A bit off topic, but it’s about academic science, so of course I have an opinion.
The author picks an example of a friend who dropped out of “science” to go to a traditionally highly ranked university in a field in which that university is highly ranked. The subtext is “Look at this amazingly intelligent person who failed at science because they were not taught how to fail productively.”
Maybe. Maybe it wasn’t their thing.
I’ve met a lot of people “in science” and they have had different strengths. Many of them were not exceptional in any particular way. This is fine. Science is a job and the skill set required can be taught. It is often taught badly. That is a different matter.
People who drop out of science may sometimes use the excuse that it was too hard, or they felt stupid etc. but the real reason is usually that they were not getting the satisfaction out of it that they wanted, especially for the effort they put in. Some people burn out, but for many people it genuinely is not what they expected from life and they move on, and this is the correct life choice.
Science is not an exceptional job. I realize many scientists think this, but this is merely how senior scientists justify paying below poverty level wages to graduate students and post docs. Scientific jobs are jobs. Some of them are easy, some of them are hard, some aspects will fit you, some wont.
In the end, this is a free country, with a healthy economy and people move to a field and place they can. Sometimes, when senior scientists ask them “Why did you leave science?” instead of saying “My experience sucked, a lot of scientific research is crap, and the junior people get treated like dirt, and the pay is lousy, and the old fogeys at the top live for ever!” They’ll just say, “Oh, I wasn’t smart enough.”
I joke that it took me a decade of scientific training to realize that I prefer being an engineer. But the sheer cliff full of dead end routes that was a career in science certainly played a role.
“I need to discuss science vs. engineering. Put glibly:
In science if you know what you are doing you should not be doing it.
In engineering if you do not know what you are doing you should not be doing it.” – Richard Hamming
A bit off topic, but it’s about academic science, so of course I have an opinion.
The author picks an example of a friend who dropped out of “science” to go to a traditionally highly ranked university in a field in which that university is highly ranked. The subtext is “Look at this amazingly intelligent person who failed at science because they were not taught how to fail productively.”
Maybe. Maybe it wasn’t their thing.
I’ve met a lot of people “in science” and they have had different strengths. Many of them were not exceptional in any particular way. This is fine. Science is a job and the skill set required can be taught. It is often taught badly. That is a different matter.
People who drop out of science may sometimes use the excuse that it was too hard, or they felt stupid etc. but the real reason is usually that they were not getting the satisfaction out of it that they wanted, especially for the effort they put in. Some people burn out, but for many people it genuinely is not what they expected from life and they move on, and this is the correct life choice.
Science is not an exceptional job. I realize many scientists think this, but this is merely how senior scientists justify paying below poverty level wages to graduate students and post docs. Scientific jobs are jobs. Some of them are easy, some of them are hard, some aspects will fit you, some wont.
In the end, this is a free country, with a healthy economy and people move to a field and place they can. Sometimes, when senior scientists ask them “Why did you leave science?” instead of saying “My experience sucked, a lot of scientific research is crap, and the junior people get treated like dirt, and the pay is lousy, and the old fogeys at the top live for ever!” They’ll just say, “Oh, I wasn’t smart enough.”
It makes for a more peasant goodbye.
I joke that it took me a decade of scientific training to realize that I prefer being an engineer. But the sheer cliff full of dead end routes that was a career in science certainly played a role.
“I need to discuss science vs. engineering. Put glibly: In science if you know what you are doing you should not be doing it. In engineering if you do not know what you are doing you should not be doing it.” – Richard Hamming