Did the US Take the Back Seat In Science In 2009? 502
tcd004 writes "In the PBS NewsHour's roundup of the biggest science news of the year, Neil DeGrasse Tyson dropped this doozie: '[Scientific leadership] drives the economic strength and security of nations. The fall is not from a cliff. More like a slow, downward slide — almost imperceptible from day to day. But as the years pass America will have descended from leaders to players to merely followers as we fade to insignificance, at best hitching a ride on the innovations of others.'"
I expect so... (Score:5, Insightful)
The USA has a population of around 300,000,000, or around 5% of the world population. It should expect to be following in some areas. In the twentieth century, a combination of factors (less damage from WWII than other developed nations, higher ratio of middle class to subsistence-level citizens, greater economies of scale that most of Europe) let the USA lead in technology. Even then, a number of key developments came from outside the USA, for example the first theoretical models in computing, the first stored program computer, the most successful commercial CPU architecture and the TFT display all came from the UK, the first (and, so far, only) supersonic passenger aircraft was a joint venture between the UK and France.
With 5% of the world population, you simply can't expect to be the world leader at everything. Through most of the twentieth century, the USA operated quite a successful brain drain, skimming off a lot of the best and brightest in the rest of the world by offering them bigger salaries and, more importantly, a lot more resources to continue their work. Now it's quite difficult for someone with a PhD to get a visa to work in the USA (unless they're just transferring within the same multinational company) and the desire to work in America is significantly lowered by the insane anti-terror legislation, not to mention the crippling IP laws which make the USA a much less attractive place to do research unless you have a massive company backing you.
"Science" is not just "Eureka" (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't just have PARC and places sitting in isolation, churning out whizz bang science.
Neither can you just build a PARC, and have that attract and create industry around it.
PARC and places like that need to co-exist with a hotbed industrial base, and then you get a positive feedback loop.
If you kill local industry and manufacture, then you also kill science.
If you kill science, then you also kill local industry and manufacture.
Back in the 1960's and before every school in the UK turned out kids who could read, write, and do math.
You cannot do ANY trade without these skills, not plumbing, not carpentry, not bricklaying, not to mention the slightly higher level trades like boilermakers etc.
Sadly, we threw it all away, in our pursuit of crap courses like equine aromatherapy and womyns studies, anything, just to get more people in university, just to get more people with degrees and diplomas and certificates.
Now we have a "service" economy that relies on someone else being able to do the basic math etc.
I am an engineer ( a proper one, eg mechanical and marine) and sadly I am the demographic that went through the trade at a time when an engineer was lower in status and pay than many blue collar jobs, which meant no-one wanted to do apprenticeships, which means I am one of the last of the "old school" of engineers.
The future isn't bright.
Sci-fi series Firefly had one thing right, learn a second language, and make it Chinese.
Even if we turned around and went balls out to fix the problem, money no expense, NOW, it would take a generation, or 20 years, to fix, which is too damn slow to work.
All that is left is importing the talent.
From what I know of the USA, there is a lot of importing engineering talent going on, lots of foreign nationals, green card holders and immigrants working in tech.
A friend of mine summed it up well years ago, when he said that in 2020 the USA will be the place to go to make cheap porn and exploit people who don't have any other options.
USA, the new Romania.
Strange conclusion based on the named fact (Score:3, Insightful)
US may be taking a back seat in science, but what is described in the article has nothing to do with that.
Russian space agency needs money very much like NASA. The proposal to shoot down an asteroid (which, according to recent calculations is not an imminent threat) is made primarily to raise their profile, and perhaps get some cash. It certainly helps that the cause is "you will die unless you pay". If you read the original russian announcement you'd notice that they "will need 100s of millions of dollars" and they hope US and European partners will bring some dough to the table :)
I am somewhat familiar with a state of Russian science, and while it may be that over countries are going ahead of US - Russia is not one of them. Real science in Russia is, unfortunately, taking a backseat to populist crackpottery (such as controlling the clouds or making machines that cure all diseases with "magnetism" and other such things bordering on mysticism) that is in style with the new rich, who are ready to pay for it.
Re:What's this 'we' thing ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody ever said the Internet wasn't global. When interpreting pronouns like 'we' in a quote like that posted on slashdot, context matters. The person who constructed the sentence made it very clear that the 'we' pronoun was citizens and residents of the United States. 'We' isn't always a universal that is meant to encompass everyone who reads the text. For example, the U.S. Declaration of Independence was written by the Continental Congress, to be sent both to people within the American Colonies, *AND* to foreign nations (in particular, England). The second paragraph starts "We hold these truths to be self evident. . ."
It's obvious that the writers of the Declaration of Independence weren't including all possible readers in the "We", as the King of England and his privy council, as well as the parliament of England, probably didn't hold that view at that time.
'We' is a perfectly useful pronoun, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with the way it was used in the quote posted to slashdot. If the article author hadn't made it clear from context who 'we' encompassed, then I might have agreed with your position, but I personally find your argument lacks merit.
Re:I expect so... (Score:4, Insightful)
In a modern, globalised world (Score:4, Insightful)
Smart people are discriminated against in US... (Score:1, Insightful)
American society absolutely hates smart people these days. They are called derogatory names, like "nerds", and "geeks", ridiculed and made fun of. The net result of that is in years to come only rednecks would be left in US and other countries which value smart people would have replaced US as world leaders. This is called evolution - survival of the best and the fittest.
By the way, if we have laws to prevent discrimination against races, why is there no anti-discrimination law for discrimination against intelligent people? Calling someone a "geek" and bullying him and making fun of him just because he is more intelligent than you should be against the law.
Economics: Comparative Advantage (Score:3, Insightful)
However, that law is never mentioned when American companies demand that Washington open the floodgates to foreign engineers begging to come to the USA. The CEO of, say, Intel says that the American economy will collapse unless we Americans admit foreign engineers. Professor David Patterson (of UC-Berkeley) promotes the idea that we must admit foreign engineers so that we can be #1 in all fields. (Patterson is president of ACM and has promoted the H-1B program.)
These advocates of foreign engineers are wrong.
Even more interesting is the fact that Japanese companies rarely hire foreign engineers. Technology in Japan is homegrown. Yet, the Japanese beat the Americans in several areas of high technology. Most of the patents for your LCD monitor are owned by Japanese companies.
Here is the irony. Despite a massive influx of foreign engineers, the USA is actually declining in scientific achievement according to the lead news article in this discussion. Yet, Japan, which has severe restrictions on hiring foreigners, remains a technological powerhouse. Here is the conclusion: H-1B engineers were never necessary to the American economy.
We have a creationist "museum"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Disruption is essential (Score:4, Insightful)
Disruption is the essence of progress. Some of what was is superseded by something new. Typically the incumbent technologies and powers either fight progress tooth and nail, try to co-opt it, or try to at least manage it's pace to something they can control. When too much incumbent power is too successful at slowing progress, that progress tends to move somewhere else.
In recent years, those incumbent powers have been quite successful in the US. One can hope that that trend doesn't continue.
Re:I expect so... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is fear that will be the downfall of our "Home of the Brave". Fear that our kids will not believe in a god if they are taught evolution, fear that they will blow us up if they are taught chemistry, and fear that they will "steal" songs if they are taught math.
Re:not news (Score:4, Insightful)
not anyone who counted
I have seen the lecture you are referring too. (Score:5, Insightful)
He made a very good point.
Tyson made a very good point. In that lecture, he talked about the Islamic Empires of the 12th and 13th centuries that were building while we were in the Christian Dark Ages. Do you know what happened? A bunch of Imams got together and basically stated that Math and Science were of the devil. After that, it was only a matter of time. The result is the Middle East we see today.
He also stated a statistic that since Bush took office in 2001, during the 8 years of Bush, the amount of "hard science" Papers in Chemistry, Biology and Physics has dropped to 1/10th what it was in the 90s.
(He had exact numbers, and I saw this last November.)
The point is, Reactionary Christianity is causing the collapse of our civilization just the same way that Reactionary Islam caused the middle east to become what it is today.
Christianity. Its the Problem.
When you have 60% of your population denying Evolution, a scientific fact, your civilization is circling the drain.
Re:Time to reverse scientific migration... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:offtopic (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I expect so... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I expect so... (Score:4, Insightful)
Really?! Read the 5000 year leap, and then feed me that BS line.
Given the fact that Glenn Beck seems to be the #1 tout for that book, I think you just proved my point.
Re:Time to reverse scientific migration... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe now it's time for the US to send their best students abroad and get valuable PhDs from countries where you can still find a taste for hard work and good science?
No, America has a high quality (but very expensive) post-secondary education system. Being expensive means that some bright but less fortunate students will never reach their full potential - which is sad but it is still provides a quality education. The real problem with America is the public education system. Low standards combined with parents that don't get involved result in very few American students good enough to attend post-secondary education. So good students are imported.
For some time now, America has operated their "brain drain" to attract the best from other countries. Take Canada for example (I am Canadian). American jobs generally offer higher wages and result in lower taxes. This is partly because tuition in Canada is subsidized - I only paid ~$2000 a semester. So I can graduate from Canada with very low dept and then move to America to work. This is great for both me and America as America does not have to pay for my training. It is bad for the Canadians that do pay for my training and for the Americans I am competing against that do not have the option of a low cost education. But overall, this is good for America and is partly responsible for the lead America had in R&D.
Others have discussed some reasons why this American "brain drain" is starting to fail - and I agree with them. For example, I have no desire to work in the US. I don't even want to travel to the US - or through the US for that matter. I will gladly pay extra for flights that do not require a transfer in an American airport. It is sad because the Americans that I know who live here in Canada are amazing people. I love my American friends - but seriously America, what happened???
Re:I expect so... (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that millions of illiterate and non-English speaking people get into the U.S. every year without valid papers, you would think that all these PhDs would be able to figure out how to do it too.
You might think that, if you thought people with PhDs would put up with getting paid under the table, having to carry fake IDs, going without access to even the US's meager social safety net, and living in fear of being deported.
It's one thing to put up with those conditions when you're coming from some poor, broken country. But why would an educated person from a developed country come here to live as a second-class citizen when he could stay home, do the same work above board, and enjoy his single-payer health care and 4 weeks of vacation?
Re:I have seen the lecture you are referring too. (Score:1, Insightful)
Oddly enough, when that number was much higher the US was the indisputable leader of the world.
Re:Smart people are discriminated against in US... (Score:3, Insightful)
^ +1, uncomfortably true.
There is certainly a big "culture of entitlement" in the U.S. that has largely replaced individualism and a good work ethic. When you have a lot of people wanting something for nothing and only a small number of hard-working people to leech off of to get that something for nothing, are you surprised that the country is collapsing?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We have a creationist "museum"... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think other areas are the cause. You don't see China or India leading the world with billions of dollars of research on how life began (because it really isn't a priority). Creation vs evolution doesn't affect chemistry, physics, or 90% of biology. I know several very smart and productive hard science PhDs who espouse creationist viewpoints; somehow it doesn't affect their work (they obviously don't work in evolutionary biology though).
The Creation Museum is a symptom, like Sarah Palin, etc., of a country that takes stupid way too seriously and discounts intelligence, intellect and expertise as "elitist". Young earth creationist nutballs are harmless as long as they don't try to teach it as science or history or whatever. Because when you're trying to discern the laws of nature, predict future natural phenomena and exploit these for technological purposes, "God did it" is not a very good starting point.
The Creation Museum is trying to get dinosaurs with saddles taken seriously as science. They are trying in general to get taken seriously as science. Check out their website, reviews of the museum, people's impressions and photo journals of it to see just what we're writing about. Seriously, take a look -- it's way wackier than you might think, much more loony than your creationist PhD friends, who are probably otherwise normal and would never suggest that Noah's Ark is literal history and the dinosaurs came along for the ride.
I cannot make this stuff up.
Re:Economics: Comparative Advantage (Score:5, Insightful)
While I think there is rampant abuse of the H1-B program I do think it is vital a U.S. dominance in all technological fields. Through-out the 30's and 40's we were not pulling just highly educated people from other countries, we were pulling in rockstars of science, people that could contribute the science we were trying to develop. Today H1-Bs are just a form of cheaper labor for companies and you don't have to be especially well qualified to land a job using an H1-B. Because of this our job pool is diluted and all the effort bringing people here yields very little.
The best and brightest minds are naturally going to be in other countries as we hold merely 5% of the population. H1-B needs to be about bringing in the best and the brightest, not about filling non-existent programmer position voids. Foreigners helped us construct the atomic bomb among many other technological leaps forward. They are necessary. The fact that Japan is so successful right now is due to us being lazy and let's face it, science was manipulated for political gains through the new millennium. When we recover our strengths you'll see us surpass Japan unless they too start bringing in foreign talent.
Of course you might remember that Japan was in a similar position to the U.S. now about a decade ago. They shifted their priorities and surprise surprise, they are back to being productive members of the international community. Right now people in the U.S. take their success for granted and have forgotten that it was only achieved through lots of hard work and lots of sacrifice! My own feelings lean towards suggesting that the religious awakening since 9/11 has been the root cause due to people living in fear searching for a quick fix rather than fixing the root of the problems at hand. It's easy to say god will save us, hard to actually do it yourself and stop the international sale of arms to unstable regions and stop the acquisition of oil from countries that behave unconscionably. All solutions come with sacrifice and there would be serious humanitarian issues to deal with although I suspect China would fill any economic gaps for those countries we stopped buying from. At some point we have to accept higher gas prices as a cost of our ideals which are just and sound if only we had the balls to live up to them.
Re:Economics: Comparative Advantage (Score:5, Insightful)
H-1B engineers are necessary to suppress wages, which is necessary to make the rich richer at the expense of everyone else. That's commonly known as "right-wing" politics, which have been practiced at least since Reagan's time, for the detriment of almost all.
Re:What's this 'we' thing ? (Score:3, Insightful)
What this shows is that we have a coming superpower that only recognizes national lines, not global.
Re:I expect so... (Score:3, Insightful)
Try to keep up with the thread, please. We're not talking about poor immigrants hoping to give their kids a better life in the land of opportunity.
We're talking about people who already have a post-graduate education and are looking for a career in scientific research. They didn't spend all that time in school just so they could sneak into the US in the back of a truck, try to find some research position that pays cash and doesn't ask too many questions, and keep their heads down to avoid being discovered by the INS!
If they can't move here, they're going to stay in their home countries, where they can live like respectable citizens and maybe even become famous for their discoveries without the risk of deportation.
Re:Economics: Comparative Advantage (Score:5, Insightful)
>>They are, but perhaps they wouldn't have been if there was sufficient (in price as well as quantity) homegrown talent.
Fixed that for you. H-1B's are there to lower expected wage for engineers by increasing the pool, not to replace any shortage.
Re:I have seen the lecture you are referring too. (Score:5, Insightful)
A civilization that follows the Gospel of Jesus Christ will never collapse? Tell that to the Roman Empire! (West or East.)
Re:I expect so... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fear is the mind killer. Good song, btw.
And yes, fear is the downfall of the US. And many other countries. We (including the US, most of Europe and a lot of other so called developed nations) are so terribly afraid of losing what we got that we don't dare to risk going ahead.
Just recently I saw a good documentary explaining why God plays such a huge role in a country that (IIRC as the first) separated church and state. The riots of the 70s were blamed on the godlessness and hedonism of the period, and people were terrified by those riots. The religious right gained a lot of steam in these days and they still got it today. And, when I look around me and ponder what people are the most "God fearing", I notice that the age bracket matches quite nicely.
My only hope is that time will cure it. People tend to forget, and those that refuse to forget will die, and we will eventually get more people relying on logic and reason again. I hope it won't be too late.
Re:Economics: Comparative Advantage (Score:5, Insightful)
To have a good domestic workforce, you have to train good domestic engineers. It is actually that simple.
Ever seen a Japanese school from the inside? Try to discuss the idea of "no child left behind" with a person from Japan and watch closely how he tries to retain his proverbial composure. Japanese schools don't level the field, they demand.
You say that the Japanese system of a reliance on domestic engineers is good and should be applied to the US. I say, to do that you first of all have to create engineers that are on par with Japan. Then we can talk.
Re:not news (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:stop educating foreigners to a high standard (Score:4, Insightful)
American universities should focus on Americans first.
And this is exactly the attitude that is causing America to be slipping. Don't educate the best and brightest, educate the best from the 5% who happen to be born in the USA. Don't encourage the best and brightest to come to America and make it a better place, pick from the 5% who happen to be born in the USA. If you want America to regain the place it had in the middle of the twentieth century, you need to make it an attractive place for the top foreigners to relocate to. Stop importing people to fill up jobs at the bottom and middle, and start importing world leaders again.
Or would you rather that people like Einstein and Von Braun had gone somewhere else and their jobs been taking by Real Americans(tm)? The world stage would probably look very different if that had happened...
Re:I expect so... (Score:3, Insightful)
visa's (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Time to reverse scientific migration... (Score:2, Insightful)
As to the last paragraph, you have the first item CORRECT. That is, LAZY profs are choosing to ONLY WORK with their national kin are choosing to overlook many other, and many better, individuals JUST BECAUSE IT IS EASIER ON THEM. In addition, no doubt a number of the them are choosing ppl to take back tech to their nation.
As to the last item, the answer is no. There are PLENTY of good ppl. When I worked in RD, including in our universities, I saw loads of good ppl passed on. And a number of the ppl that were brought in, were behind in their knowledge, and others were very lazy (just here for the piece of paper). Now that does not mean all. Because I admire so much of Asian work ethics (similar to Americans), I spent time with and ended up marrying an Indian. BUT, that does not mean that Americans are lazy, either intellectually, or even in labor.
I do have to say that I DO despise those that apply simple tags to groups of ppl without even having a clue of what they are talking about. Right now, I carp about China (due to their nationalistic behaviors and their illegal actions concerning money exchange, trade barriers, dumping, lack of env. ethics, etc), but not about the Chinese (a hard working group of ppl). There is a HUGE difference. One is a gov. the other is a group of ppl. OTH, your nationalistic racism shows a great deal about you.
Re:Decline (Score:4, Insightful)
I have no clue what you're trying to prove by that.
That the US still does science isn't being disputed. Science in the US can be on the decline, while still exploring the solar system, doing research in genetics and funding studies.
Re:I expect so... (Score:3, Insightful)
It has always amazed me how debates about immigration to the US are almost always about illegal immigration. As these posts indicate, the American legal immigration system is thoroughly broken. It is mind-bogglingly stupid that America's universities attract the best and the brightest from around the world to get BS and PhD degrees, but then the USCIS sends them away as they can often not get a work visa to continue to live in the US! The only way the US can continue to lead the world is to continue to encourage a brain drain to attract the world's best minds to live and work in the U.S., not just study in the U.S. and go away.
Re:We have a creationist "museum"... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not a symptom of a country, it's a symptom that there is a group of people in that country that take stupid way to seriously.
It isn't like creation science is a department at most public universities or anything so ridiculous.
Re:Actually this has happened for a while now (Score:1, Insightful)
Really? You think the problem with the US is that it provides TOO MUCH of a social safety net? You realise that one reason why most foreign countries do not require companies to purchase health insurance is because most foreign countries have proper national healthcare schemes ranging from single-payer to full nationalisation?
The only places that don't tend to be collapsed states or semi-developed countries aiming for the real lowest cost, lowest value unskilled or semi-skilled labour. There is no way that this work will even be sufficient to provide a middle-class income any more. It just doesn't provide enough value and the luxuries expected for a middle-class lifestyle in the US are now too much.
If anything, America has benefited from massive outsourcing by the rest of the world of capital raising and corporate HQ admin. One reason why many "American" companies have lots of operations overseas is because they serve lots of customers overseas - for many American companies the US market may not be the biggest part of their operations any more and won't be one with the highest growth potential.
The US market clearly works well at providing one thing though - it provides plenty of scapegoats, talking points and political finger-pointing to allow people to avoid facing the changing global economic environment.
Re:I expect so... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I have seen the lecture you are referring too. (Score:4, Insightful)
RELIGION is the problem. Don't single out one, they're all in there.
I don't mind people believing in some sort of higher being or whatever floats their boat. But stay out of science with it! Science and religion don't mix well. Science is about doubting everything that's relayed to you, testing it and trying to find flaws in those theories, trying to find better theories, trying to improve on it. Religion gives you a text or other teachings that must not be questioned, that must not be doubted, that must not be tested, that has no flaws because it's holy and that you cannot improve because it's been taught by God or some other holy being.
Religion keeps things static. And while stability is a nice thing because it gives you something to work from, not being ALLOWED to work from it means you are standing still. No improvement. No progress. It's change that drives progress, and if you cannot change you cannot progress.
Re:I agree (Score:2, Insightful)
this nightmare started in 1980 with reagan and has continued ever since. Poppa Bush tried to give it more funding, but Clinton did little and W out and out destroyed it. It remains to be seen what Obama really will do, but it does not look all that good.
Clinton canceled the Superconducting Supercollider. That's pretty fucking big, but not in a good way...
Re:not news (Score:3, Insightful)
In an odd coincidence, when those plants were growing with all that carbon dioxide in the air, it was a lot hotter than it is now! Obviously that warming wasn't man made so this must not be either, right?
Re:I expect so... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I expect so... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure what point you think has been "proven,"
Glenn Beck is rabidly isolationist and a major terror-monger - precisely the kind of attitudes that have produced the massive headache for foreign engineering and science students to come to the USA and foreign engineers and scientists to work in the USA. Hence the proving my assertion that the most heavily jingoist are also the biggest contributors to our country's loss of prestige.
The rest of your response is such a ridiculously knee jerk paranoiac ranting that all it does is reinforce just about every stereotype you are trying to dispute. And for the record, I have never voted for a democrat or green or any other left-leaning party in my life, so your attempt to characterize me as part of the 'Left' cracks me up.
Hold your horses, FUD master... (Score:5, Insightful)
You state we spend money "proving" global warming. Let's assume you're right - how much is that exactly?
According to the GAO [gao.gov], it's probably around 6 billion a year. Which is about two weeks in Iraq.
Not sure that... we are doing anything never seen in the history of this planet.
Yes, we are burning hundreds of millions of years worth of old biomass in less than 150. We're also destroying every old growth forest on the planet. I'm fairly sure these are new events. And even a closed system will have periods of self-regulation that could be very inhospitable to our way of life.
Virgin is doing more with space technology than NASA is. And making money at it.
Virgin is not making money. Virgin has not been to the moon. Virgin hasn't ever placed a satellite. Virgin has never even orbited the earth as the space shuttle has. Virgin has never docked with a space station, or built one. It's performing sub-orbital flights - whoopdedoo!
All government funded research does is take money away from people who want to spend it in some other manner and apply it towards projects that may not have any realizable benefit that's being run by people who are better at pitching funding proposals than delivering results.
If this is true, why are all technologically advanced civilizations run by a strong state government? And I guess rocket technology, information technology, satellites, and every other major advance of the 20th century funded directly by government research have netted us very little.
Here's food for thought. Polywell fusion has amazing potential as a viable energy source. Government funding consists of $500,000 from the US Navy and run by a private company. The researchers are not Government employees. With some Venture Capital they could be running this project with billions of capital investments
I thought you just said government funding was the problem? Would polywell reactors had a chance at private capital investment in the 1980s, so it could develop to the point where it may be viable? Or are you just unable to form a coherent argument if you're allowed to write more than a few sentences?
I agree that there need to be more reasonable restrictions for research and development, but that's more of a function of bad governance than private initiative. All of the programs in Australia and South Korea are sponsored by their federal governments.
We don't do commercial R&D because we can't afford it. All our money is going to Federal programs.
Commercial R&D is just like commerce itself. Incredibly short sighted and hamstrung by the requirement of quick return on investment. That's why pure R&D does not exist in the commercial realm, especially since the closure of Bell Labs. Modern corporations are so greedy, they are only allowed by their shareholders to perform product development. Anything that has a good chance of losing money - like pure research and development - is never even put on the table.
Re:I expect so... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is belief in God anti-logical or anti-reason?
It's not. But blind faith is anti-logic and anti-reason, and most religions tend to emphasize that faith is a virtue. There's an element of faith in science too, because no one is going to replicate every experiment to verify it; they're going to trust that the experimenters were honest and didn't make mistakes. But someone will try to verify it, and then you have a higher probability of correctness.
Re:not news (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, about the Climate Change or Global Warming, I find it funny that people come and say the we have no proof of that. The other day I was hearing a known analyst on tv saying just that. I remember the same guy saying there were WMDs in Iraq well after US troops overrun the country, that Saddam hid them in a boat of truck in the desert... I'm not saying the same applies to you... My point is that while some disagreement seems to exist, that's more on how it's going to affect us, because the large majority - it no longer takes a scientist to see that - can't deny something is happening. But even if people don't want to believe the warming there's a whole array of other nice problems: garbage, garbage on the sea, extinction, deforestation, and our old but somewhat forgotten friend - the ozone hole! Now, are the scientists still trying to find proof for these too, I ask?
I sure think it's changing. In fact I'm sure. I hear my parents and grandparents saying how it used to rain more or how it used to be colder in Winter. Hell, seasons are blurring since a few years back. More extreme weather phenomena is happening... And it's going to get worse I fear.
As for research, we don't have much of that here, we slightly have some in the Universities but that's it. But in the US? Come on, cut a few percent off the defense budget and there's plenty dough for everyone. Why should people have to choose between having private or public R&D? They can have both.
Re:I have seen the lecture you are referring too. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I expect so... (Score:3, Insightful)
India is making huge strides in science and they are highly religious. Many European countries are more religious than the U.S. (at least officially) and they have great scientific progress.
Many of the great scientists throughout the ages were religious and those who were not religious still believed in God.
I'm not arguing that religions should run the country but any slack in scientific progress is not caused by the "religious right", it is caused by our education system (the problems with the education system are largely due to liberal policies and ideologies, not religious; take No Child Left Behind as only the most recent example - that is a "leftist" and liberal policy. Just because Pres. Bush supported it as did many Republicans does not mean it isn't liberal - Ted Kennedy wrote it and its ideas are the epitome of modern liberalism).
I've found in my 9 years of college so far (undergrad + graduate) that distrust of science has far less to do with religiosity than it does with amount of education.
Somebody Noticed!!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
The decline in science and technology in America is enough to scare the hell out of me. The worst of it is that we can do nothing to fix it that the public would tolerate. Requirements for success by our school children would have to be drastic. American parents are in no way willing to put their kids through the kind of hell it takes to make competitive scholars. Some nations have genius scholars simply because extraordinary accomplishments are the only hope a young person has to avoid a living hell.
I see a lot of excuses here but no real reasons... (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people here are talking about H1bs and the cost of education and one person even said the size of our population somehow correlates to a lack of amazing scientific progress. If that's true, India and China should have warp drives already.
Let's stop with the nonsense, especially with regard to immigrant workers.
While some companies do abuse H1bs it's not the cause of the decline of US scientific leadership, not even close! Einstein, Fermi, Godel et al were all foreigners! Please take the immigration debate elsewhere!
The realize the real root of the problem: culture. We have created a culture that loves to watch celebrities and make money. We have not instilled in our students the value of science education. And this should be seen as the biggest tragedy going into the second decade of the 21st century. People lack basic scientific literacy and they seems to be ok with not understanding a great many things. Just the other day I read about a high school that wanted to cut science labs [eastbayexpress.com] because too many white students were overachieving while the minority students were not. This should be obvious to anyone with common sense that this is absurd. Taking away resources from achieving students and directed them to non-achieving students won't help anyone. There are a lot of factors why students don't perform well in school, particularly in the math and science fields. But I think the main reason is culture. The under-achieving students haven't had it beaten into them that their education, particularly in science, is invaluable. And while these are often minority students, they are not exclusively so. My grandfather came to this country with a PhD in physics but less than $6.00 in his pocket and no family, but managed to work his way up to solidly middle class with a comfortable life and his kids are in engineering. The idea that education is paramount has been drilled into me from birth and now I'm a graduate physics student and I enjoy doing physics.
So my point is, you must hammer into the psyche of the populace that science and math are not inaccesible and can be quite enjoyable if some hard work is put into study. Not everything is about money and getting the MBA (but yes, increased funding would go a long way to help advance STEM). And even though some companies do probably abuse H1bs, it's not the reason we're lacking and neither is the size of our population (a silly idea in my humble opinion, it's obvious to see why).
So, even thought Tyson makes a weak link between the shooting of Apophis and American science, the point he raises is still a valid one and is a valid concern and requires an honest attempt at a cultural shift as I pointed just mentioned that requires us, especially scientists, to show the population that evolution is fact, the reasons for it, why it's important, and how spectacular learning about it is.
Don't be an Engineer (Score:4, Insightful)
Get an MBA. Half the work, twice the standard of living. If you're smart, do a salary survey and really look at the work conditions of the various career paths. I didn't.
Engineers, and many scientists from what I see, work long hours, get very little respect/recognition, and make a decent salary. Don't expect a door or window to your "office", and expect to be jealous of Dilbert (I'm no kidding).
With an MBA you get lots of recognition (i.e. take credit for what your engineers do), get little blame (i.e. blame all your engineers), and get ~50% more salary despite the omnipresent line of drool on the left side of your mouth. No one bats an eye when you leave for a 3:30 PM tee time either. Best of all your skills are "universal", no need to understand microwave design now that you manage it, you worked for a disk drive manufacturer. Same thing, right?
Seriously, the incentives are pretty fouled up at the moment, and you will kick yourself later if you get into engineering or science for anything but the cerebral self rewards your are occasionally allowed to enjoy (in between schedule related beatings from your MBA wielding overlord).
Re:I expect so... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it's a matter of agreeing or disagreeing with Mr. Beck's political views. The problem lies in discerning what those views actually are.
I've never actually watched Mr. Beck or listened to his radio show. I've only ever seen him on The Daily Show where he is shown doing paid commercials for gold vendors, and also doing unpaid promotion for it on his Fox News show. Or where he says that Mr. Obama is a racist who hates white people and then 45s later says he's not saying that Mr. Obama hates white people. Or the topper - Mr. Beck emerged from the hospital with nothing good to say about the health care industry "In this country, trying to get well could actually kill you" and then moved from CNN to Fox and now has only good things to say about the health care industry. "We already have the greatest health care in the world, and we're going to lose it if the government gets involved," things of that nature.
It seems from all this that Mr. Beck's opinion is for sale. I don't know how one would go about determining if he was promoting things in good faith or not. I welcome any references you can provide that can correct my image of him.
He is, after all, welcome to believe whatever he wants, and to say whatever he believes on TV. In fact, he's welcome to say whatever someone pays him to say on TV, but blurring the lines between honest opinion and paid opinion destroys credibility.
Re:not news (Score:4, Insightful)
Ironically, we are only releasing carbon from fossil fuels that was once in plants, which was once in the air, which is where we are putting it. Not sure that, given the planet earth is a closed system in terms of matter conservation, we are doing anything never seen in the history of this planet.
Ironically, you would not be living well in a Earth habitat that existed 1,000,000s of years ago. Just because the Earth once was does not mean that Humankind once was. Humankind has not been around as long as the Earth and there were many, many environments that the Earth has had.
Re:I agree (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I expect so... (Score:3, Insightful)
You might want to read this formal fallacy.
You might want to apply basic logic:
My Premise: Those who believe in A are the strongest supporters of policies that destroy A.
AC's Rebuttal: Not true, see book B praising A.
My Repsone: Z is apparently a huge fan of book B and he's a huge supporter of polices that destroy A, ergo AC has just brought to light that Z fits my premise to a T.
Do you now understand why the association fallacy has nothing to do with my point?
Oh, that's simple (Score:3, Insightful)
Investment theory models treat corporations as if they were mathematical or perhaps physical entities - a mechanism, if you will.
That is not the case.
A corporation is a SOCIAL entity, because most of the moving parts are PEOPLE.
That means that there are second and third and umpty-ordinal effects of the model-driven first order effects because the model cannot predict how the employees will feel and react to decisions made in the company.
Any military commander will tell you that the most precious attribute of a unit is *morale*. You can give a man the best weapons, the best equipment, outnumber the enemy by a significant margin - but if the troops won't fight, you're going to lose.
Morale is built from human relationships and human contact. It is constructed from trust and experience. It is a very touchy-feely, nebulous concept that does not model well. It can be simulated, somewhat, and many wargames attempt to build in some approximation of it because it is so important. Do your investment models take it into account?
I have been in companies with both low and high morale. The difference is night and day. And a company with low morale is both a horrid place to work and and underperformer.
Leadership, not management, build winners.
DG
The cattle prod training method (Score:2, Insightful)
While I agree with your assessment that US schools and society should foster interest and acceptance of more hard science and engineering, and seek to reduce the attractiveness of careers like being the next basketball or hip hop star, using the Japanese method of schooling does have its own set of drawbacks.
http://www.japantoday.com/category/kuchikomi/view/childrens-depression-and-suicide-a-worsening-problem [japantoday.com]
I think something in the middle between the US methods and the Japanese methods of childhood education might hit the sweet spot a little better.
If that means some short attention span theater stockholder doesn't make enough this quarter..who cares...
I think it is far more important, for the longer range view of humanity in general, that the emphasis is more placed on just being happy and having enough, rather than the great race to see who can accumulate the most electronic digits in some server some place, to be at the top of an unhappy and dysfunctional dystopian society, by being the most strict and ruthless and to use your word, "demanding".
I, for one, to follow the meme and to use an example that everyone here would understand, have absolutely no desire to be part of a society of either extreme (which unfortunately both extremes exist today and ARE being pushed heavily towards); either some zombied/brainwashed out Borg "you as an individual have no worth, and must conform and do exactly as you are programmed to do for the collective" type society, nor a "profits above everything else" type individual greed is king no rules and get out of the way or you are dead Ferengi type society.
Got no use for either, but sadly, those are roughly the two main political tracks on the planet now. Kinda sucks.
Your Statement is Illogical (Score:4, Insightful)
First off I am a frequent lurker of the Polywell community and if you are being intellectually
honest you know darn well that the potential device has only a slim chance of being
better than ITER. The lack of funds is one thing true, the other is the performance of science
(in this case fusion) without a proper amount of community (yes boring democratic government)
peer review so that in 30 years on the most basic assumptions have yet to be verified.
Secondly were "climate change" false or a scam there would be zero reason to develop Polywell
since this country has ample coal reserves -- enough to last 100's of years.
Thirdly I have been long been an academic researcher, now am in industry and I will tell you
that nothing innovative in science comes except from government funding. The halcyon
days of Bell Labs funding astronomy are long gone. There is a difference between science
and technology.
Capitalism, as practiced worldwide has advantages in terms of efficiency, but few in terms of
"the vision thing".