My intent was to indict a process of using quantitative skills in a manner that was supposed to "add rigor" to finance, to encapsulate and tame risk. It didn't work.

Just because people are making a lot of money in finance does not mean they are smart, or would be capable working as an engineer or scientist.

True. I'm simply using elite college enrollment as a proxy for "smart".

Many of the best entry-level jobs in finance go to top engineering graduates.

It's not just the US - it happened in the UK at the same time. Although it is very obvious that in places like Germany this decline never happened (or at least not to the same extent).

Interestingly enough, in a fairly recent poll of the Top 100 Britons an engineer came second, only problem is he lived in the 19th century:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel

People chase what inspires them. The problem is that there are no heroes in science like there are in sports. Here are a couple of ways to inspire people: 1) Huge prizes like the X prize for a variety of breakthroughs (milestones in energy independence) Prizes should be 10M+ so they get a lot of media attention. Turn the scientists into media celebrities. The main benefit is that the government gets huge leverage for every dollar spent and doesnt spend any money until a milestone is reached. 2) Create competitions for students to teachers to professionals to compete in at every level similar to sports. Televise (reality tv) and make the competitions fun. Make the prizes 100K plus.

---------------------- This is happening already with entrepreneurs - a few young hotshots getting really wealthy in technology startups should generate interest in science/math/tech. But definitely have inspired a generation to start their own tech businesses.

Dancing with the stars, american idol, all the chef shows - have all increased interest in those fields/hobbies.

You might want to review the history of industrial pollution in the US - and remember that it was all the miraculous promises of science that brought us TMI, Love Canal, mercury poisoning in fish, smog and everything else.

To the average person, it seems obvious to them that "scientists" are why companies can strip away entire mountains, it was "scientists" that killed all the eagles with DDT, and, above all, it's "scientists" who assure us that "ingredient X" give us cancer, or high blood pressure, or whatever, and then, 10 years later its "scientists" who then turn around and hail "ingredient X" as the a panacea that will ensure you live a long and healthy life.

Now, you and I both know that's not how science works - but that's certainly how it's perceived.

http://www.phds.org/reading/schwartz/market.pdf

http://departments.colgate.edu/physics/miscelanneous/aiprep0...

http://physics.tsu.edu/Academics/EDphysund07.pdf

Some good examples of how degrees in physics have changed relative to population, enrollment, job markets, etc...

First thought: the US no longer produces like before. Services have taken over manufacturing.

I agree the services economy must have something to do with it. But I'm not sure how exactly. It's true that services now employ more people than manufacturing. But even if the number of people employed in manufacturing have declined, the amount of stuff manufactured itself has risen; manufacturing is more productive (even if employing less people) than it was before. I am not yet sure why this should lead to a loss of prestige for science and engineering.

> the US no longer produces like before

You're right about that, but not the way you meant: http://mercatus.org/publication/us-manufacturing-output-vs-j...

The US produces twice what it did in 1975 using a third fewer people.

Was the social prestige of science and engineer higher before? I'm not sure if I actually buy the premise.

I think there were a few times when we had blips higher. In the late 1800s and early 1900s and during the space race. I can't find specific data on it, so it is possible that re-written history has led me astray on this point.

I also think, given the pipeline visible in research, we will have a resurgence in a decade or two.

Your assumption is that an increased labor force will result in an increase in productivity.

I wasn't thinking in terms of labor force. I was assuming current research could lead to tech that has a very large impact on our daily lives, and that this impact would increase positive perception the public has of scientists and engineers. I think this happened in the early 1900s and could happen again.

Changing population base and other ways to make more money faster.

Looking forward to China's inevitable Sputnik moment.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com