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To get kids into science, just do it

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Re: To get kids into science, just do it

#71

Post by rdtwo »

chriskanan wrote: post #54
lotsofpulp wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probability distributions are the difference. There are people earning $200k, $500k, and $1M+ in many fields. The probability of getting there (and quality of life while getting there and after you get there), are the important bits of information. For example, if you have to grind out my whole 20s (some of the best years for the human body) doing dissertations and working 80+ hour weeks for near minimum wage (per ho…

Unfortunately, in the USA that's true across PhDs and MDs. It requires about 10-15 years post high school to make more than a living wage. At least for everyone I know, they all ended up with comfortable salaries after finishing their PhDs. Most people spend our best years spending the majority of our time working, and at least for me, scientific research makes it not feel like work. Not everything is about money and…

Yeah that can be an issue since you basically only have 2-3 years left to have kids if you want them and are a woman.

Also 90k ain’t what it used to be. It’s probably equivalent to 60k 3-4 years ago.

Re: To get kids into science, just do it

#72

Post by ProjectArcturis »

insightcheck wrote: post #34
chriskanan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a scientist, I'd say this claim doesn't hold true for many scientific disciplines. I know scientists working in biopharma earning over $1M per year. That said, I do think the salary mentioned is accurate as a starting salary in academia for a research faculty position (tenure track starting salary in USA is ~50% higher though), but academia pays much worse than industry. You give up salary for huge amounts of auto…

> “You give up salary for huge amounts of autonomy.” I heard otherwise from a staff scientist at a university in biological sciences, though I’m not sure how representative his view is. He said that non-professors lack research autonomy, and even then, there are limitations of what one can fund due to grants (though I’m not sure how accurate this is, as I used to assume that academic grants generally had fairly flexi…

This is all accurate. There is flexibility in funding, but if you use your grant money for a completely different project than you proposed, you better hit an absolute home run or you won't get any more grants.

Re: To get kids into science, just do it

#73

Post by ProjectArcturis »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #7
auxym wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's satire. STEM is pushed hard, but realistically, science and math dont have that great career prospects. For one thing, a PhD, and the 4-7 year opportunity cost that comes with it, is pretty much required to get anything more than a lab tech job. After that PhD, where do you go? You can try for an insanely competitive tenure track faculty position. Or a very limited number of industry researcher job…

I mean, usually you just end up trading stonk at Renaissance Technologies or PanAgora. I'm not studying anything finance related and haven't even finished my phd and they've still been actively after me to sell my soul for mid six figures. The worst part was, I did the interviews to get an offer and everyone I talked to was tangibly brilliant- like could really be changing the world instead of this. I almost did it f…

What moral implications? Quants at RenTech are basically just card counters in the biggest casino in the world.

Re: To get kids into science, just do it

#74

Post by btrettel »

chriskanan wrote: post #66
btrettel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You give up salary for huge amounts of autonomy. The "autonomy" is a facade in many instances. Professors have to do what can be funded. For a lot of professors that means doing what's trendy or what panders to moneyed interests rather than what they'd actually like to do and what would be more valuable. Read chapter 4, titled "Assignable Curiosity", in the book Disciplined Minds for more detail. https://discipline…

This is true if you need large amounts of resources ($) to achieve your research goals. At least for me, I have not found this to be true. However, what I was thinking about when I wrote that was that I control my schedule, calendar, research objectives, and have a yearly check in on my performance. In contrast, my experience in industry was VERY different across the board.

> This is true if you need large amounts of resources ($) to achieve your research goals.

My experience is that the quoted situation is the exception in US academia. Despite paying a pittance, graduate students are expensive enough to make professors dependent on the approval of funders. And that's where the loss of autonomy comes from.

It seems to me that certain parts of academia that are more funded by teaching like pure math may be more immune to this, but STEM broadly seems accurately described by the chapter I recommended.

> However, what I was thinking about when I wrote that was that I control my schedule, calendar, research objectives, and have a yearly check in on my performance. In contrast, my experience in industry was VERY different across the board.

I agree with what you said, aside from that I don't think you have full autonomy over your research objectives. If you think you control your own research objectives, I recommend reading the chapter I mentioned. As far as I can tell, your interests are well aligned with what's supported. I looked you up, and was not surprised to see that you work in deep learning, one of the most supported and hyped fields around today. People (like myself) whose interests aren't aligned with what's supported often find academia to be quite hostile. The relative research autonomy you feel is real, but if you decide to move outside of deep learning, you may no longer find the same sense of research autonomy.

Re: To get kids into science, just do it

#75

Post by strken »

hnews_account_1 wrote: post #50
n0tth3dro1ds wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever hear Kary Mullis (PCR inventor / Nobel prize) talk about his childhood? He could basically buy whatever chemical he wanted. Definitely did dangerous stuff and got into trouble, but it’s hard to imagine children today having similar ability to hone skills with brains still spungey and time still abundant.

Are .. are you saying it’s a bad thing children can’t handle dangerous chemicals anymore? Wut?!

I mean, yes? Our threshold for what's dangerous is very sensitive and our trust in kids is very low.

A ten year old raised to understand danger can be capable of using bleach safely, operating a lawnmower, or carrying out fun exothermic reactions in the backyard.

Re: To get kids into science, just do it

#76

Post by antasvara »

ehBut wrote: post #69
fastneutron wrote: post #32

To the people posting about having good chemistry sets as a kid: what were these sets and where did you/your parents get them? Where are the good sources today? Everything I remember growing up in the 90s was pretty dumbed down at best, and if you wanted to order any of the interesting chemicals or equipment, you needed a company or school letterhead with a PO account. Things got better in the 00s when eBay was still…

To these people as well; cooking is chemistry. Making household cleaners is chemistry. To do chemistry with kids all one needs is a grocery store, an herb shoppe, and the right explanations for what’s going on. But instead there’s bunch of waxing poetic about how the world has changed. It’s rather pathetic to think science should come neatly labeled in a box. The lack of individual creativity and imagination in our c…

As a child, a lot of innovation comes from riffing on things you see/learn from the world around you.

When you talk to people that had scientific experiences as a child, a significant component of the learning comes from tinkering with already built devices, seeing an experiment and thinking "what else would work in this," etc.

Science isn't neatly labeled in a box. However, a decent chunk of it is using previously done research to guide new questions, a process that is emulated on a smaller level by chemistry sets.

Re: To get kids into science, just do it

#77

Post by AlbertCory »

My friend Jerry and I and some friends have done a whole set of experiments on various aspects of making coffee, and if I can ever get him off the dime we'll be publishing them here.

So yeah, we Did Some Science. So can you. You can stop reading all these "experts recommend" stories about, e.g. not keeping your beans longer than two weeks, and just carry out a proper experiment on whether you can tell the difference. Who cares if the general population can tell if you can't?

"Doing science" means applying some basic techniques that anyone can learn. Especially the kids.

Re: To get kids into science, just do it

#78

Post by lotsofpulp »

chriskanan wrote: post #54
lotsofpulp wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probability distributions are the difference. There are people earning $200k, $500k, and $1M+ in many fields. The probability of getting there (and quality of life while getting there and after you get there), are the important bits of information. For example, if you have to grind out my whole 20s (some of the best years for the human body) doing dissertations and working 80+ hour weeks for near minimum wage (per ho…

Unfortunately, in the USA that's true across PhDs and MDs. It requires about 10-15 years post high school to make more than a living wage. At least for everyone I know, they all ended up with comfortable salaries after finishing their PhDs. Most people spend our best years spending the majority of our time working, and at least for me, scientific research makes it not feel like work. Not everything is about money and…

While the ROI on MD has gone down quite a bit, it is not as volatile as PhD. The floor for MDs is quite a bit higher, and the path to high income is well defined (less random to achieve it if you go through the steps).

https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2022-compensation-overvie...

Re: To get kids into science, just do it

#79

Post by toddm »

My parents were both elementary school teachers. I was born in 1969.

My dad had a 40-year career teaching science to 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. Think model rockets, aquariums, microscopes, chemistry sets, rock collections, and all the wide-eyed kids being exposed to that (myself included).

We'd play a card game called Space Race, and I had a really cool model of the spaceship from Space: 1999. It was all quite wonderful. My dad would bring home copies of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics from the school library at lunch (yes, we walked/rode our bikes to and from school and went home for lunch back then).

The chemistry sets were insanely cool and dangerous at the same time, and my dad would bring home vials of poorly-labeled powders for me to experiment with. I made gunpowder. I blew fuses in the basement by shorting a cobalt chloride-soaked cork in an electrical outlet (I don't know why I did that). Phenolphthalein came with my kit, as did an alcohol burner. At least half the stuff was carcinogenic. Needless to say, gloves and safety glasses were not in use in the basement :)

I was exposed to that at home, and I wanted nothing more than to be a chemistry professor from a very young age when I learned about the degrees and higher education.

So I earned an M.A. in geology and a Ph.D. in chemistry and was briefly a professor. The research years in academia leading up to that point were certainly the highlight of my working years. I published. I worked for and with brilliant people. I played with high explosives (Master's work) like HMX, RDX, and TNT. I had access to great facilities and instrumentation. I worked on a Cray Y-MP and every system that came along.

Anyway, just a walk down memory lane and a nod to the title of the post/article. I certainly had a predilection for science, but being thrown into it certainly pushed me in that direction.

Thanks dad (and mom, who tolerated this)!

Re: To get kids into science, just do it

#80

Post by trashface »

rdtwo wrote: post #2

Why would you want to get kids into science? It don’t pay for shit and career/life prospects are grim. Grind out a phd for 80k starting salary? Hard pass

Its probably more reliable income though. Screw up in tech (not even big tech), or have some kind of life misfortune, and your salary can pretty quickly go to zero. Knowing how to reverse a tree on a whiteboard is not some kind of important skill that employers want.
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