Then fund us. I'm about to leave science because I can't find a position.
I'm almost done my PhD (defense next week) and I'm starting as a patent examiner later this month. That was the only job I was offered, and I applied overwhelmingly to research positions. There really aren't enough research positions out there. (And before someone asks: I worked in a very practical area of engineering.) With that being said, increasing total funding can only go so far. A bigger problem to me is that…
Good luck at the USPTO. I worked with some former examiners (patent attorneys now). The early years are a grind to say the least.
Mods have deleted this question with no reasoning- Why is the "science" solution to lockdown? This is a prioritization of a minority population at the expense of an overwhelming majority. Logic would say to prioritize (pick your numbers, I don't care) the 99.5% over the 0.5%. My hypothesis is that since it's a healthcare issue, the leaders are less math/statistics inclined and more focused on biology.
Sweden who has single digit deaths and extremely minimal new cases has said that lockdown was the extreme solution.
> An engaged and well-informed public has always been the foundation of our democracy Is there even a shred of scientific evidence to support this hypothesis? I see it in print so often that it appears to be a axiom that is considered so correct as to be unquestionable.
I agree. In my lifetime I have never known the average person to be engaged, nor informed. I think they're mostly mis-informed for the past 10+ years. People just believe whatever outlandish title comes across their facebook feed. I had about 12 people ask me if I heard the news--that wayfair was selling missing children on their website, disguised as fancy cabinets. It took me about 12 seconds to find out it was a t…
Worse yet.
When confronted with truth and reasoning, people reject them without engaging...
> An engaged and well-informed public has always been the foundation of our democracy Is there even a shred of scientific evidence to support this hypothesis? I see it in print so often that it appears to be a axiom that is considered so correct as to be unquestionable.
I agree. In my lifetime I have never known the average person to be engaged, nor informed. I think they're mostly mis-informed for the past 10+ years. People just believe whatever outlandish title comes across their facebook feed. I had about 12 people ask me if I heard the news--that wayfair was selling missing children on their website, disguised as fancy cabinets. It took me about 12 seconds to find out it was a t…
You think that's bad? I've met more than 12 people who believe humans were created by an invisible space alien who reads our minds and will punish us if we think the wrong thoughts. When I was at school, we were encouraged to engage in group chants begging the space alien not to punish us.
Religion is the elephant in the room. There are more people who believe God wants them to kill gays and Jews than believe in any internet conspiracy theory.
Given the track record of institutional science and the ever-growing list of regulatory failures, moral failures and outright abuses pushed in the guise of scientific expertise, why do so many people seem to think that simply doubling down and bullying the general population into compliance with expert consensus will ever work? What if institutional science in the US has a legitimacy crisis because it has failed to p…
Science in America tends to be practiced in universities, and universities in America are no longer open to the free exchange of ideas. While it may look like the public is losing faith in science, it's actually the public losing faith in the platform on which science is practiced: academia. If we want the public to regain faith in scientific findings, we need to fix academia.
I agree to some extent, but the whole "culture war" dimension of this question is far less important than people think. It has much more to do with corruption and broken incentive structures than with the identitarian critiques being pumped out by poorly-funded humanities departments. Until getting so much attention recently, they were at worst a minor check on what really has been an undeserved intellectual hegemony of STEM. Sticks and stones really. There are certain critiques that have been accurate enough to stick, and STEM should learn from those. The rest are noise.
I think even now the Confused Critique Industry is largely just a distraction from the deeper, internal issues: No jobs for new graduates, abuse of grad student labor, no innovation, too many labs lazily churning out incremental work just to secure their own careers in a climate of precarity, and so on.
Democracy has never really relied on people being well-informed. The "wisdom of crowds" incorporates a lot of ignorance. It just assumes that ignorance is random, while informed opinion will tend to have a bias in favor of reality. If 49% of the people make a random guess one way, and 49% of people make a random guess the other way, then 2% of people who actually know something will put the best-informed answer over…
The 98% are never split equally. And some percentage of 100% is always swayed by propaganda. That's why it's propaganda that pushes the vote over the top. And in today's democracy, its done under the guise of "education". That's why the self-declared "engaged and well-informed" are often the most targeted, readily swayed, and eager to back the wrong movement. The anti-vaccine movement is one example of the engaged be…
You're simply restating jfengel's 2nd 'graph.
Domocracy is resilient against simple ignorance. It is susceptible to overt manipulation.
Even manipulation often reflects a balance of interests, though shifting the margins can have profound effects.
Given the track record of institutional science and the ever-growing list of regulatory failures, moral failures and outright abuses pushed in the guise of scientific expertise, why do so many people seem to think that simply doubling down and bullying the general population into compliance with expert consensus will ever work? What if institutional science in the US has a legitimacy crisis because it has failed to p…
> scientists who can be bought off for nothing and blackmailed easily. Bought off by who? I presume the "elite families" you mention. So either way we are ruled by the wealthy in this model. There are other options of course and I assume you would agree, I just wanted to point out my surprise at this false dichotomy (that's not even a dichotomy since they're mostly the same scenario). I also agree 100% that STEM prof…
I heard of tailoring findings to the preferences of the grant giver (advocate a wrong view and kiss your grant good-bye). This is very worrisome as a lot of experimental science labs are so grant dependent.
I actually think this is partly a self-inflicted wound -- a large fraction of major grant givers want truth and can stand findings that go against their beliefs, but given the heavy dependence of labs on grants there is a tendency to sugar coat findings to the taste of the money source.
Which is totally, completely and absolutely against the spirit of real science. My 2c.
Science is important. Science is great. I love science. Let's just be extremely careful when trying to apply the latest scientific achievements in our day to day lives. Phlogiston theory of 17th century was wrong. Race theory of 18th century was wrong. Semmelweis was laughed at in 19th century. And lobotomies were perfectly scientific for treating depressed patients for most of 20th century. I doubt 21st century's sc…
Four examples of bad science? I see a trend in these comments that people here are pretty anti-science. I would like to remind us all to just take a peek around us, and look at what was not even possible, not even imaginable, a mere fifty to one hundred years ago. We are speaking to one another using faradays laws and discoveries, teslas fascination with wireless and countless physicists and engineers that build practically everything you see. Computers, the internet, wireless... does anyone here remember polio, or how the flu used to kill far more than today (with the exception of the COVID)? I find it fascinating how easily we beat down on science and academic scientists in general. Are there bad scientists? Sure. Are there bad people? Sure, but the narrative I find myself reading more and more is all scientists are bad, and all research should be stopped, as it is somehow costing everyone else money or the money is being used wrongly. I think the percentage of that is incredibly small. I only hope we are still educating our children enough in the future to realize the tiny bad percentage of people we hear about (be it in science or the general population) is not representative of all.