Science =/= technology. Lab training =/= science education.

[Kai]

This is something that's bothered me for years. Which means when I saw this article earlier this week, I rolled my eyes at yet another journalist who doesn't fucking get it. I'm not going to quote it because the thesis is spread out over 3 pages, so I'll just let you read it there.



Okay, if I may just have a bit of space here, I'm going to fucking rant this one out. First off, yes, I do understand that it's very useful for an undergraduate student to have /some/ practical experience at the end of their career, whether that be running PCR or microscopy or field work, or running various types of equipment. What really cranks my noodle is that THIS IS NOT THE FUCKING POINT OF A SCIENCE EDUCATION.

Which brings me to the second article, someone who gets it.

Here's the problem. "Science" is NOT the same as "technology" and not the same as "engineering." There's a big difference between learning science and learning how to build things. The purpose of a degree in technology and engineering is obvious—it's job training. The purpose of a science education is quite different—it's supposed to teach you how to think critically.
...
Why do science majors drop out? There are plenty of reasons. In the case of "pre-med" students (whatever they are) the reasons could be as simple as not getting high enough grades for medical school. They were never really interested in science in the first place and once they discover that they're not going to medical school they flee to other disciplines.

But that doesn't account for all the students who drop out. Some students think they are interested in "science" but they're actually interested in technology. Those students are bored reading textbooks and sitting in lectures learning about theory. What they really want to do is build robots and learn how to use DNA to solve crimes.
...
If students enter science programs because they want to become technologists, then the way to keep them happy is to let them play with fancy toys as soon as possible. They're not interested in general relativity, plate tectonics, quantum theory, or evolution. Why should they be?

But if they're not interested in those things, why are they in a science program?

A science education is not job training. I repeat IT IS NOT JOB TRAINING. And this is one of the reasons why the STEM acronym is so abhorrent to me, because to teach science is not to train lab monkeys. And the science educators job is not to make the students feel all warm and comfortable and fuzzy with fun and games and shit. If the students want this, they should go into engineering or technology or psychology (j/k about the psychology). Same as if they want to be rich; my mentor told me that scholars take a vow of poverty, scientists included.

The purpose of science education is to teach students how to think critically, and to expose them to the reality of the universe. Science classes, not technology or engineering or pre-med classes, are filled with really hard to grasp theories like evolution by natural selection. And yes, the passion of the professor will instill fun into the subject despite this. And no fucking TOYS are necessary. No fucking mollycoddling.

This is why less scientists are graduating these days. Because they equate science with technology and with their education as job training. And frankly the equation of these things is pissing me off. They can take their STEM acronym and shove it up their asses. The answer is NOT to shove more lab training into the curriculum.

[Bruno]

Where do you draw the line between toys and tools for getting people to that ONAOIGEDDIT moment?


And, what do you mean by "toys" anyway?

[Freckleback]

College is for job training, not sitting around thinking.
               \

The issues addressed in this article resonated with me. When I enrolled in college, I was interested in someday becoming an astrophysicist but I wasn't sure. I took an introductory astronomy class - and it was the most boring, tedious thing I ever endured. I thought we would be observing the heavens through telescopes, not slogging through obscure information about celestial spheres and such. I decided that while science is a fun hobby, I didn't want to do something this boring for a living, so I switched to studio art. If I can't make some sort of positive impact on society, if I'm just slogging away for years on tedious tasks, then why waste my time doing it?

[Bruno]

College is for job training, not sitting around thinking.
              \

The issues addressed in this article resonated with me. When I enrolled in college, I was interested in someday becoming an astrophysicist but I wasn't sure. I took an introductory astronomy class - and it was the most boring, tedious thing I ever endured. I thought we would be observing the heavens through telescopes, not slogging through obscure information about celestial spheres and such. I decided that while science is a fun hobby, I didn't want to do something this boring for a living, so I switched to studio art. If I can't make some sort of positive impact on society, if I'm just slogging away for years on tedious tasks, then why waste my time doing it?

Sounds like sour grapes from someone who had an interest in something, but couldn't hack the... um... math or something. Maybe they just weren't into it enough to put in the time/effort, or maybe they just didn't have the natural ability for the skill set of that particular field.

It's really not a trivial matter to figure out what you're "supposed to be doing".  I have no fucken idea, myself.

I'm a little concerned with this individual's apparent distaste for "obscure information", though, cuz, man, that is where the good shit is.






Also, this.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

College is for job training, not sitting around thinking.
               \

The issues addressed in this article resonated with me. When I enrolled in college, I was interested in someday becoming an astrophysicist but I wasn't sure. I took an introductory astronomy class - and it was the most boring, tedious thing I ever endured. I thought we would be observing the heavens through telescopes, not slogging through obscure information about celestial spheres and such. I decided that while science is a fun hobby, I didn't want to do something this boring for a living, so I switched to studio art. If I can't make some sort of positive impact on society, if I'm just slogging away for years on tedious tasks, then why waste my time doing it?

I am baffled by that attitude, because how the hell did they think they were supposed to understand/interpret/learn something new by looking through telescopes, if they have no idea what they're looking at?



People are fucking stupid. In order to be able to SCIENCE! you have to have a grasp of what people have learned in the field before you. Otherwise, you're just playing pretend. Yay! Let's make-believe laboratory!

[Template]

College is for job training, not sitting around thinking.
               \

The issues addressed in this article resonated with me. When I enrolled in college, I was interested in someday becoming an astrophysicist but I wasn't sure. I took an introductory astronomy class - and it was the most boring, tedious thing I ever endured. I thought we would be observing the heavens through telescopes, not slogging through obscure information about celestial spheres and such. I decided that while science is a fun hobby, I didn't want to do something this boring for a living, so I switched to studio art. If I can't make some sort of positive impact on society, if I'm just slogging away for years on tedious tasks, then why waste my time doing it?

I am baffled by that attitude, because how the hell did they think they were supposed to understand/interpret/learn something new by looking through telescopes, if they have no idea what they're looking at?



People are fucking stupid. In order to be able to SCIENCE! you have to have a grasp of what people have learned in the field before you. Otherwise, you're just playing pretend. Yay! Let's make-believe laboratory!

I just realized how heavily the underlying tedium in astrophysical discovery could be pounded in.  Try looking at years (and years (and more years)) of photographs, to identify objects' movement, and location in space.

Sounds like commenter wanted nonstop pretty, and probably has it now.

[rong]

i think it has a lot to do with the american public being pushed to produce more scientists in order to keep up with other countries.

i predict this will change as, i believe, industry is finding out that science can be imported.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I want to know if this increases the odds of getting my schooling paid for.

[Cain]

i think it has a lot to do with the american public being pushed to produce more scientists in order to keep up with other countries.

i predict this will change as, i believe, industry is finding out that science can be imported.

I predict it wont happen because science is evil Devil Worship Nazism from Canada, something all right-thinking Americans reject.  Only pagan atheists like India and China will it.

Also, yes, to the OP.  Another difference is that technology is vastly more popular than science.  The Ayatollahs are quite willing to embrace modern arms and medicine, for example, but not so keen on evolution...

[Kai]

i think it has a lot to do with the american public being pushed to produce more scientists in order to keep up with other countries.

i predict this will change as, i believe, industry is finding out that science can be imported.

I predict it wont happen because science is evil Devil Worship Nazism from Canada, something all right-thinking Americans reject.  Only pagan atheists like India and China will it.

Also, yes, to the OP.  Another difference is that technology is vastly more popular than science.  The Ayatollahs are quite willing to embrace modern arms and medicine, for example, but not so keen on evolution...

I find this hilarious in one of those  types of hilarity. What research do they think made the technology possible? Stupid humans.

The fastest way to cull population would be to shut down all the electricity. It would be straight out of Monsters are Due on Maple Street.

[Cain]

Technology is helpfully value neutral, and does not require knowledge of science for the average user, so they don't need to know.  Magickal pixies might as well cause their iPad to work.

[Kai]

Where do you draw the line between toys and tools for getting people to that ONAOIGEDDIT moment?


And, what do you mean by "toys" anyway?

The ONAOIGEDDIT moment only came for me after hours and hours of thinking and discussing various topics. Metaphor was particularly important. To be completely honest, very little of the time I spent in laboratory was instrumental to the eureka moments. Some of the coolest things I know about the universe have come from listening to and discussing with my professors, reading the primary literature (including the classics like On the Origin of Species), and listening to some of the really great explainers of science like Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, etc. Even the taxonomy labs where I learned skills instrumental to doing my research did not lead to Eureka moments.

Toys? Laboratory equipment that is expensive and looks cool but actually does very little in the way of instruction in principles. Learning how to use equipment is what internships are for.

Here's the thing about scientists. You either start interested and grow even more interested in science from the get go, find an interest early on, or you fail as a scientist. Frankly I'm glad that the people who can't get interested in theory and principles don't go on to become scientists. Theres a drive and passion behind every scholar, and you can point to it for people, you can show them great examples, you can be the example, but you can't teach it. They either have it, quickly get it, or they won't.

Sounds like sour grapes from someone who had an interest in something, but couldn't hack the... um... math or something. Maybe they just weren't into it enough to put in the time/effort, or maybe they just didn't have the natural ability for the skill set of that particular field.

It's really not a trivial matter to figure out what you're "supposed to be doing".  I have no fucken idea, myself.

I'm a little concerned with this individual's apparent distaste for "obscure information", though, cuz, man, that is where the good shit is.

Also, this.

I think it has very little to do with the difficulty of the math, and everything to do with failure of passion and devotion to that passion. Passionate scientists make it out of that devotion to discovery and understanding the universe.


As for obscure information...

In my third semester of grad school, I had an emotional, psychological breakdown. This was just six months after a near break from reality that many of you here on PD remember. I was physically exhausted from the many hours a week I was putting in to my new assistantship, driving 6 hours every two weeks to take samples on a DoE site. I had 4 classes in addition, two of which were very difficult, and my thesis research was not going well. The overwhelming stress lead to a collapse and I could not continue my courses, which thankfully I got departmental permission to drop them. But I asked my professor if I could sit in on the class, just to keep learning, and I started going to his office after class to discuss molecular biology (this was a physiology course). It was standing with him in front of the blackboard after one of these lectures that I was talking to him about transcription factors and he was drawing embryos and protein gradients on the board. And in that state, as bad off as I was, I GRASPED for the first time transcription factor cascades and how they draft a grid onto the embryo which acts as the architectural blueprint for development, and that these cascades are originated maternally and their cascades are originated maternally and their cascades....

You know you're a scientist when you can be at your worst and still sit in awe of the universe, and that can bring you back and make you want to live again.

[Bruno]

I finished my technology degree a couple of years ago. Electro-Mechanology type stuff. Metaphors were important to helping me understand what I was learning. In electrical classes, the water-in-a pipe analogy is pretty common. Volume per unit time is amps, pressure is volts, they never went any further than that with the analogy, But I worked out a few others over time.

Coulombs would most closely relate to Mols.
Inductance relates to the inertia of the fluid.
Capacitance to a spring, membrane, or height/potential energy.
Transistors are different types of valves., etc...

These analogies helped my wrap my mind around things. If I can visualize something, then I get the feeling that I understand something. There seemed to be times when I had already "gotten it", I just didn't get that I got it until I could visualize it. I could do the math; Plug and chug, solve for x and shit, but if I didn't really understand how G_p related to Phi over delta Z to get to x, I knew I was just going to forget it after the next test anyway. Some classes let us use a sheet of formulas for tests, but if I didn't understand what the formulas meant, they were  useless. If I understood them really well, I didn't need them.


Then there was the huge machine with dials and meters we hooked up with cables, and fiddled with dials to see how the meters changed. What was the point of that enormous and probably expensive and dangerous thing? Did they really need a huge thing capable of hundreds of amps?

[Faust]

Science is a tool set for analysing and hypothesising while minimising personal bias. On its own it is only useful as a stepping stone to applying methodologies like you have listed (engineering).

The reason there is such an emphasis on the practicalities is that all courses are designed to get you a job, not train you to be a good scientist. In some respects I can understand that, there is a much more pressing need for engineers (though standards may vary from place to place, some of the stuff roger has said about their engineers makes me sick), then for pure theoretical scientists.

The simple fact of the matter is that most University courses are appealing to the local industry, with the goal of bringing more money into the area. It dilutes both what it means to be a scientist AND what it means to be an Engineer (training someone into an overspecialised skillset does not a REAL engineer make).

The long and short of it is if you want a good science or engineering education, university is a good place to start but your real training will be your own and wont happen until you leave the ivory tower.

I also don't believe that psychology is anywhere near what you could call a science. Maybe in a decade or two.

[Triple Zero]

I also don't believe that psychology is anywhere near what you could call a science. Maybe in a decade or two.

Really? Because of my college friends, the one that actually made it to the end of their Psychology Masters, nearly all of them were real good with their statistics and SPSS¹. Even though some of them still hated it

But they were really thorough about the hypothesis/experiment scientific feedback loop. In fact, in some sense, "more scientific" than the stuff I was doing with Computer Science². Especially because they had to go through great length to try and objectively measure things that are generally considered subbjective and very hard to measure. And they learned and developed methods to do that, which is also part of the science of psychology and sociology.

Maybe you are thinking of psychiatry? Which, like medical school, is much more about learning a profession than doing Real Science. IMO the only reasons why those are taught at a university instead of higher education vocational school is because of history, prestige and that you probably want your cardiologist to have as high an education as possible.

Of course, there should exist such a thing as Medical Science, but it should be different from "training to become a doctor". Hell, even cardiologists. I've had a very bad experience with our University Medical Centre Hospital finding some slight anomaly in my ECG during a routine check, I got appointed to a cardiologist, who warned me that this could be a very rare and really very dangerous in the "take the wrong medicine and you could drop dead" kind of sense, which included simple dentist's anaesthetics (not that she gave me, or my GP a complete or current list, oh no)--regardless of this supposedly being a life-long thing, and I can't remember my heart ever as much as skipping a beat--it took months before they finally got around to scheduling me a test, which came out negative, but she wouldn't tell me things were fine because "the symptoms were there" (indeed my ECG is very reliably slightly different than a typical one), which complicated things because my therapist and me wanted to try out some anti depressiva meds and it took the University Hospital like 3-4 weeks to schedule a portable 24h heart monitor to, I'm not really sure, be able to determine afterwards "yeah it was the heart thing that got him".
Right, what's this got to do with anything? Well at some point she wanted to test my family too, and then we slowly got the realization that she hadn't been interested in finding out whether I actually ran any risk, AND BASICALLY HAD BEEN STRINGING ME ALONG CAUSE SHE WANTED TO STUDY THIS RARE HEART CONDITION (epilogue: I went to the other non-University hospital in town, they could set me up with a portable monitor and get back the results within less than a week, and after the third time their cardiologist said "Well, given that your test half a year ago came out negative, the monitors never find anything and you don't have a history of any heart problems, I don't think there's much to worry about. It's a fact that some people just have an anomalous ECG and have no problems at all. If you worry about some significant change in your medications or actually do notice heart-beat-skippings, feel free to give a call and we'll set you up with another monitor, if you want." And that was that.

Sorry, went off a bit of a tangent there. But university hospitals? Fuck em! Either you get a medical student that needs to stab your arm four times before the IV needle sits right, or you get the old scientific professor doctor that's more interested in trying out new treatments, writing for medical journals and talking at symposia. Actual talented doctors seem to go someplace else.


¹ this was back then, I hope nowadays they're using R.

² except for Machine Learning and Computational Science topics, those were all about running experiments to test hypotheses. Even though in practice ML is all about building a smart/clever system that works, we were doing SCIENCE to them at university.