[Kosh]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4172504.stm


I'm thinking that a certain administrations attitudes towards science are one of the reasons why science isn't "cool" anymore. There is a concern amoung the science and engineering community here that there are not enough new scientists and engineers to replace the ones that are retiring. On a slightly related note, more and more foreigners who come here to study science and engineering are no longer staying here, they are actually going home. In addition to this, fewer and fewer foreign students are coming here at all because of the new VISA restrictions. Coincidence? Maybe, but maybe not. Plus the budget of the National Science Foundation is being cut back. Bad move, IMO.

[karajorma]

It's a very bad move. Go into any lab in the US and there are loads of foreigners doing PhD's or in other lab positions. If they prevent them coming in US research is likely to grind to a halt very quickly.

Oh well. Can't say I mind the US not being the best at exploiting scientific discoveries. I'm personally sick of the way that the Brits invent tonnes of stuff and yet never see a penny from it. I doubt we'll be smart enough to take advantage of the US dropping the ball this way though. The far east are going to be the big winners out of this one.

[aldo_14]

The economic future of a nation can often be measured in terms of its postgraduate population, IMO.  In the UK, the lack of centralised MSc / Phd funding is shocking, I think.

[Kosh]

Last year China graduated 600,000 students in engineering. India graduated 350,000 students in engineering. The US graduated just 70,000. The source for that was Fortune magazine.

In my experience the Indians and the Chinese (on average) are just as capable, if not more so, then their American counterparts.

[EtherShock]

Now I understand why public schools have always stressed math and science.

Numbers don't always add up. However, that is a significant margin. One of the problems we have here is the social stigma that math and science are "uncool." In fact, I don't ever recall them being cool, but I guess even the people with interests in the sciences desire a bigger paycheck.

I read another article about this that stated one of the reasons is that more students are studying law and medicine (and I don't mean medical science) for the money. There's big bucks involved. Seems lots of people don't pursue their passions anymore. Apparently, science's reward of benefiting humanity isn't enough. Yeah, like we need more ****ing lawyers.

Maybe next time we'll have a president with a brain and he or she will fix this mess. Somehow Bush still has delusions of returning to the moon though, and you need science for that.

If there are less scientists, they could become in great demand, which means, they'll be offered more money, so maybe this is (do I dare say it) just a phase, but I'd watch intently.

[Deepblue]

Does anyone else find it funny that anything that goes wrong is inherintly the administrations fault and anything that goes right has nothing to do with them?

[MatthewPapa]

Originally posted by Kosh
Last year China graduated 600,000 students in engineering. India graduated 350,000 students in engineering. The US graduated just 70,000. The source for that was Fortune magazine.

In my experience the Indians and the Chinese (on average) are just as capable, if not more so, then their American counterparts.

But you have to look at it proportionally to be fair. Keep in mind china and india's population is four to sixfold the USA's.

[Grey Wolf]

What needs to be done is quite simple. We need to get a president who has a vague clue what science is, and we need the Chinese to get ahead of us in putting a man on Mars or something along those lines. We need another Sputnik Crisis. In the words of Lyndon Johnson:

In the eyes of the world, first in space means first, period; second in space is second in everything.

[Bobboau]

Bush has nothing to do with the stigma against smart people

[Kosh]

Does anyone else find it funny that anything that goes wrong is inherintly the administrations fault and anything that goes right has nothing to do with them?

What it comes down to, yet again, is the lack of leadership. Science was cool enough in the 60's for a lot of people to go into it because of the space race.

But you have to look at it proportionally to be fair. Keep in mind china and india's population is four to sixfold the USA's.

Not as much as you think. Numbers matter a lot more than you realize.

Bush has nothing to do with the stigma against smart people

The stigma was already there, but Bush is doing nothing to help get rid of it. In fact, he is only making it worse. The administrations attitude about science is blindingly obvious: That it is not a good thing. If he didn't believe this, then why would he cut back the funding to such critical institutions as the National Science Foundation, the Pell Grant program, and the Perkins loan program?

[Kamikaze]

The president supports intelligent design in school. That's quite anti-science.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by MatthewPapa
But you have to look at it proportionally to be fair. Keep in mind china and india's population is four to sixfold the USA's.

Kosh is right here that numbers do matter. Scientists don't progress at a rate proportional to the population of their country. This isn't like law or medicine where the country needs a certain number of those professions.

10,000 scientists will advance science just as quickly in India as they will in the USA (At least in sciences that don't require huge outlays of money all the time).

[WMCoolmon]

Originally posted by Kosh
The stigma was already there, but Bush is doing nothing to help get rid of it. In fact, he is only making it worse.

I'd say John Kerry did more to make the stigma against smart people worse. Bush has discouraged scientific research in a number of areas, but he hasn't really done anything, as far as I know, to influence any attitude towards smart people.

And IMHO acceptance of a religion often has little to do with someone's intelligence.

[Kosh]

I never mentioned anything about acceptence of religion being involved with someone's intelligence. Many smart people are religious (along with loads of stupid people unfortunately).

[WMCoolmon]

I didn't really get that out of your post, I was anticipating the next argument that would come up (ie smart people support science, science supports evolution, Bush supports intelligent design, therefore Bush is fighting against smart people).

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Deepblue
Does anyone else find it funny that anything that goes wrong is inherintly the administrations fault and anything that goes right has nothing to do with them?

We call that government.

To me, it seems that the current administration is not so much anti-science as simply not giving a **** about it.  We've had, what, the whole creationism thing, the doctoring of environmental reports ahead of the G8, the knee-jerk banning of stem cell research to name the most obvious?  Science coming secondary to personal opinion in the former and latter, and second to political expediency / campaign contributors in the middle one.

I can't imagine it's inspirational for people; science is in many ways the opponent of religion (as it seeks to provide answers which run contrary to those touted by religion in many cases), and there's a heavily moralistic, religious government in the White House.

[Kosh]

Originally posted by WMCoolmon
I didn't really get that out of your post, I was anticipating the next argument that would come up (ie smart people support science, science supports evolution, Bush supports intelligent design, therefore Bush is fighting against smart people).

So you did some pre-emptive argueing?


But Bush is clearly not pro-science. The kind of leader we need is someone who is pro-science, pro-engineering, and pro-edjimacation. No matter what Bush says, his actions indicate he is none of those.

[Shrike]

Originally posted by Bobboau
Bush has nothing to do with the stigma against smart people

Down with the intelligensia!

[Flipside]

In the UK of course, we overcome this by simply moving the goalposts every year and making sure we get a high degree of pass rates. This does of course actually dilute the opportunities for the realy high achievers, but who cares, it looks good on paper.

[Grey Wolf]

My point in bringing up Bush in my post was stating that his lack of regard for science, as shown in his administrations doctoring of reports, and his general apathy to the subject in general can't possibly help raise the profile of science in this country.