Why You Don't “Fucking Love Science”
johnskylar.com
johnskylar.com
But.. That's part of the reason why scientists aren't paid very much. By and large, their work is not vital, and by most people's admissions much of "basic science" won't amount to much - but you never know till 10, 50, 100 years down the line. Now. Let's say one out of ten basic science projects becomes relevant (an overestimate, if you ask me as a PhD biologist)... And let's say a postdoc gets paid 60,000. Then the cost of that postdoc corrected for "likelihood of usefulness" is 600,000.
The other part is that we are willing to work for beans.
edit: I just realized I'm a postdoc and I'm not getting paid nearly close to 60k.
http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=youre_not_a_nerd
Labor theory of value? Just because you spent time acquiring skills doesn't mean that others value those skills enough to pay you for utilizing them.
My point was that postdoc salaries don't vary much by field.
The point is that if even if you do exactly the same thing and are a post doctoral researcher in an industrial lab; you will earn more than what you would do with the same execution in academics.
The timeframe is too long, so we collectively decide to pay for basic research with the understanding that some chunk of it might be useful at some time.
Basic science is not an activity that jives well with the profit motive (again, because of the long time frames), yet it is a required foundation for the 'value add' products that companies are good at bringing to market.
So, the question is, do we want to continue to invest in long term thinking via the government? Do we want to structure other institutions (foundations, corporations, non profits, universities) in such a way they have an incentive to undertake long term projects? Can we have individuals take part in this? Do we want to abandon big projects with uncertain return?
I think it's a stretch to say that these things "couldn't possibly [have been] brought to market by a private company" -- especially not only because it was government that happened to fund those things (I mean, doesn't the existence UPS/FedEx pretty strongly imply that a private postal service is/would have been viable?)
> so we collectively decide to pay for basic research with the understanding that some chunk of it might be useful at some time
That's not quite what happens. _Some_ collectively decide that _all_ should pay for basic research.
A lot more goes on than just "researching things that kill people." The Joint Strike Fighter, for example, is a sophisticated, state-of-the-art aeronautics platform. Advances discovered while working on it can end up applying to everything from advanced crypto to materials science to acoustics research.
Also, let's conveniently ignore the fact that defense research spending dwarfs the NASA budget by an order of magnitude, and has potential to be just as important to "science" as a whole.
> Science is people.
Spectacularly false. Science's primary obstacle, its single most important handicap, is people. In fact, the reason science exists at all is to compensate for how badly people test reality. Science is a kind of intellectual crutch so that people who cannot think, can at least assume a roughly upright posture in the world of ideas, maybe even stand "on the shoulders of giants".
I look forward to a time (in the far future) when what we call "science" will be a normal way to think about the world, rather than a special discipline representing a dramatic contrast to the majority of human behavior.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elise_Andrew
she has a BSc, and most certainly does understand that science is not just pretty/cool pictures - the site is just where she puts the ones she finds.
First of all, data is science just as much as people are, it's an arbitrary line to draw that puts people in science and data out of science. It's not a "side process", it's the critical piece. Computers can do science, but science can't happen without data.
Secondly, the "if you love it, support it" argument is also utter bullshit. I love rain, but I'm not actively seeding clouds because I'm not a huge fucking asshole who doesn't give a shit what impact my seeding might have on the environment. I also have to do other things with my time so when it does rain I can enjoy it. If I didn't work, and was therefore homeless, I'd enjoy rain a whole hell of a lot less.
Thirdly, people love more than one thing. I, for example, love woman's rights too, as well as net neutrality, the free market, and a number of other things. People who love science also love other things, and when we vote, we don't just consider one single issue (science funding). Oh, and by the fucking way, my country spends the most money by a wide margin, on science funding [0].
So to sum, you might have a point if you want to talk about how little money researchers get paid. But don't play games with telling me what I like and don't like, because you have no fucking clue what you're talking about in that arena, and it just ruins any legitimate point you might have.
[0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_a...
False choice. Science is neither data nor people, it's what we do with the data. Data by itself is nothing without a falsifiable theory that tries to explain the data.
How hard is it to say that science is disciplined reality-testing, and if reality disagrees with your theory, you must abandon the theory?
-- Science is the quest to understand how and why things work, and how to make 'em better (for engineering). Sure, some of it is "process", but not "process and people" (to me, though the people are good too).
-- Academic science definitely has a profit motive: get money to do more science.
-- Academic "workhorses" get paid $40k because they're either in training (grad student) or in a holding pattern (postdocs) and looking for the "right" long-term gig.
-- Biological sciences have perverse career trajectories compared to others in STEM. I still can't believe that you need multiple 5-year postdocs to be (truly) eligible for faculty jobs. Probably some supply-demand things going on there.
-- My gut tells me... People in science who bitch about others' motivations are just projecting their own unhappiness. You can love science and its beauty without committing your life to it.
Part of the role of government is to fund research that may not pay off for 20 years, or 50 years, or a century.
Corporations do indeed do a large amount of R&D, but it's much more focused, and needs to impact the bottom line on a much shorter timeframe (say ~5 years).
Because of this, there's a large amount of very important research that will never be funded by anything other than a quasi-governmental organization.
Not all corporations are for-profit.
> Part of the role of government is to fund research that may not pay off for 20 years, or 50 years, or a century.
What? Can you point to me where it says that?
Who else will fund it, though?
As far as the non-profit angle, that's what I was implying by quasi in "quasi-governmental". I definitely could have worded that better, though.
HHMI also does this at its in-house Janelia Farms campus.
Not basic science, but Salk and Sabin developed the polio vaccines without much federal help (via march of dimes, a nonprofit) - and didn't even patent their vaccines.
Much basic science in the pre-1940 era was funded internally by the research institutes they were at.
And there are basic science foundations that get the patronage of industry, just because, they're so gosh derned nice, and some that do limited basic science on the side while doing applied that passes patents onto the for-profit (lucent/bell labs, Xerox PARC).
Looking as the total US DoD budget, as they're winding down from 2 foreign wars is a non sequitur when talking about research funding. Just looking at federal R&D funding ( http://www.proposalexponent.com/federalprofiles.html ) things are going strong - even DoD funding is well above Cold War Levels.
Anecdotally, of the people I remember from grad school, most of them moved on from post-doc work after 3-4 years. While not the same as becoming PI for a large grant, there's a pretty big gap between 4 and 20 years.
While it's not a career that you'll get obscenely rich pursuing, it's nowhere near the level of lifelong poverty that the article is suggesting. Once you consider the excellent retirement benefits, work environment and unparalleled stability of a tenured position, it's a comfortable life. It's not for everyone but there's no reason to avoid it.
Academia has flexibility and challenge (and politics, to be fair). Despite all of the downsides, I miss it.
OK, that's a bit of a self-serving statement =)
First, what does defense spending have to do with whether or not I love science, or how much money should be invested in science? That's like saying:
"You don't love bread. You spend half as much money on bread as you do on cheese." Huh?
Also, I was a bit annoyed by the argument that researchers deserve more money because they spent a lot of time acquiring their skills. If I take 10 years learning how to bake a cake, the cake is still only worth 5 or 10 bucks.
One could argue that researchers are paid too little based on the value they create because of some kind of market failure. That would certainly be an interesting read.
Two words: wedding cake.
"If everybody had to study for 10 years to bake a cake, cakes would become more expensive"
This is not exactly true unless the demand for cakes is perfectly inelastic, but I will admit that if the cost of becoming a cake supplier increases, total supply should decrease (all else equal), the result will be a higher equilibrium price. The point I was trying to make with the cake metaphor is simply that the price of x is not determined by the cost of the inputs, but by the value of the output.
The part of your comment that I don't understand is the bit about the government support. I don't really see how that relates to the cake metaphor. Am I missing something?
Also, you're describing a situation that can logically only arise in the context of market failure (this is interesting because I alluded to this in my first comment).
If people aren't willing to pay the higher cost of the cake because the benefit doesn't justify the cost, why would it make sense for the government to use tax money to intervene?
Short answer: it doesn't.
This only makes sense if the total benefit of cake > the cost of the cake, but there was some market inefficiency in the way.
You could certainly argue that this is the case with scientific research. In fact I personally would agree with this argument. But it has nothing to do with how long the scientist spent in school and what they "deserve" to earn based on that education.
I really want some cake now.
If you want to get someone interested in programming, do you start with telling them about variables and loops? No, you show them a game or something else cool that's been made via programming.
In a time when scientific work is severely under-appreciated and undervalued, why is the author trying to undermine a resource that is doing more to promote science than the whole school system combined?
that's your opinion... I respectfully disagree.
Making uncharitable generalizations about people making uncharitable generalizations about science makes you statistically likely to be interpreted as a troll, and even if you aren't, you've earned that designation by failing to appeal to any demographic or make any reasonably qualified statements.
Did this really need an essay?
I'll "fucking love" whatever I want and define it however I wish. How does this make you feel?
...and the last part is what I think is the reason that there has developed a subculture of people who "fucking love science". They don't mean that they love the scientific process, but rather that they love the results that science is giving*. But of course, if there wasn't such a subculture, someone would make a blog post whining about how people aren't appreciative of the science that is the corner stone of modern civilization.