Londoners see what a scientist looks like up close in 50 photographs
nature.com
nature.com
At best, they end up wasting years of their lives before switching careers. At worst, you get what we did to cops, by making them believe that police work is all about shooting the "bad guys", so now it is.
The new Fallout show has a funny dystopian take on what a society controlled by scientists would look like. It's obviously exaggerated for comedic effect, but I absolutely wouldn't want us to move the needle even a bit closer to that.
Also, talking sci-fi as a meaningful reflection on how things would work is kind of silly. It’s not some academic projection of likely outcomes just whatever random nonsense makes for a good story/game.
This project in London might emphasize diversity more, which is great. Not just "Being a scientist is interesting, and conceivably something I could do" (and incidentally it features a diversity of people) -- but more directly going for the reaction of "Someone who looks like me can be a scientist". We still need that.
We also still need to follow through on supporting that, once the kids manage to arrive at college, grad school, and the job market.
They also had a series for pride. It was sponsored by skittles, but sadly not only was the logo in greyscale, but they didn't have the the slogan "taste the rainbow". Its london, You've gotta go all in with humour, or it just looks like pride washing....
And even if they were surely we can do more than one thing at a time.
Yep, that's all nurture.
> As for the choice to highlight black and brown people in this project that others in the GP are complaining about.. maybe they’re under represented in these fields in the UK and the government wants to fix that?
This is not the real problem here. Black scientists are perfectly okay.
The problem is lying to children about the scientific career, specially if those children are in a minority.
Let me explain a thing; in 99% of the cases, when somebody says "we need to inspire children to became scientists", they are not saying what we could think.
What they are selling is not "science", is "science courses". And both things are profoundly different.
But "selling science courses" is profoundly different than "selling a career in science". As most of this children will discover too late, there is not a career waiting at the end of the road. The grant money is in a vault, and the politicians keep the keys.
Lets talk about politicians. For politicians the best outcome possible in the game, is to keep as much as possible of that money for themselves, unless is useful to promote their own careers somehow.
They will use every single trick in the book to say "we invested lotta money in science" so they are justified to took it from the vault, but then use the money on other things. Allocating the same money to three different ministries is a good way to round the budget books.
How they do it?,
1) Putting arbitrary obstacles so scientists will never reach the money.
Some common tricks include:
* 1.1 Arbitrary narrow intervals of time where people can apply to the job. In the past I received a lot of job offers after the application interval was closed for example.
* 1.2 Feast and famine. Releasing no new offers in months, or years, followed by a flood of offers at the same time in arbitrary periods where applying to more than one job is specifically forbidden.
* 1.3 Peekaboo. Lack of a common billboard where all the jobs are advertised.
* 1.4 Job offer shaped like a puzzle piece. That is the worse offence and would require a more extensive explanation. This includes lots of constrains. Like the typical constrains by age for example (The same constrains that are specifically forbidden in the constitution). Is impossible to hire a specialist with a complicated pool of unrelated requisites that must be fulfilled previously, unless they are finely knit around an previously known candidate, and they know it.
* 1.5 Bureaucracy overload to apply.
etc...
2) Spreading and repeating as much as possible the idea that science "is vocational and funny"
So scientists should accept the idea that they are privileged to be "volunteering" or "making a better world" or doing "citizen science". Other names for: 'You work for free while I eat the lobster with the money that I would need to "spent" in paying you otherwise'.
And even if it is just a tool, it’s an unbelievably useful one. As far as I know there is no more effective way to build things, change things, study things, etc. than the scientific method.
And there’s no science without scientists. Not everyone should aspire to be one, but we should probably all be thankful they exist.
I'd be satisfied with just portraying scientists as normal working people, who might be your neighbors, and have mostly the same concerns about humanity as everybody else.
Disclosure: Industrial physicist.