Why You Don't “Fucking Love Science”

http://www.johnskylar.com/post/61507282912/why-you-dont-fucking-love-science

by denzil_correa • 13 years ago

57 63 13 years ago

hvs• 13 years ago

Or you could stop relying on the government -- who is broke, mind you -- to fund your livelihood.

robmclarty• 13 years ago

Use your PhD to figure out a way to advance science at a profit. Bootstrap that shit ;)

dnautics12• 13 years ago

not everything has to be "for profit", even!

jofer5• 13 years ago

The problem is that corporations simply aren't going to fund pure research.

Part of the role of government is to fund research that may not pay off for 20 years, or 50 years, or a century.

Corporations do indeed do a large amount of R&D, but it's much more focused, and needs to impact the bottom line on a much shorter timeframe (say ~5 years).

Because of this, there's a large amount of very important research that will never be funded by anything other than a quasi-governmental organization.

NovemberWest5• 13 years ago

Hmmm. Wondering what else we can do here that would be viable.

dnautics12• 13 years ago

corporations simply aren't going to fund pure research.

Not all corporations are for-profit.

Part of the role of government is to fund research that may not pay off for 20 years, or 50 years, or a century.

What? Can you point to me where it says that?

seehafer• 13 years ago

These guys are acting on that premise and ought to be supported:

https://www.microryza.com/

Yhippa• 13 years ago

I'll just leave this right here (NSFW)...

http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=youre_not_a_nerd

deletes• 13 years ago

Thank you, i forgot that page exists.

zalew• 13 years ago

what's nsfw there?

NovemberWest5• 13 years ago

Lots more F words.

Dewie3• 13 years ago

Maddox.

jnbiche• 13 years ago

I agree with the sentiment 100%, but to be fair, most of the ones s/he labeled "science" (as opposed to the "not science" ones) are clearly product placements for lab equipment thinly veiled as "webinars". But yeah, there's not much science on that Facebook page based on what I saw there.

dnautics12• 13 years ago

if you really love science, you'll donate out of your own pocket to science research nonprofits.

OK, that's a bit of a self-serving statement =)

NovemberWest5• 13 years ago

My ex was career military. People in the military bitch constantly about the "low pay" while oblivious to the dollar value of a long list of benefits. I wonder how those high civilian salaries compare to the academic salaries if you figure out benefits. I am not seeing any reason to believe this is an apples to apples comparison.

jofer5• 13 years ago

My benefits (in terms of health care, pension, 401k, etc) in industry are _substantially_ better in industry than they would have been in academia. Industry has both better benefits and higher salary and shorter working hours.

Academia has flexibility and challenge (and politics, to be fair). Despite all of the downsides, I miss it.

NovemberWest5• 13 years ago

Have an upvote, though I would say flexiblty and challenge are real benefits and it would be possible to calculate a dollar value for them if you knew the right data to look for.

dnautics12• 13 years ago

A lot of the people in the military have a legitimate gripe because they see paramilitary civilian contractors do the same job or nearly the same job they are doing for huge amounts of pay.

NovemberWest5• 13 years ago

You can retire from the army after a mere 20 years with about 1/2 your base pay for life plus free or cheap medical benefits for life etc. Thus, if you go in at age 18, you can start over at 38 with a raftload of bennies and pay until you die. On top of that, you can pursue whatever other career you so desire. Name me a single civilian position that offers the same.

alecbenzer4• 13 years ago

a postdoctoral scientist has tons of training, and that should come with a boost in salary

Labor theory of value? Just because you spent time acquiring skills doesn't mean that others value those skills enough to pay you for utilizing them.

jofer5• 13 years ago

The listed postdoc salary is the same for fields where you have very applicable skills that industry is very willing to pay you 6 figures for.

alecbenzer4• 13 years ago

Ok? What's ultimately valuable then is the things you can do with those skills, not the skills themselves. If you take the same skills and do things with them that others care less about, you'll be paid less.

ctdonath2• 13 years ago

Supply and demand. Funny how often people want to ignore it.

phibit• 13 years ago

Came here to say this, glad someone said it first. The sense of entitlement that sometimes comes with higher academic degrees is flat-out weird. Congratulations you have a PhD, keep making meaningful contributions but don't expect to get well paid until you earn it by bringing an idea/product that has real/perceived value to market.

mooreds• 13 years ago

This is why government funding of science is so important. The government funds long term projects that couldn't possibly be 'brought to market' by a private company: weather data, gps, even that old chestnut, the internet, the postal service.

The timeframe is too long, so we collectively decide to pay for basic research with the understanding that some chunk of it might be useful at some time.

Basic science is not an activity that jives well with the profit motive (again, because of the long time frames), yet it is a required foundation for the 'value add' products that companies are good at bringing to market.

So, the question is, do we want to continue to invest in long term thinking via the government? Do we want to structure other institutions (foundations, corporations, non profits, universities) in such a way they have an incentive to undertake long term projects? Can we have individuals take part in this? Do we want to abandon big projects with uncertain return?

dnautics12• 13 years ago

"I’m not trying to talk down to those professions; they’re all vital and should be well-paid, but a postdoctoral scientist has tons of training, and that should come with a boost in salary."

But.. That's part of the reason why scientists aren't paid very much. By and large, their work is not vital, and by most people's admissions much of "basic science" won't amount to much - but you never know till 10, 50, 100 years down the line. Now. Let's say one out of ten basic science projects becomes relevant (an overestimate, if you ask me as a PhD biologist)... And let's say a postdoc gets paid 60,000. Then the cost of that postdoc corrected for "likelihood of usefulness" is 600,000.

The other part is that we are willing to work for beans.

edit: I just realized I'm a postdoc and I'm not getting paid nearly close to 60k.

Finster• 13 years ago

It's fairly obvious that the author knows next to nothing about military research, or even how much engineering goes into modern industry, defense or otherwise.

A lot more goes on than just "researching things that kill people." The Joint Strike Fighter, for example, is a sophisticated, state-of-the-art aeronautics platform. Advances discovered while working on it can end up applying to everything from advanced crypto to materials science to acoustics research.

Also, let's conveniently ignore the fact that defense research spending dwarfs the NASA budget by an order of magnitude, and has potential to be just as important to "science" as a whole.

kiba• 13 years ago

Indeed, we won't know what advances defense spending will yields 50 to 100 years down the road. However, it is also true that we don't know what basic science research will yield 50 years to 100 years down the road, and I rather human spend money on space exploration rather than trying to find better way to kill things.

dnautics12• 13 years ago

Would you feel better if you knew DARPA was spending money on pie in the sky ways of killing things if "things" was bacteria and viruses?

Gravityloss• 13 years ago

Ironically a lot of advances done in secret projects are lost forever. Some may be declassified after 50 years.

Dewie3• 13 years ago

If you loved science, you’d be voting based on candidates who want to increase funding for it. You’d be making it an issue that actually gets debated in the media, that sees equal time with the wars we fight and the bills we pay our aging workforce. These other things are priorities too, but if you think that science comes after these things, you’re dead wrong: science is the reason we’ve gotten so damned good at these things.

...and the last part is what I think is the reason that there has developed a subculture of people who "fucking love science". They don't mean that they love the scientific process, but rather that they love the results that science is giving*. But of course, if there wasn't such a subculture, someone would make a blog post whining about how people aren't appreciative of the science that is the corner stone of modern civilization.

dnautics12• 13 years ago

they may not even love the results that science is giving, they may love showing off that they "like" science as a status symbol or social signifier.

Dewie3• 13 years ago

That might very well be the case. Of the friends of mine that like that page on Facebook, most of them are either involved (or have been involved) with science or technology.

ianstallings• 13 years ago

Here's some science for the author: http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/mind_brain/anger_management...

diminoten• 13 years ago

This article is utter and complete bullshit.

First of all, data is science just as much as people are, it's an arbitrary line to draw that puts people in science and data out of science. It's not a "side process", it's the critical piece. Computers can do science, but science can't happen without data.

Secondly, the "if you love it, support it" argument is also utter bullshit. I love rain, but I'm not actively seeding clouds because I'm not a huge fucking asshole who doesn't give a shit what impact my seeding might have on the environment. I also have to do other things with my time so when it does rain I can enjoy it. If I didn't work, and was therefore homeless, I'd enjoy rain a whole hell of a lot less.

Thirdly, people love more than one thing. I, for example, love woman's rights too, as well as net neutrality, the free market, and a number of other things. People who love science also love other things, and when we vote, we don't just consider one single issue (science funding). Oh, and by the fucking way, my country spends the most money by a wide margin, on science funding [0].

So to sum, you might have a point if you want to talk about how little money researchers get paid. But don't play games with telling me what I like and don't like, because you have no fucking clue what you're talking about in that arena, and it just ruins any legitimate point you might have.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_a...

lutusp2• 13 years ago

First of all, data is science just as much as people are ...

False choice. Science is neither data nor people, it's what we do with the data. Data by itself is nothing without a falsifiable theory that tries to explain the data.

How hard is it to say that science is disciplined reality-testing, and if reality disagrees with your theory, you must abandon the theory?

RafiqM• 13 years ago

IFLS promotes science by showing the data/results of science.

If you want to get someone interested in programming, do you start with telling them about variables and loops? No, you show them a game or something else cool that's been made via programming.

In a time when scientific work is severely under-appreciated and undervalued, why is the author trying to undermine a resource that is doing more to promote science than the whole school system combined?

dnautics12• 13 years ago

under-appreciated and undervalued

that's your opinion... I respectfully disagree.

ameoba• 13 years ago

The big graph in the middle, which drives the argument that you're somebody's bitch for two decades as a postdoc before making it on your own is driven by NIH data. How is the situation for other fields of research & sources of funding?

Looking as the total US DoD budget, as they're winding down from 2 foreign wars is a non sequitur when talking about research funding. Just looking at federal R&D funding ( http://www.proposalexponent.com/federalprofiles.html ) things are going strong - even DoD funding is well above Cold War Levels.

Anecdotally, of the people I remember from grad school, most of them moved on from post-doc work after 3-4 years. While not the same as becoming PI for a large grant, there's a pretty big gap between 4 and 20 years.

While it's not a career that you'll get obscenely rich pursuing, it's nowhere near the level of lifelong poverty that the article is suggesting. Once you consider the excellent retirement benefits, work environment and unparalleled stability of a tenured position, it's a comfortable life. It's not for everyone but there's no reason to avoid it.

nether• 13 years ago

Stop liking what I don't like!

Did this really need an essay?

I'll "fucking love" whatever I want and define it however I wish. How does this make you feel?

mildtrepidation• 13 years ago

This starts off with the same mistake made by "why you're doing x wrong" or "everything you know about y is wrong:" Talking down to the entire population of the internet, i.e. anyone who might read your post.

Making uncharitable generalizations about people making uncharitable generalizations about science makes you statistically likely to be interpreted as a troll, and even if you aren't, you've earned that designation by failing to appeal to any demographic or make any reasonably qualified statements.

tehwalrus• 13 years ago

The wikipedia article of the 23-4 year old girl who set up the facebook group that he's taking the piss out of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elise_Andrew

she has a BSc, and most certainly does understand that science is not just pretty/cool pictures - the site is just where she puts the ones she finds.

kurtismorrison3• 13 years ago

An engaging post but this one kind of lost me.

First, what does defense spending have to do with whether or not I love science, or how much money should be invested in science? That's like saying:

"You don't love bread. You spend half as much money on bread as you do on cheese." Huh?

Also, I was a bit annoyed by the argument that researchers deserve more money because they spent a lot of time acquiring their skills. If I take 10 years learning how to bake a cake, the cake is still only worth 5 or 10 bucks.

One could argue that researchers are paid too little based on the value they create because of some kind of market failure. That would certainly be an interesting read.

ctdonath2• 13 years ago

If I take 10 years learning how to bake a cake, the cake is still only worth 5 or 10 bucks.

Two words: wedding cake.

kurtismorrison3• 13 years ago

Truth

rincewind2• 13 years ago

Your Cake metaphor breaks down because of your intuition and experience of cakes. If everybody needs to study for 10 years to bake a cake, cakes would become are more expensive. If people are were willing to spend 5 bucks on a cake, baking would not be a lucrative carer and few people would pursue it. Politicians might then show concern about a cake talent crisis and fund programs to get girls more interested in baking at an earlier age, while cakes still cost 5 bucks a piece.

kurtismorrison3• 13 years ago

rincewind - not sure I understand your point.

"If everybody had to study for 10 years to bake a cake, cakes would become more expensive"

This is not exactly true unless the demand for cakes is perfectly inelastic, but I will admit that if the cost of becoming a cake supplier increases, total supply should decrease (all else equal), the result will be a higher equilibrium price. The point I was trying to make with the cake metaphor is simply that the price of x is not determined by the cost of the inputs, but by the value of the output.

The part of your comment that I don't understand is the bit about the government support. I don't really see how that relates to the cake metaphor. Am I missing something?

Also, you're describing a situation that can logically only arise in the context of market failure (this is interesting because I alluded to this in my first comment).

If people aren't willing to pay the higher cost of the cake because the benefit doesn't justify the cost, why would it make sense for the government to use tax money to intervene?

Short answer: it doesn't.

This only makes sense if the total benefit of cake > the cost of the cake, but there was some market inefficiency in the way.

You could certainly argue that this is the case with scientific research. In fact I personally would agree with this argument. But it has nothing to do with how long the scientist spent in school and what they "deserve" to earn based on that education.

I really want some cake now.

beambot• 13 years ago

To each their own. I experienced the PhD-postdoc path. IMO...

-- Science is the quest to understand how and why things work, and how to make 'em better (for engineering). Sure, some of it is "process", but not "process and people" (to me, though the people are good too).

-- Academic science definitely has a profit motive: get money to do more science.

-- Academic "workhorses" get paid $40k because they're either in training (grad student) or in a holding pattern (postdocs) and looking for the "right" long-term gig.

-- Biological sciences have perverse career trajectories compared to others in STEM. I still can't believe that you need multiple 5-year postdocs to be (truly) eligible for faculty jobs. Probably some supply-demand things going on there.

-- My gut tells me... People in science who bitch about others' motivations are just projecting their own unhappiness. You can love science and its beauty without committing your life to it.

lutusp2• 13 years ago

I'm getting a bit tired of articles that offer to explain science but don't mention falsifiability or reality testing.

Science is people.

Spectacularly false. Science's primary obstacle, its single most important handicap, is people. In fact, the reason science exists at all is to compensate for how badly people test reality. Science is a kind of intellectual crutch so that people who cannot think, can at least assume a roughly upright posture in the world of ideas, maybe even stand "on the shoulders of giants".

I look forward to a time (in the far future) when what we call "science" will be a normal way to think about the world, rather than a special discipline representing a dramatic contrast to the majority of human behavior.