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Poverty and social background remain huge barriers in scientific careers

nature.com

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Re: Poverty and social background remain huge barriers in scientific careers

#81

Post by wutbrodo »

jordigh wrote: post #78
wutbrodo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when a university education was given to me, I thought I could just "follow my dream" and not concern myself too much with making an income, because why should I? Making an income had never seemed like a concern, so I studied pure mathematics. Are you talking about your math undergrad degree, or graduate degree? Pure math is perhaps a bad example here: in my experience, damn near every high paying field is glad to…

Sure, I got jobs programming, but not jobs doing math . It was good enough to wave the degree around to impress people, but the actual stuff I learned was utterly irrelevant to programming. I could have studied chess and still gotten programming jobs, if only they gave out chess degrees and people admired chess. I wanted to keep doing math and that's why I was having a hard time finding money.

Oh gotcha, I misunderstood you as saying that finishing a math degree wouldn't be worth the financial investment.

FWIW, I kept my eye on the ball and five years after finishing undergrad I mostly have work that's heavy in math but is still as lucrative (more actually) than a programming job. It's not a guarantee, but if you like it enough and try to point each step forward towards doing more math, it's definitely possible. I did get other degrees during undergrad though, so that probably shaped the opportunities available to me.

Re: Poverty and social background remain huge barriers in scientific careers

#82

Post by fu9ar »

davidf18 wrote: post #35

From the article: > Last year, Christina Quasney was close to giving up. A biochemistry major at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Quasney's background was anything but privileged. People with little family money get free grants and low-interest government backed loans to attend college. She is attending a public university. In NYC, there are many students that are attending City University of New York an…

You don't understand these arguments because you came from such an extreme place of class privilege that you already had the education in high school to get paid "programming" jobs. People coming from poverty don't have family that can make up the 10% that you didn't cover out of pocket. Even then, you are probably being disingenuous with that 90% figure and if you want it to stand as valid evidence that all of these dirty poors should just suck it up because, "BOOTSTRAPS!!!", you should share your financial records for the years that you were in college rather than throwing out a few general links.

You created something that, at first glance, seems like a reasonable argument, but when exposed to a cursory examination, collapses under the weight of it's own bullshit.

D-

Re: Poverty and social background remain huge barriers in scientific careers

#84

Post by rspeer »

lintiness wrote: post #61
rspeer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you were exceptionally unclear about it. What does Google News's science section have to do with anything? A newspaper's "science" section has little to do with real science.

the argument the article made was that financial barriers made science inaccessible. ubiquitous exposure (google news) makes the argument nonsensical. if you think you can't master high school science today (the argument) without bunsen burners, some hcl, and an egregiously over paid teacher, i can't help you.

Oh good, there's no financial barrier to being the kind of person who believes what unqualified journalists say about science, goes on fad diets, and says "I Fucking Love Science".

That has shit-all to do with doing science.

Re: Poverty and social background remain huge barriers in scientific careers

#85

Post by wutbrodo »

SilasX wrote: post #77
wutbrodo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument is circular: the "oversupply" isn't relative to the market's ability to pay, it's relative (broadly speaking) to the amount the government is willing to spend on the positive externality of available research. If the marginal output of a new scientist is low due to "lack of things to discover" instead of "lack of funding", _then_ you can talk about an oversupply. I've yet to see any evidence that this i…

You're right that it's possible, in theory, to increase funding to the point that everyone who is capable of and wiling to be a research scientist makes a competitive salary. However, in this case, the oversupply is so obscenely high [1] that you would have to allocate something like a fourth of the economy (roughly all government funding at all levels) in order to exhaust the supply and pay it the no-labor-of-love w…

Thanks for clarifying, I understand your position a lot better. I no longer find it circular, but I still disagree with a lot of your assumptions.

TL;DR: I (and IMO this thread) was speaking of hard sciences, not social sciences: there doesn't seem to be nearly as much of a replicability issue due to people starving for discoveries (there are still process improvements to be made, however). As such, the only bottleneck I've seen evidence of (in the hard sciences) is funding. I do of course think it's possible to fund science _too_ well, I just think that what evidence there is doesn't imply that we're on the point on the curve where excess funding is the problem. The "oversupply" in hard sciences is only relative to the choked-off funding, not to any reality-grounded assessment of the value of further research (and researchers).

I did think the social sciences would come up and considered clarifying that I was speaking exclusively of the hard sciences; I assumed from the conversation about "science careers" that we weren't talking about the majority of the social sciences (I don't think sociology/economics/etc are commonly held to be "science careers").

When you're saying that 1/4 of the economy would be necessary, I'm not sure if you're basing that on the situation where every schoolchild thinks they need to go to grad school? Frankly, I don't think this assumption is reasonable: I don't think the current system even encourages that. Universal undergrad is heavily encouraged, but culturally, grad school still remains very much discretionary. Hell, the last three generations of my family have been thick with advanced degrees on both sides, and I still didn't end up getting one (though it's certainly possible in the future).

Re: Poverty and social background remain huge barriers in scientific careers

#86

Post by yummyfajitas »

rmxt wrote: post #65
zo1 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't easily fix a broken culture from the outside. All people need to be treated equally, above all else, including race, gender, beliefs, and economic status (yes). I simply think it is unfair to nullify and demean the good work that hard-working individuals have done. By claiming that their position in life is a product of "privilege" or their parent's privilege, and simply giving those that did not do said ha…

Putting your ideological motivations aside, how do programs promoting home computer ownership or basic literacy (with the ultimate aim of getting people up to par in literacy, before encouraging development in the sciences) in impoverished areas "nullify and demean the good work that hard-working individuals have done"? There's no logical connection there, nor any sort of free pass being offered. Furthermore, the imp…

Furthermore, the implication that people in poverty are any less "hard-working" than those that have achieved financial success/accessibility to the sciences seems like a claim that needs some citations

60% of poor adults (age 18-64) don't work at all. In contrast, 81% of non-poor adults do. 58% of non-poor adults worked full time year round, whereas only 11% of poor adults did.

http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publication... Table 3 on page 21.

Why is this a remotely controversial claim, as opposed to simply standard knowledge that all educated people know? Would you also require a citation that proves Trump is a Republican, or that rich people don't commit much violent crime?

Re: Poverty and social background remain huge barriers in scientific careers

#87

Post by eanzenberg »

nickpinkston wrote: post #44
davidf18 wrote: post #35

From the article: > Last year, Christina Quasney was close to giving up. A biochemistry major at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Quasney's background was anything but privileged. People with little family money get free grants and low-interest government backed loans to attend college. She is attending a public university. In NYC, there are many students that are attending City University of New York an…

The blindness of privilege: > I paid for 90% of tuition/housing/living expenses by programming computers beginning in high school. It's commendable that OP did this - that's great and plenty of people have squandered their gifts unlike him. However, just because funding is available doesn't mean people aren't at a disadvantage due to their situation. Does OP really believe that you're on equal ground if you: - Live i…

I'd rather spend the cash on the gifted students. Probably better return on investment.

Re: Poverty and social background remain huge barriers in scientific careers

#88

Post by dragonwriter »

SilasX wrote: post #77
wutbrodo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument is circular: the "oversupply" isn't relative to the market's ability to pay, it's relative (broadly speaking) to the amount the government is willing to spend on the positive externality of available research. If the marginal output of a new scientist is low due to "lack of things to discover" instead of "lack of funding", _then_ you can talk about an oversupply. I've yet to see any evidence that this i…

You're right that it's possible, in theory, to increase funding to the point that everyone who is capable of and wiling to be a research scientist makes a competitive salary. However, in this case, the oversupply is so obscenely high [1] that you would have to allocate something like a fourth of the economy (roughly all government funding at all levels) in order to exhaust the supply and pay it the no-labor-of-love w…

> it shows up as the "replication crisis" you may have heard of in the social sciences

The "replication crisis" is not focused in the social sciences; its a name for a problem across the sciences, and is of particularly acute concern in medicine.

Re: Poverty and social background remain huge barriers in scientific careers

#90

Post by erikpukinskis »

fu9ar wrote: post #80
jackcosgrove wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people in business trying to advance our species and there are people in academia trying to burnish their prestige, make money, and get a job you can't be fired from.

Well, the entire institution of business has an explicit profit motive and academia has an explicit knowledge motive, so while there may be misguided individuals in either pursuit, that doesn't sully the previous poster's point.

Academia's primary product is credentialing, not knowledge. If knowledge were the product they would bill for knowledge, but they don't, they bill for credentials.
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