is academia a scam?

atyy

Well, now insurance agents know QFT. That's surely diffusion of knowledge. BTW, I'm sure you've heard the story from me before, but Karhunen (Karhunen-Loeve theorem!) used to work in insurance. Maybe you'll consider that staying in the same field in his case, but I don't think he did (IIRC, a friend asked how he could stand it, and he replied that he still solved problems, just different ones). Also, QFT has benefitted a lot from probability, since the Euclidean path integrals in in constructive field theory all depend on stochastic processes theory. I guess my belief is that one shouldn't define "field" too narrowly. But perhaps my point of view is more that of an experimentalist, where success really depends on getting money for equipment (and luck!) and not on being talented. Since getting money is probably just as unsciency as working in insurance, I think most experimentalists don't do science by that measure.

pi-r8

I always figured that the diffusion was mostly along the lines of random conversation. Someone will read some random article about physics research, and they can ask you about it as "the physics person" and then that hopefully increases their interest in science and helps persuade more people to vote for increased scientific research funding.

atyy

Yes, except a bit less cynically.

Basically, if ParticleGrl becomes president, that will be a worthy diffusion. (Except that going by her current mood, she'll probably stop all physics funding;)

ParticleGrl

In many years of bartending (first in a college town as a phd student, then in a tourist resort as a phd), exactly 0 coworkers asked me anything about physics (although they did take it upon themselves for some friendly pranks, like etching ",phd" into my nametags).

I don't think very many people read random articles about physics research. If we want to increase scientific knowledge, sticking random phds into people's everyday life in the hopes they ask them some questions is terribly inefficient. Your better bet is probably an incentive/training program to get phds teaching in middle and highschools. If the interest isn't instilled in them young, its probably too late by the time they are adults.

If I could social engineer on that sort of level, I'd more likely push for a strong industrial policy/mercantilism. Give manufacturing a shot in the arm, and physicists will be in higher demand. But until there is higher demand, I stand by the assertion that training lots of scientists in the hopes that some go in to politics is silly. A better question is how can we get science into curriculums at law schools? If you want your president to know physics, teach the people likely to go into politics some physics.

atyy

OK, I'm voting you for president (too bad I'm not a citizen)!

pi-r8

Hmm I've been asked a lot of questions by random friends and family members... not so much coworkers though. I don't have a PhD just a bachelor's degree. And, on the flip side, I also ask them questions about whatever subject their degree was in.

Admittedly most questions were of the "do you think the LHC will destroy the earth???" variety which is... kind of annoying... but I do my best.

mal4mac

Why not include n=0 - a school? Then there is actually a shortage of physics graduates! Isn't it just as good teaching in a school? Given the shortage of physics graduates, you should be able find jobs teaching classes with motivated pupils in good schools (if you don't fancy the challenge of 'difficult' pupils...)

mayonaise

Or teach physics people politics. I think it's quite arrogant to think "the other side", which is everyone except scientists, should come and understand how important science is. How much politics/economics/law do you think the average physics grad understands? And if they, we, didn't learn any of these in our youth, how well are we equipped for power struggle? These are exactly the social subjects! Any wonder that people in power don't know science? I don't even think it's moral to personally ask the president to understand physics, given how little I understand our law.

Also, once you learn politics/economics/law, you might find that science is not so important to so many people after all.

ParticleGrl

I'm willing to be most science majors took at least one or two econ classes in college. Probably more for physics and math majors (the two semester micro/macro course was considered an easy A for people who already knew calculus well). And I'm not talking about teaching senators string theory, I'm talking about trying to make sure they have a decent, basic understanding of the laws of thermodynamics.

Moral is a strange word here. Anyway, the reason why the analogy is bad is that law makers set the scientific and industrial policy for the nation. Politicians ARE involved in scientific policy, but scientists aren't usually particularly involved in making laws. I'd suggest that scientists who go into policy should certainly know something about politics- and I'm willing to bet they do.

I'm not sure this is true either. At least in the US, k-12 schools have been shedding people for years now. There are a fair number of highschool science/physics teachers looking for work.

atyy

No, of course not - no one is saying that physicists don't have to understand politics. In fact, physics as an experimental science depends tremendously on politics. And yes, it is moral and necessary for the president to understand physics - energy and defence are major political issues that depend on physics. Now what is the reason for maintaining cutting edge "esoteric" research in particle physics when there are tons of important problems that can be solved by existing technology if social organization permits? The reason is that knowledge not maintained is knowledge lost. And yes, even biology (my field) benefits from the overarching framework of high energy physics. Of course, it doesn't have to be the bulk of physics research - and it isn't - but a critical number of workers has to be maintained.

"Politics is more difficult than physics." Albert Einstein
"If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is." John von Neumann

Pyrrhus

A PhD in Economics is highly in demand. I can type in any job search engine "PhD Economics", and there will be MANY MANY MANY job postings requiring one. Both Industry, and Academia. Thus, I am not worried. In fact, I have already applied to several jobs, and I am just waiting for job offers.

twofish-quant

I think it is as long as you define "academic" in ways that doesn't include being a full time researcher exclusively paid for the job.

twofish-quant

It does for me. In my family, getting a doctorate degree is rite of passage akin to getting married or having kids. This started in the 18th century, where passing the Chinese Imperial Examinations meant that you were "upper class", and the social meaning of that got transferred to getting a Ph.D.

One thing that I noticed was that there were a lot of people descended from Eastern European Jews in the astronomy department, and I suspect that there is a similar cultural meaning.

twofish-quant

One thing about classes is that they can be useless. One problem with economics classes is that they there is an effort to make economics work like physics, which is bad in a lot of ways. You can go through an intro physics class with the belief that what you are being taught isn't totally wrong, but there is no such guarantee with an economics class.

One of the reasons I think my Ph.D. education was excellent was that I got a lot of training in the politics of science. A lot of times, you found yourself in a lunch time discussion about the latest goings-on in Washington, and from time to time we'd have speakers from the NSF or NASA talk about things.

The scientists that I knew were *very* heavily involved in making laws and getting funding. One of the big issues that I remember was the effort to get NASA to send up another space shuttle mission to repair Hubble, and AAS was very heavily involved there.

The other thing is that I went to a big public university, and the interaction between the department, the university, and the state legislature was something that was just part of the background.

twofish-quant

But there is a catch. It's harder to get into a Ph.D. economics program than it is to get into a Ph.D. physics program, and much, much harder to get funding.

twofish-quant

I had a job in which I wasn't using much of what I was doing in graduate school, but in the end I was going crazy so I quit and found another job. The one big catch was that I had to move to New York City.

What finally did it for me was that I found out that an "old college rival" of mine had just been named a dean of a major university, and at that point I knew that I'd either mentally explode in a bad way or mentally explode in a good way, and exploding in a good way meant going to NYC. NYC is one of the most insane places on the planet, and I had to go there to keep my sanity.

We are looking at different parts of the elephant, but physics is diffusing pretty heavily into high finance. Also one thing that is cool about NYC is that you end up with very different people colliding with each other, and that produces all sorts of crazy interactions.

The other thing is that I don't think I have really "left the field". I'm still on good terms with my adviser and his research network, and I'll find my way back.

atyy

That's great! I thought it a rule of thumb that students don't get along with their advisors (maybe reading too much PhD comics:)