ParticleGrl said:
Alright, but you answer this- is a middle aged biology phd flat broke with no savings, and no lab access making $8.50 an hour a success by ANY definition? Can you think of definitions of success in science that a nobel prize winner wouldn't fit? A nobel winner shaped their field in a tremendous and lasting way. Do you admit that Doug Prasher's scientific career would have been totally different (and more successful) had a tiny bit more soft money come his way while he was at woods hole?
For me, success in science is a career that let's you do some research that also provides a lower middle class income (maybe 30k-40k a year) and enough stability to have children, but I fail to see why this is relevant.
You seem to be doing your best to dodge what I think to be a fairly obvious point- plain old bad luck can overcome any amount of hardwork,savvy,skill,persistence, etc. As people we want to ascribe failure to patterns of behavior or whatnot, but a lot of life is simply luck. A lot more things are lotteries than we care to admit.
Ok, I'll take a crack at it.
First I will divide success into two parts: personal success and social success. Personal success is the success that the individual gets that is not in any connected socially (i.e. with other people), and the social success is the success that comes with success involved by other people in society.
For personal success, I would define a successful scientist as one who learns about the world and then uses that in any endeavor to accomplish something. I say something because that something may literally be anything: it may benefit ordinary people, it may benefit only a nations military, or it may only benefit the sole person themselves. All possibilities are equally likely, and in my opinion, it is naive to think that all science benefits everyone equally.
For social success, this depends largely on psyche of the person involved. There are a lot of people who are just happy, like the teacher that sees their student motivated to do something that they taught. No-one really knows them, and they don't really care, because social success is not what they crave. For others, they will crave success and acceptance from their peers, and may take many opportunities to make sure that people in their company knows this.
To answer your question, my definition of social success, is that if I did have an impact on some group of people or set of people, I would be happy knowing that it helped them and just leave it at that. The rest is just window dressing.
However I should point out that I would also add your definition of being able to meet basic needs like paying the rent, being able to eat, and other survival based needs are important.
When I talked about success I was only looking at the very top of Maslows hierarchy which deals with self-actualization, and not the only levels, and as such I say that I did not incorporate the other levels which was a big mistake.
Also like I said previously, if someone wants to do something they need to research what they are getting themselves into and the possibilities of what can happen, and I would expect a bidding scientist to be more keen to do this over other people.
There are many scientists out there telling people of the realities of science. In fact there are people that do science in their own time: that is the time outside their full-time job that pays the rent, and feeds the body. Some of them publish (and are able to) in so called peer review journals as well just in case you are wondering.
If you want a concrete example of someone that is trying to solve this issue, ask twofish-quant himself. He has spoken numerous times about solving the dilemma of being financially setup to do science, and he has offered a lot of good advice about using different resources in different ways to meet his goal.
I do agree that luck is an element in life, but I can absolutely not agree that all or even a majority of life is luck. We set things in motion that will effect us ten, even twenty years in the future. We have to make choices every day, and major choices every other day. I just can't accept your statement of luck being the major force. In my experience, the people that feel they have attained some measure of success are the ones that 1) work hard and are responsible for their life and 2) have a positive attitude and 3) always want to develop themselves and be around like-minded people. It's my observation, but it has been consistent.
I suggest you look into it.
