Asymmetrical Information

Think its worth pointing out that interesting and complicated does not necessarily equate to better. Primarily because these jobs often bring with them considerable responsibility. How many of you have seen the doctor with the demeanor of an assembly line worker? The manager who chain smokes and gulps advil. And how many of you have seen the warehouse worker, without a care in the world, who heads for the softball field immediately after work? Or the helpdesk worker who spends most of the day surfing blogs :) Just some examples from my personal experience - but you get the idea. Define intelligence.

Preach it, sister.

I remember an argument quoted way, way back (I mean ca. 25 years ago) in one of George Will's columns to the effect that people should be conscripted to collect the garbage. And to empty bed-pans. And a lot of other necessary but distasteful tasks.

It wasn't Will's own case (and damned if I can remember whose it was), but he was struck by it and so was I. The author argued that such work should not be left full-time to people who "when they were little, dreamed of doing something else when they grew up," but ought to be a shared responsibility.

Hear hear. I fell for the "fun job" canard long ago and made a mess of everything, going into the music business and basically becoming a drunk, while my peers pursued *boring* lines of work and...are doing much better than I now. But hey, I was having fun!

Besides, by demeaning all those essential occupations you demean all the good people who DO them. It's as if life were Not Worth Living if you're a CNA or plumber. I think anyone goes goes to work every day has immense innate dignity.

You dont get paid by how hard you work, but by how hard you are to replace. People often confuse the amount of money they are paid for a job with some level of afirmation of the social worth of the individual. The two have nothing to do with each other.

Nice post.

On this:

"At the lower level of the income/education scale, the choice that people are making is generally not between work that is entertaining and work that is remunerative; it's between work that is physically demanding, and work that is mind-numbingly boring."

... I'd just add that the "have-a-family vs. don't-have-a-family" choice probably colors these decisions vis-a-vis what sort of job to take as well, no?

"disinterested" undergraduates: oh dear, you are becoming a journalist.

To some extent, unions have broken the connection between skills/training/intelligence and wages, by boosting the salaries for completely unskilled work to levels far higher than what the market ordinarily would bear. This is becoming less common, of course, at least outside the public sector.

Could there by anything crazier, at a social level, than telling young people with the talent and determination to pursue careers in the natural sciences that doing so isn't a wise move from a personal-financial-planning perspective? It's true, of course.

It most certainly is true. Lower salaries are only part of the equation; job security is another, which lowers salaries still further on a risk-adjusted basis. Scientists are the very first people out the door when the going gets tough, because they're the furthest removed from collecting revenue.

Suppose big company X hits a rough patch, and anticipates trouble making its numbers. Whom to let go? (All that "people are our most important asset rubbish goes over the side in a nanosecond.) Manufacturing? Nope. Sales force? Nope. Accountants? Nope. Marketers? Nope. Those people are all perceived as part of the solution, banking (and tracking) revenue. Scientists take the hit, because any contribution that they make will only make itself felt years from now, by which time the decision makers will have moved on.

Similarly, say startup Y's basic research has a potentially promising new product, but needs to develop and market it. Unfortunately, at Y's present burn rate, they won't have the money to do so. Solution? Get more runway by laying off the basic research people, and redirecting the freed up resources to development and marketing. Problem solved.

Another drawback for scientists: those looking to fill research jobs expect an exact fit. A millimeter or two away is not good enough. A "biologist", "chemist" or "physicist" is too broad; exactly what type of biologist, chemist or physicist are we talking about? And has he worked not in this particular field, but in this aspect of this particular field? So scientists suffer from the worst of all worlds. They are on one hand utterly fungible as far as the world is concerned (most people consider two Ph.D.'s equivalent, because few people have much interest in, much less grasp of, a scientist's work, so they go by credentials only.). At the same time their high degree of specialization limits their job opportunities. Contrast Ph.D.'s in this respect with MBAs, for whom fungibility seems more appropriate, and who, at least in principle, can work in any industry.

This point is striking in watching, e.g., lawyers and accountants hop from one firm to the next, one reason that their pay is higher: it's determined by a fluid auction market. If they're annoyed by one firm, they can work for another next week, if they choose. Most scientists (apart from medicinal chemists) are more like placekickers in the NFL; a company or university needs to have an opening for someone in that specialty, and at that career level, for them to move. As a consequence, they're poorly paid.

Last, technical people in industry are viewed as inappropriate for advancement beyond a certain level, usually within hailing distance of a lab. Some scientists break through that glass ceiling, but usually by "passing" as non-scientists, downplaying their technical background as much as humanly possible. A case in point: how many of the businessmen who worship Jack Welch are aware he has a Ph.D. in chemical engineering? Marketing is the path to the top, not research.

And what about academia? Grant money is getting tighter and tighter, while the pressure to bring it in is getting higher and higher. Universities can be pretty nasty to people who don't bring in the bucks; if they're in a soft money position, they're toast. Bad (or even lukewarm) reviews on a grant proposal (all too often influenced by personal vendettas and professional rivalries – the reviews are anonymous), and it's adios, amigo. Meanwhile, academic salaries are, to put it mildly anemic, so on a risk-adjusted basis, they're bad indeed.

Becoming a scientist is a great way to end up working for guys who partied through college (no lab and library for them!), who will hold your fate is their hands, who will make much more money, and who have much greater job prospects. Alternatively, it's also a great way to end up slogging for grant money while being jerked around by university administrators who go home at 5 o'clock. (Personal experience, in both cases.) Those years spent on a pittance in graduate school, far from being an investment in the future, actually adversely affected the future. In the modern economy, nimbleness is crucial; spending the time and effort to delve deeply into a subject reduces the nimbleness of those who do so, to their detriment.

That's why Americans don't want to be scientists. They're smart. My sons are very interested in science, and good at it, but I do not encourage them to become pursue it. I loved it, but science is a cruel mistress. American kids know this, and consequently avoid it like the plague. An undergraduate degree in it provides more than enough knowledge for someone to know when to nod gravely at a cocktail party; when more is needed, it's cheaper to rent it from someone else.

Sorry for the rant, but the "where are we going to get the scientists of tomorrow?" bit always pushes my button!

TOO RIGHT! I am a chemist for a small pharma company where many of us are planning our moves to business or law school. What I have said, and my colleagues endorsed, is that if my (as-yet-unborn) children express interest in studying science, I will beat them.

Ex-scientist, that was a wonderful rant. Years ago, when my industrial employer seemed likely to plan to lay people off in the near future, my boss's boss's boss set about getting his "chicks" transferred to Production or Sales jobs, since they wouldn't be secure in Research or Design. It was easier to do with Engineers than with Scientists.

Folks who complain about how much money salespeople make have no idea of A.)How many salespeople go broke selling before they discover it isn't for them, and B)How rare it is for someone to have the type of personality which can can absorb huge amounts of rejection without becoming completely discouraged and demotivated, combined with having the type of listening and interpersonal skills which allow someone to efficiently identify amd meet the needs of others.

Being intelligent is only part of it: many, many doctors, for instance, are very smart, but couldn't sell ice in Arizona, because they don't know how to really listen and to ask productive questions. Sure, there are salespeople who operate in monopolistic environment who make a lot of money without really doing anything special, but the typical mega-successful sales person has a very, very unique skill set that is extremely difficult to identify and hire.

totally fun debate. Too bad that Typepad is broken, and I can't write a long response.

Smiled when you wrote about the low wages of a journalist. My mother just called griping about my how much transit workers make in comparison to my brother the journalist. The transit workers make more. Crappy, boring jobs can be more remuerated than brainy jobs when a union's involved. But let's not go there :)

Because you know that I have commie-pinko sympathies, I did agree with Mark that there is something to be said for a social safety net. Maybe not in terms of enabling people to have careers in unstable professions. But in terms of protecting us all from that good awful fear of ending up homeless, because of bad luck or error. Isn't it worth a little economic slowdown to make more people secure?

Doctors, Orthodontists, Dentists, and Psychiatrists all work, more or less, with the natural sciences and they do all right money wise. It's the esoteric science jobs that don't pay. I think I'll stick with corporate law nonetheless.

I was a business school undergrad and I don't remember too much "partying through college" or never setting foot in a lab or library, though I did hit the bars now and then. I do remember some ridiculously long nights spent with my trusty TI BA-II in Helen C. White.

Also, lots of good sales people (whether they partied through college or not) bust their asses, work long hours, and travel to some god forsaken places. It's not all toothy grins and back slapping over cocktails.

"Isn't it worth a little economic slowdown to make more people secure? "

No. Because the "Economic Slowdown" makes people MUCH MORE insecure.

Ideas of fun, of course, differ from individual to individual. Some people actually think supply chain management is more fun than journalism.

After all, why would it be more fun to *write about* Nucor's supply chain than to actually design it and run it?

Pay is based on the value of the service you provide and how replaceable you are. It has nothing to do with your value as a person.

I worked on research ships. The marine biologist Ph.Ds always complained that the engineers made so much more money than they did. They were so much more educated than the engineers, weren't they? I had to explain that scientists were easy to come by but we'd pay a lot more to the engineer who could get us back to port.

Also, everyone wants to study dolphins. People volunteer to do the work. How much do you think you should get paid to do work others are willing to do for free? The only ones how made any money were the project leads who spent most of their time herding the cats. Not the fun part of the job.

Being a scientist is like being an actor. Some make good money but a whole lot are the starving type.

"Even at an individual level, do we really want to live in a world in which most of us have to choose between work that is materially rewarding and work that is satisfying?"

Reminds me of a Dilbert where the "Prince of Insufficient Light" offers Dilbert the heckish choice between a job that is emotionally fulfulling but pays poorly and one that is meaningless but well paid. Dilbert is thrilled saying, "Well either one is better than what I've got now."

I do think younger people should "pursue their dreams" if only becuase they have so little to risk. But after 10 years in my chosen field I have found that management and coaching is more personally ( and financially) rewarding. Many knowledge based fields have a surprisingly steep obsolesence curve. Older workers have valuable experience but that has to cover their comparative deficit of energy and raw brain power. I understand that few mathemeticians publish significant papers after their 30s.

I don't know about a lack of scientists, but since a hell of a lot of science is publicly funded these days, the indigent biochemist is probably pretty rare.

What is much more common is people who got a Ph.D. in something that is only useful to teach other people how to that Ph.D. Those are the poor guys who are hunting for 10 an hour with huge student loan bills. It's kind of pyramid scheme--- if you're at the top (tenure-track) everything is peachy. If you aren't, you scrapping together three teaching gigs at the local degree farms and hitting the homeless soup line for lunch. If you're lucky.

Lesson here: if you want to do some job where the supply vastly outstrips the demand... make sure you really want that job.

Yeah right, 'cause physicists, mathematicians, chemists, biologists and others all deal with esoteric fields of science, as they are not doctors, dentists, and/or orthodontists. Whatever you did in school, sausagegut, it wasn't getting a fucking clue about the world.

I was particularly struck by this ---

Kleiman wrote-- If more people listened to this advice, untold misery would be avoided. But if more people listened to this advice, we'd be living in a different sort of society. In particular, I doubt that following Megan's advice would help a single person's -- especially, but not only, a single man's -- chances in the courting market.

So, remember people... "you can prevent 'untold misery' through a little thrift and personal responsibility, but you won't get laid as much-(and it's worse for guys because women are especially prone to being 'golddiggers')"!

Medical doctors get paid more than physicists for a simple reason: the AMA gets to restrict entry into the medical world in the way no physicist can. Period. If there were no limits on how many med schools could open given certain very minimum standards and if all the AMA did were accreditation WITHOUT the ability to exclude successful non-accredited doctors doctors' average salaries would be a lot lower. [Though superstars' salaries might be a lot higher.] There would also be no need for this med school matching nonsense that facilitates the cartel.

Med school should be as open and varied (from horrible to superb) as the undergraduate education market.

nn, presumably that's why it's so restricted. (because otherwise, you'd get the bell curve.)

Scott -- I noticed that sentence, too. Little does Kleiman know that one of the many reasons I decided to marry my wife was that I saw she was smart about her money. Maybe I'm just not very romantic (or not as romantic as Kleiman.)

Joe: Whoa there. All I'm saying is that you can be involved in the natural sciences and still make a good living if you pick certain fields, like medicine for example. I suppose that all advanced areas of scientific study are esoteric in that only a particular group really understands what's going on there. I agree that the artificial restrictions on who may practice are an important part of why doctors get paid so much but they also do provide some legitimate value.

We have a shortage of American students who want to be engineers, organic chemists, and so forth, even though these fields pay quite well; science is hard work.

I see such comments by non-engineers on a regular basis. "We have a shortage" in a job field usually means that we have job openings going begging -- we simply can't find qualified bodies to fill the spots that are available. It usually means that new graduates get multiple job offers. Yet the IEEE and ACM and various other engineering organizations repeatedly testify that there are, in fact, large numbers of unemployed and underemployed engineers. Department heads of engineering and science at universities report that finding jobs for their recent graduates within their field is a hard problem.

The top people at Intel have been fond, in recent years, of taking cheap shots at the US education system. Ask them how many net engineers and research people they have added to their staff in the US in the last ten or so years -- it's a negative number. The big oil companies are astounded that they can't hire petroleum geologists out of school these days -- but the average age of petroleum geologists at oil companies is 50 or more, and there haven't been any net increases in the number of employed geologists in a couple of decades.

The evidence suggests that there's a shortage of engineering jobs, not engineers (and if there aren't enough jobs for the engineers we already have, there can't possibly be a "shortage" of students). Industry consolidation has been a contributing factor to this. When giant company A buys giant company B, they almost always tell Wall Street that there are lots of opportunities for "synergy" and "efficiency". Over in the engineering department, "synergy" is the code word for "we're going to fire 40% of you."

A few comments on entries above. Brace yourselves for another rant!

The comment that physicians, dentists, and orthodontists (!) are "involved" in the natural sciences does not bespeak much grasp of the latter. By the same standard, auto mechanics and electronics technicians are also "involved" with the natural sciences, in fact, probably at least as much so as health care providers, and woodworkers are involved with forestry.

Physicians' knowledge of the natural sciences, in my experience, is generally vestigial, by their own admission (to me, that is, once they realize my background; to others, they may hold themselves out rather differently). This is not to criticize them; no one remembers much of stuff he doesn't use often. Practicing medicine seems (to me, at least) to consist largely of learning a decision tree and applying a therapeutic "look up table" (if X, do Y). Again, not a criticism. The look up table physicians have to learn is staggering in its complexity, and changes over time. But that's a very far cry from doing research, and physicians are involved with the natural sciences only in the most peripheral sense that their practice derives from them.

Physicians get paid more than scientists for a variety of reasons. First, the supply is artificially restricted. Second, people can see and understand (in broad strokes) what they do (i..e, "fix people up," not the details of doing so, of course), so they value it more. That's why there are TV shows on medicine ("ER"), but not on research ("Lab"). (Shows such as CSI don't count, because a) they're applying known science, not doing research, and b) the plots revolve around human conflict, with the technical details a differentiating backdrop.) Medicine necessarily revolves around human issues as its central focus (man vs. man, man vs. fate), science in general does not (man vs. rotational double groups doesn't make it; fighting with a department chairman for space is peripheral to doing research).

Close. Pay is based on perceptions of value and replaceability. The problem for scientists is that non-cognoscenti have little idea of the value of one scientist as opposed to another, because most people cannot judge the soundness or novelty of the science. (See the comments above about fungibility.) Even many scientists have difficulty doing this, which is why charlatans can build impressive careers on repackaging the work of others. If we can't all muster the requisite judgment, how do we expect laymen to do so?

Pay certainly has nothing to do with your value as a person – no argument there. Witness Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson, or other sluts du jour. QED.

I actually wasn't talking about pay per se, but more generally about career trajectory and options, opportunities for advancement, and quality of life, of which pay is only one component, and not even the most important. My point was that the risk/reward ratio is unattractive, particularly in view of the work involved, and that's why American students don't go into science.

Similarly,

I agree entirely. I have no problem with salesmen or their pay (which they most certainly earn), and wouldn't/couldn't do their job either. My point was that salesmen don't spend four years in college, five years in graduate school, and two years of postdoctoral work to limit their career opportunities, to be the first fired, and to have trouble finding another position. A good salesman/accountant/marketer can walk down the street knocking on doors and find another job in an afternoon; a scientist cannot. The reason he cannot is that he spent years of effort, foregoing serious pay, to become overspecialized and make himself less employable. That was my point.

I spent four years arriving at the Science and Engineering Library at 6 pm and closing it down every weeknight (midnight), along with a band of regulars who did the same thing. It was the norm. I had to quit intercollegiate sports (in which I lettered my first two years as a walk-on) because it became impossible to accommodate practices, games, and travel schedule with lectures, labs, and library. No complaint here, I enjoyed what I was doing, but just a little perspective. There wasn't the occasional long night; long nights were the norm, both in college and graduate school.

Of course, every job has its downsides. Few business majors have friends who were blinded or who lost fingers in lab explosions. (My answer: one of each.) Few have ever put out someone who's on fire. (I've done it twice.) Few business majors have ever had to wear a respirator to fight a fire of an especially noxious substance. (I have, twice.) As for long hours, assistant professors (in the big leagues, at least) routinely put in 80 hour weeks for years on end. (By the time I got tenure, I couldn't stop working all the time; it was just habit by then. I still have a problem with this.)

Business may not be all toothy grins and back slapping over cocktails, but at least there's some. Not so in research.

The bottom line, however, is this: no one fails to hack it as a business major and switches to, say, physics. No one.

My point is not to be melodramatic, but rather to put in perspective the risks/rewards of a career in science. For a given amount of native ability, it's possible to have a better life, to worry less about employment, to have a more promising career trajectory, to have more options on where to live and work, and yes, to make more money, if one does not pursue a career in science.

As indicated above, medicine is developing many of the same problems (talk to anesthesiologists, for example) – over-education/specializiation makes one a sitting duck. In the modern economy nimbleness is the key to survival; physicians and (especially) scientists have built economic Maginot Lines.

Um, nn, how many physicists are there in the U.S. versus the number of physicians? And by "physicist", I mean having a Ph.D. in physics at the very least... generally you can't get a research job with only an undergrad degree.

Oh, and who "controls" how many physicists there are? Right, the grad schools. Now, it's not some nationwide cartel, but it's not like there are more slots for physics grad students than medical students.

Disclosure: I'm in a profession that also has limits in getting credentials -- I'm taking exams to become an actuary. Thing is, unlike medicine, you do not need these credentials to actually do actuarial work except for some very special cases (filing certain regulatory documents) -- many people doing actuarial work are doing it while taking the series of 8-9 exams, and some stop before getting through all of them and keep their jobs. Still, actuaries tend to be pretty well-paid: http://dwsimpson.com/salary.html ... the knowledge is math-intense and can boring and detailed at times. There are few people who can do this work (but then, there are few people who can do string theory).... and actuaries are needed to do important work in making sure insurance rates are adequate and that insurance companies don't go insolvent. Some go on to be CFO or CEO of insurance companies or financial services companies.

Anyway, it's important work. I would recommend this profession to people who are good in applied math.

Am I the only person who would prefer that experienced physicians do everything within their power to limit the job pool through an extreme weeding-out process? I'm not necessarily a fan of residency as it is currently practiced; but neither do I want a D-student who was tossing tequila shots instead of studying for his clinical pharmacology course to have a license to prescribe controlled substances in the name of my good health.

My hunch is that if nn's wishes were fulfilled, Dr. Nick Riviera would become more reality and less spoof.

"Even at an individual level, do we really want to live in a world in which most of us have to choose between work that is materially rewarding and work that is satisfying?"

I almost could not believe Kleiman wrote this.

All other things being equal, of course work that is less satisfying should be expected to carry a higher salary; otherwise nobody would take that work. What plausible alternative is there to allowing people to choose which is more important to them?

In general I am skeptical of "how can we make people choose" formulations. Usually the people using such formulations are proposing outlawing the choice that half of the population would prefer, making their "choice" for them, and congratulating themselves for restricting other people's choices.

All other things being equal, of course work that is less satisfying should be expected to carry a higher salary; otherwise nobody would take that work.

For example, construction workers who wave signs and otherwise engage in traffic control -- reportedly paid $40-60 an hour on some job sites -- but then, what would it take to get YOU to work a temp job that required standing out in the hot sun for hours on end while holding a sign?

Ex-scientist:

(1) Natural science: A science, such as biology, chemistry, or physics, that deals with the objects, phenomena, or laws of nature and the physical world. A career in medicine or engineering is in the natural sciences. I don't see why researchers are the only people who can be classified as having careers in the sciences. Why should applied sciences not be included in a discussion of careers in science?

(2) I'm glad researchers are out there working hard but don't think that nobody else is. Lots of young professionals work like crazy. Investment bankers, big four CPAs, entrepreneurs and big firm lawyers all work late even if they did party through school as you allege.

"Could there by anything crazier, at a social level, than telling young people with the talent and determination to pursue careers in the natural sciences that doing so isn't a wise move from a personal-financial-planning perspective?"

Telling people that "this is a tough field to make a living in," often comes out as: "YOU won't get a job," which is an entirely different statement, and I think what Kleiman was getting at.

Speaking as one trained in physical chemistry (after which I started a computer clone business in the early 80's), I can tell you another reason young men are dissuaded from going into science as a career:

Because very large numbers of young women won't have anything to do with them.

Anybody who pooh-poohs this notion has never gotten drunk with a bunch of male chemists and physicists.

(1) Natural science: A science, such as biology, chemistry, or physics, that deals with the objects, phenomena, or laws of nature and the physical world.

Sigh. Much as I love circular definitions (the above boiling down to "a natural science is a science that studies nature") let me rebut this with a question: what doesn't deal with the objects, phenomena, or laws of nature and the physical world" (apart from Barbara Boxer speeches)?

Let's use the approach of that great business thinker, Socrates, who was almost as insightful as C.K. Prahalad. Are veterinarians scientists? They're like physicians, right? How about animal breeders? They're kind of like vets, right? They need to know about animals, genetics, and physiology. Applied biology, yes? How about vet techs? Same argument applies, doesn't it? How about the guy who cleans out the animals' cages? He deals with objects of nature, and tries not to step in any of them, doesn't he?

Are farmers scientists? Isn't that applied biology? How about guys running a radio station? Lots of dials and technical language (megahertz, frequency modulation, superheterodyne, wow). Aren't they applied physicists?

Are neurologists scientists? How about chiropractors? Masseuses? Don't they all deal with the nervous system?

Are chefs scientists? Aren't they practicing applied chemistry? They even wear white coats – what could be more dispositive??

Are astrologers scientists? (Please say "no." Please.) They deal with stars, their positions and such, just like astrophysicists. Does that make them scientists?

The operative phrase in your definition is "deals with." Everybody perforce "deals with" natural phenomena, objects, and laws. (Release a heavy weight over your foot if this is not clear.) The crux of the issue is how they deal with them. See the concluding question below. Without a rigorous ironclad operational definition (i.e., a definition that entails an empirical method for determining which propositions do and which do not conform to the definition) one is faced with a smooth gradient from undertakings that clearly are sciences to those that just as clearly are not.

A career in medicine or engineering is in the natural sciences.

This begs the question. Business majors can check here to find out what that means.

I don't see why researchers are the only people who can be classified as having careers in the sciences.

Yes, that's apparent.

Why should applied sciences not be included in a discussion of careers in science?

Because the endeavors you're characterizing as applied sciences (medicine, dentistry, orthodontistry (I still can't believe this one)) are not sciences.

Review the questions above (I sincerely apologize for the sardonic attitude; I can't help myself) and ask yourself: "what do I mean by a science, and how do I recognize a scientist?"

Hint: most putative scientists are not in fact scientists. They think they are, but they're not.

Ex-scientist-

I think you could more easily make the point by saying, "A scientist does science, some others use science."

Which would be correct.

Average welfare mother today better off than the Rockefellers!?!? Having lots of servants often makes up for lack of technology. If they clean out the fire places and carry in the fire wood then fireplaces are a substitute for central heating. If they carry in the big ice blocks you have primative air conditioning. If they carry the water to fill your bath you don't miss indoor plumbing as much. In fact indoor plumbing was available for the rich by Rockefellers time.

Clothes. The welfare mother has Levi's 501 jeans. Rockefeller had hand taylored silk suits. If you don't have to worry about the cleaning and mending bills what would you choose.

Food. Rockefeller had available game animals to eat. He also had cod and other sea food that hadn't been fished out yet. Granted seasonal produce is available year round now, but it is still relatively expensive for a welfare mother.

Entertainment. Welfare mother has movies with cool special effects. Rockefeller has private performances of opera and magicians. Can't say that is better than Grand Theft Auto 3, but I'm not going to say it is worse.

Health care. At first that would seem a clear win for the modern welfare mother given the vast advances in modern medicine. After all Rockefeller could die from an infection now easily treated with antibiotics. However after a stroke Rockefeller gets as much physical therapy as necessary. And if he still has servants to help him if he is mobility impaired.
He probably has less stress which is a health benefit. He gets as much time as he needs to explain his problems to the doctor. The welfare mother's doctor may have more knowledge but will he listen long enough for a complete evaluation or he go with the most likely condition after a five minute exaimination?

I'm a practicing physicist and have noticed a number of my friends escaping the field due to lack of jobs. At first, it was for the computer industry, then management consulting, now it seems to be finance. Occasionally, a few flee into biology. Even in fields like solid state, there are simply too few jobs in industry. For academic jobs, the situation is far worse. The number of applicants for a single position is huge. It's not clear even if the position is real, or if it is just being advertised to comply with the law when a favored candidate has already been chosen. Also, it has been an international market for some time, so one is not just competing against americans for jobs, but against the entire world, which besides making the finding a position difficult, but also helps to keep salaries down. One can be a postdoc with a salary of $30-40K on average, until they are in their mid 30s and if successful, finally get a job with a salary of around 50-60K/year, with that salary range for the next 5-7 years before (if) tenure is achieved. Think of the opportunity cost--and the fact that after a decade of higher education and 3-5 years of postdoctoral experience, they still may not be employable and have to change careers. With younger people thinking about entering the field, it's hard in good conscience to encourage them. For myself, I had decided that if I couldn't find a job after my first postdoc, I would leave the field. I was fortunate, but for american students it is very rational not to enter science. Meanwhile, there continue to be announcements about the "shortage" of scientisits and engineers which I can only fathom are to further increase supply and thus limit salaries. For those of us that have suceeded, it can be an enjoyable profession, but the numbers are relatively small compared to other fields.

Let them be where their talents and efforts will take them.

However, make sure they understand the division of labor and the structure of production so that if they become an ivory-tower academic or have some other isolated, eltist career where they depend on others to provide their necessities
(which they often take for granted); they will not mindlessly promote policies that damage or destroy the division of labor and the structure of production.

Travis

Ex-Sci: Exactly. All kinds of careers use concepts derived from physics, chemistry, biology, geology etc. Some careers use more pure derivations than others. Someone interested in chemistry or biology might pick a career where they apply the tools they've learned from those fields most directly. Of course they wouldn't necessarily be a scientist; they might select careers with less direct applications than the most pure.

Rockefeller v. welfare mom is a bit of a stretch. However, welfare mom v. solidly middle class citizen of 1900 isn't at all.

And the welfare mom still beats Rockefeller when it comes to medicine.

One phenomenon to beware of is this: field has shortage of people, therefore high pay. Media glamorize field; lots of people decide to go into it. They graduate. Soon, field is overcrowed and doesn't pay all that well anymore.

Large numbers of individual decisions to enter a particular field have a collective impact on the career outlook for that field.

An alert and intelligent media would have been running stories in 1998 about the coming shortage of petroleum engineers. But instead, they were encouraging everyone to do something in "computers."

@ex-scientist, @ will allen:

One of the chief advantages of sales jobs is that you can quickly find out if you are no good at them or the work is not lucrative, whereas the scientist usually must invest undergrad + grad + post-doc and *then* find out there are no jobs and/or he doesn't like the work.

One job I held back in the mid 1990s was in an IT department of a large midwestern US mortgage bank, and it was my task to write the very first 'top 20' list of mortgage brokers. The same people kept appearing on the list month after month, year after year, and could make $250-300K at that time and locale (i.e., it appears there was a skill involved). There was of course a fantastic amount of churn and failure underneath, but the failures left after 3 - 6 months and this was actually useful to them.

My first post is an anecdotally-enhanced way of saying what some others here have said: the opportunity cost of being a scientist is very high, both financially and socially. The opportunity cost of sales is much lower, I think.

resigned makes a critical point regarding supply of scientists. The dirty not-so "secret" of the sciences: faculty recruit graduate students, independent of their future employment prospects, because they want cheap labor. (As a former faculty member, I am both sinned against and sinning in this respect.)

sausagegut: the correct answer is that scientists are those who construct and test falsifiable hypotheses, modifying them as necessary in light of experimental results, to obtain new knowledge. You kind of made my point by offering the colloquial usage, which considers a scientist as anyone who wears a white lab coat.

Interestingly, for awhile some string theory departments, realizing that the number of positions in the world were small, started actively limitting the number of students that they would accept. During grad. school, this had an interesting spillover in that a number of students finding out that they couldn't enter into to strings, went into other fields, which benefitted.

One can be a postdoc with a salary of $30-40K on average, until they are in their mid 30s and if successful, finally get a job with a salary of around 50-60K/year, with that salary range for the next 5-7 years before (if) tenure is achieved. Think of the opportunity cost--and the fact that after a decade of higher education and 3-5 years of postdoctoral experience, they still may not be employable and have to change careers.

Actually, the average age of first-time NIH grant recipients is 42 for PhDs and 44 for MDs. (Those are 2003 numbers -- I'm sure they could only have gone up.) And that's in one of the *strongest* career situations in the sciences.

And given that it's Kleiman's good guys, the universities and government intervention, that have created this mess, it's not obvious to me that giving them money to build their pyramid scheme up one more level is the way to "lower the stakes". As far as I'm concerned, working for Big Evil Pharma, doing research, saving lives and particpating in a system that takes a long-term view of everyone's career is worth any amount of Mark Kleiman's disdain.

There's no "shortage" of scientists.

If there was a shortage, there wouldn't be so many applicants for so few jobs, and the pay wouldn't be so low. Employers would be falling over themselves to offer bonuses to freshly trained scientists.

You can tell by the re-enlistment bonuses that there is a shortage of Special Forces operators.

There is actually a great oversupply of scientists, just like there's an oversupply of scuba instructors, artists, and pilots (my field). Some people just love to do these things.

In science, the root cause is immigration. As an American mortgage broker, you're competing for jobs against the qualified people in five percent of the world population, America. As an American scientist, you're competing against the qualified people of the entire world. Most of the world's talent comes to America, increasing supply and driving down prices.

If America's immigration laws made it as easy for qualified mortgage brokers to enter as it did for qualified scientists (through student visas to graduate school), we'd be having this discussion about mortgage brokers.

While the restricted supply of doctors is one reason for their high pay, a second reason is that when people need a doctor, they don't even ask what it's going to cost. For survival, they'll pay whatever it takes.

The Manhattan Project had that kind of budget because it was about national survival, but it still couldn't employ all the physicists capable of the work. Then, sometime in the 1950's we reached a point where developing better nukes wasn't about national survival at all - the ones we had could kill all our potential enemies ten times. Ever since, physics majors have faced three choices: scramble for limited government research grants, do years of unpaid and barely paid work for universities in hopes of eventually being granted a moderately well-paid tenured position, or take a bachelor's degree and look for jobs out of the field. Many employers recognize that disciplined thinking and the ability to use advanced math is very useful in things totally unrelated to physics, but a physics major seems like a long, hard path just to get to where you can start to teach yourself a different job.

I finished three years towards a BS in Physics before I faced up to those truths, and quit. Eventually I went back for Electrical Engineering. I thought most of those physics classes would directly apply - but after the engineering department got done with the transfer credits, I had three more years ahead of me. Maybe year one wasn't as hellish as it was for most of my classmates, since I already understood most of the principles, so I just had to get used to 10-page homework assignments - from each session of each class. (Decent engineering departments want to get rid of the students that can't handle a huge workload ASAP.) It would be much better for freshman to be brought face to face with the job market and switch to something practical before wasting years.

Beyond that, I don't think I was ready to go to college right after high school. And the people partying all the time were far more unready than I was. I suspect that college degrees would be far more valuable if kids were required to work for a couple of years between high school and college. It might change the most common motivation for going from, "my parents won't support me otherwise", to "I've got to qualify for something better than burger-flipping".

In science, the root cause is immigration. As an American mortgage broker, you're competing for jobs against the qualified people in five percent of the world population, America. As an American scientist, you're competing against the qualified people of the entire world. Most of the world's talent comes to America, increasing supply and driving down prices.

That is entirely true, which further reinforces my skepticism about Kleiman's faith in universities and government -- again the two forces responsible for the status quo -- as the ones to provide a solution if they were only given more power.

I'ss give you an engineering field that looks like it will be quite remunerative over the next few years - nuclear engineering. There have been fewer and fewer of these guys being produced since 1979, and the entire industry contracted into a few monasteries at Westinghouse, GE, and Framatome. Now, it looks like people are going to build new reactors again, and all the old guys (like me) who designed and built the current crop, are retiring.

There is BIG concern in the industry, and in the government, about where they are going to find people with experinece to re-build this industry, because it is not one where you can just hire replacements out of, for example, the chemical business. For some disciplines, such as I&C, or structural, sure, but not in nuclear fuel design, or in understanding the arcana of how to design stuff that will be radioactive, and therefore difficult to maintain.

The best source in the old days was the Navy, but they have also down-sized, and don't produce as many people as they used to.

What we really need in this country is some way to improve the stature of engineers, of all types, so that more people (especially women) want to do this work. Unfortunately, the luddite entertainment industry does everything it can to demonize technology, and that drives away young kids at the age when they need to start getting prepared for a university education...

Oh well - we can always sell videos to the rest of the world, and buy the technology from the Chinese, or the Indians...

I actually completed my undergrad in physics ... got fairly good grades, especially in my final year, a lot of studying sure but did my share of partying as well (a lot of us did: don't kid yourselves that all the science/engineering majors are hopeless social outcasts.) Then I graduated, took a long and sobering look around, and discovered, well, that the employment market is exactly as described above, ie, utter shite. Did some low-paid temp-work for a few months (Randy's comment up top about the help-desk worker spending most of the day surfing blogs? Well I was doing data entry, but that was basically me.) That got boring, so now I'm in Tokyo, teaching English. Couldn't be happier.

And, yeah, my experience has been that most science grads end up doing something completely different from science after they graduate, basically because there's no jobs in those fields. Those of my friends who have moved on to Master's thesis research are mostly pretty close to burning out. A year from now, I'd be surprised if any of them are still there.

At one point, I actually did want to be a scientist. That dream's dead now, but I'm not bitter: I started as an English major, and I'm convinced that statistical mechanics and quantum chromodynamics is far more valuable to me, in terms of mental training, than the work of obscure 19th century romanticists or 'transgressive' 20th century poets. I still think more people should study science instead of the humanities, if only so that they have a better grasp of how modern society really works ... what would be really helpful, actually, would be a generalist Science Major aimed not at producing cheap-labor grad students, but graduates with a broad grasp of modern science. They'd be unfit for research, sure, but just as well equipped for the job market as a history major or a poli sci major. My alma mater (University of Toronto) actually offered a course (Physics for Poets, I think) that sort of did that: took all of modern physics, subtracted the math, and taught the concepts. I wasn't allowed to take it - it was closed to physics majors - but it was actually quite popular.

As one final point: the employment market for bachelor's degrees in general didn't strike me as all that hot. A B.Sc. or B.A. is just a foot-in-the-door, at best; what employers care about is job experience.

“The correct answer is that scientists are those who construct and test falsifiable hypotheses, modifying them as necessary in light of experimental results, to obtain new knowledge.”

That is a definition of science even more restrictive than one would anticipate getting from a strict logical positivist, who would say that knowledge is a logical construct on sense data. The definition above insists that, to be “science”, a discipline may only allow incremental information be admitted to the body of knowledge by a single, particular form of sense data – experimentation.

Unless one concludes that “are” in the first sentence above means “includes” (which undercuts the author’s point), rather than “are limited to”, all other forms of inquiry are carried out by non-scientists. This leaves out much of what is done by astronomers, psychologists, economists and mathematicians, among others. Are these people not also scientists? If not, it is the resulting small world scientists that is bereft.

Of course, a reliance on experimentation provides a useful discipline in a number of fields of inquiry, but it is hardly the only – or even the primary – way we come to understand the world, whether or not we are scientists.

Unfortunately, I have observed very few self-proclaimed scientists who have taken much time to study epistemology or the philosophy of science, and so they have tended to resort to poorly thought-out definitions of science and knowledge, definitions that have the single virtue of including as “scientific” whatever field of study they are engaged in.

Perhaps the world really just needs more philosophers?

Just curious, has anyone found a case where a philosopher of science has actually made a contribution to the field of science? My personal attitude is that I'm in it for discovery, the act of creation, and to try to find tools that can help people better understand the world and possibly improve it. If it amuses others to be the equivalent of literary critics, it's their business, but they shouldn't confuse themselves with those that are actually writing the novels ;> In my experience, working scientists are interested in understanding and predicting how the world works. To do so, we adopt a certain humility and require that our models can be tested against OBSERVATION. I'm sure I will incite a number of flames with this remark, but this did not start in the western world until Kepler who after proclaiming many ideas basically wrote it was all rubbish unless it agreed with the data. So, in answer to your question, astronomy is science in that at least models exist that can be tested against observation. This obsession with constant testing is what has allowed the field to advance--old ideas are found to have limits, and newer theories expand them. Occasionally, (like in the case of Josephson) new ideas are resisted, but eventually in the face of experimental evidence, or mathematical reasoning, they are accepted. Occasionally fraud (like in the case of Schoen, or the more recent--but not yet proven case of cloning in S. Korea) occurs, but eventually in the face of experiments by rival groups is routed out. There are different ways of science, such as baconian science, where you just look to find something new, or other ways in which you try to test a particular model, but they still involve observation. Some have argued that there are "other ways" of knowing. I'd argue that in terms of explaining the world, no other method has done better. As a result of science, many people live much better than they have in the past. Mathematics is very useful (and to me beautiful), but is not science. Some of the ancient greeks had some interesting ideas, but they were not scientists, but rather philosophers. If one makes definitions too inclusive, they lose meaning.

Regarding Nuc. Engineers, this could be a problem. For the economists, I have a question--how does a market deal with long term planning? For example, let's suppose that there's a time where there's a glut of nuclear engineers and so very few people enter the field and most people in it age. Later, the market requires more engineers, but the old ones are retired and the young take a long time to train. Sure, it can be redone, but a lot of legacy knowledge (rules of thumb and many details that are not written down, but just held in the memories of people who were working in the field) will be lost and end up costing a great deal to be rebuilt. Is this then the role of government--to keep a small reservoir of people in fields that are not necessarily valued at the current time, but may be so in the future?

"Regarding Nuc. Engineers, this could be a problem. For the economists, I have a question--how does a market deal with long term planning? For example, let's suppose that there's a time where there's a glut of nuclear engineers and so very few people enter the field and most people in it age. Later, the market requires more engineers, but the old ones are retired and the young take a long time to train. Sure, it can be redone, but a lot of legacy knowledge (rules of thumb and many details that are not written down, but just held in the memories of people who were working in the field) will be lost and end up costing a great deal to be rebuilt. Is this then the role of government--to keep a small reservoir of people in fields that are not necessarily valued at the current time, but may be so in the future?"

I don't know about that, but it seems to be the role of the government to put as many roadblocks in the way of nuclear plant construction as they can for a few decades, drastically reducing the demand for nuclear engineers in the meantime, until it becomes painfully obvious to all but the dimmest observers that more nuclear plants and engineers will be desperately needed in the foreseeable future. At which time there is a distinct lack of nuclear engineers available.

If Peak Oil shows up soon, we can have a replay of the run-up to Y2K... old experts called out of retirement at exhorbitant rates to replace those fossil-fuel-fired plants before they completely run out of fuel.

"Just curious, has anyone found a case where a philosopher of science has actually made a contribution to the field of science?"

Sure, the Kant-Laplace hypothesis: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-242060
Astrophysics basically began with that guess by a philosopher named Kant. Of course, that was about 200 years ago, when science had not yet split into distinct fields. and was more often called "natural philosophy". Nor was Kant a "philosopher of science"; he was a philosopher of everything. Nowadays, if someone calls himself a "philosopher of science", I tend to think it indicates he couldn't make it as a scientist...

Jl: "This leaves out much of what is done by astronomers, psychologists, economists and mathematicians, among others. Are these people not also scientists?"

Can't speak for the astronomers or psychologists, since I'm not as familiar with the fields, but hell no are economists and mathemeticians not scientists. Mathemeticians are about as far from scientists as you can get, in my judgment. We don't even study the world, much less study it through the lens of science. As for economics, however much economists try to be scientists, they really aren't.

Resigned: "For the economists, I have a question--how does a market deal with long term planning?" There's a very good answer to your question. Unfortunately, it begins with the phrase, "assuming most people aren't shortsighted idiots..." That's always a dangerous assumption.

In theory, students would move into the field of nuclear engineering to capture the anticipated higher salaries resulting from increased demand. However this would require

1. students to be aware of what's going on in the world


2. students to judge the future of the market for themselves


3. students to take risks based on their evaluation of the market (since it's entirely possible that nuclear power will die out altogether)


4. students to think more than two years ahead.

This leaves out much of what is done by astronomers, psychologists, economists and mathematicians, among others. Are these people not also scientists?

Nope. Mathematicians are most certainly not scientists, not by any rational definition. I don't think that anyone would argue that are, despite the association of mathematics with science. (Colloquial usage implicitly recognizes this in, e.g., the bleat about the lack of students pursuing "math and science.") Mathematics logically and historically is more akin to philosophy than to present day sciences. To include mathematicians as scientists, as providing the language of the sciences (as the metaphor goes), would necessitate inclusion of linguists too as literally providing the language of science. Or of philosophers, for providing logic.

Astronomers, like other observational type scientists, can be in an iffy position. Most of them fulfill my definition above; they just don't control the experimental variables, but do control the variables they measure. String theory, mentioned above, is in a dodgy position too; unless one can falsify the model, is it a scientific hypothesis? I don't think so, because it can't be differentiated from hypotheses that, e.g., angels are involved. How can one disprove that?

Social sciences in general are a misnomer to the extent that they do not rely on experimentation. Psychology blends smoothly into neuroscience, so some is in, and some is out.

Economics is in much the position of astronomy, but much softer, and on balance probably doesn't meet the definition of a science; it's a study, and a worthy one, but probably not a science, although its practitioners would love it to be considered one

The problem is that the term "science" in colloquial usage has become a general honorific, owing to the success of science, and so we now have "library science" and other nonsense whose advocates, when pressed, will retreat to the now-archaic meaning of science as "knowledge" (from the etymology of the word). In fact, that's not how they meant the term, which I suspect was an attempt to arrogate to their field some of the success of the sciences.

To say something is not a science is not necessarily to denigrate it; to turn my definition around, it is just to say that it comprise a field of endeavor that does not employ falsfiable hypotheses etc. as described above. Any field in which a falsfied hypothesis is not considered permanently discredited is on shaky ground indeed.

FWIW, engineering is not a science either, nor would most engineers (who have much more grasp of science than most) maintain that it is.

The problem with broadening the definition above is the loss of the operational component, i.e., defining the concept in terms of a series of operations that allow one to recognize it. Loss of the operational aspect quickly leads to a slippery slope to statements such as "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it" and "You know what I mean," much as I did with sausagegut earlier.

For example, if we were to include mathematicians as scientists, what about actuaries? They're like mathematicians, aren't they? (In many respects, they're closer to being scientists than pure mathematicians.) Computer programmers? Accountants? Bookkeepers? Bookies? You see the problem. A smooth gradient invariably exists among those who "deal with" something, so the criterion must turn on how, not whether, they deal with it.

To put it another way, a scientist – according to the definition above – can successfully troubleshoot problems in the absence of specific training (e.g., debugging code, troubleshooting appliances, etc.) because such problems are all amenable to scientific method. Such troubleshooting does not, of course constitute science, but applying the same intellectual skills to generate new knowledge does.

This is why I said earlier that many putative scientists are not in fact scientists at all. They're trained to use equipment, and to carry out operations in a laboratory, and most important of all, wear white lab coats, but they don't actually employ scientific method. They're really technicians, not scientists; they do what they've been trained to do in a given situation (much like physicians), but flounder hopelessly if that doesn't work. Remove them from their field and they're lost; they have no idea how to proceed. That means that they have learned only the superficial details of their field, but not underlying conceptual framework of science.

I viewed teaching my grad students that framework – the scientific method – was the most valuable skill I could possibly impart, namely, how to approach and solve a problem in a systematic fashion through construction and testing hypotheses. Never mind the details of the particular subject; that intellectual skill transfers to many undertakings both within and without science.

"drive busses (SIC), ... and so forth. It is pretty unfair, of course, that that person isn't me, just because I happened to be born smarter and a better writer than the average person."

Sure you are.

Comments are Closed.