Dearest readers - as you know - I went off on a huge rant about how the United States trains plenty of young people in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. So many, in fact, that many of my friends with higher degrees in STEM subjects are having trouble finding work. Nevertheless, various politicians and news outlets (I'm looking at you New York Times) seem to think that it is the gospel truth that America doesn't have enough scientists, and gosh darn it, it would just be 1960 again if only we could just make science more fun for kids!
Slate, an online news magazine that I really respect, decided to put their two misinformed cents in and asked their readers to suggest ways to get American kids interested in science, because having more scientists will just fix all our problems. Naturally, this prompted a letter to the editor from me that the entire premise of this project is flawed. Naturally, I never heard back.
However, Slate must have gotten some sort of message from somewhere, because today they posted an opinion piece by an actual scientist! Actual, working scientists had been suspiciously lacking from the "getting kids into science will fix all our problems" song. Derek Lowe, an actual chemist, wrote a fascinating article tellingly titled, "We don't need more scientists - we need better ones." To summarize for you, he lets us know that there are plenty of American scientists who are underemployed, and that it won't help to add 1000 mediocre scientific minds when you need 1 genius. He talks about the outsourcing of many routine scientific jobs, and how it isn't a good time, economically, to be a mediocre scientist. He also worries that the next Isaac Newton might be in an area with inadequate scientific education, so he ends up being a farmer instead of unraveling the secrets of the universe. He also worries that the greatest American mathematical minds are working in finance instead of mathematics. Funny how absolutely sane, rational, and reasonable an actual scientist sounds. He also states that there is no scientists shortage:
We don’t need as many scientists as we can get just because they’re
scientists. Does a bowl of soup need all the salt it can get? We need
all the excellent ones we can find, without shoveling in people who’d
just as soon be doing something else.
I also really liked one of the comments from a man calling himself Scientific_American. The first and last sentences of his comment were, "I'm an academic researcher, with a focus on cancer research, and I 100% agree with this post . . . the very idea that there isn't enough people is the field is laughable."
Alright, Slate may have broken the story. What's the next news outlet that's going to catch on?
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