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Top Advisory Panel Warns Erosion of U.S. Science
fbg111 writes "From the NYT: A panel of experts convened by the National Academies, the nation's leading science advisory group, called yesterday for an urgent and wide-ranging effort to strengthen scientific competitiveness. The 20-member panel, reporting at the request of a bipartisan group in Congress, said that without such an effort the United States 'could soon lose its privileged position.' It cited many examples of emerging scientific and industrial power abroad and listed 20 steps the United States should take to maintain its global lead."
Considering how the attack on science by religious conservatives has reached a fever pitch, I am not surprised that fewer people are entering the hard sciences as a career. When every scientific discovery is met by screeches and howls by the religious right, the general public is left with the impression that scientists are just another protected minority who are forcing their views on the rest of society. There is little to no discourse on *how* these scientific discoveries are vetted; but even if the scientific method were explained in detail, the public has shown it still wants to believe in magic.
Biology and any other field of science dealing with the age of the Earth are destined to decline in the US. The balance of power has already tipped decidedly to non-US schools in technical training in these fields and will continue. This report will be ignored because Congress owes too much to the religious right to do anything that advances knowledge in human evolution or radiometric dating.
Any student of history knows that Scopes lost his trial. Things haven't changed that much in the US in nearly a century.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
It isn't just science. It literally hurts to be intelligent today. The kid comes into the world, sees what a great big pile of shit it all is, and then is given two choices: work hard to excel at making it an even bigger pile of shit, or smoke pot and listen to music or play games on the computer all day.
It's red pill vs. blue pill, and now that everybody has seen how the trilogy ends, blue pill wins every time. Want to change it? Take the Nazi out of Amerika and put forward a vision of where this country is going to be in twenty years that doesn't involve killing and torturing innocent people around the world.
Really it comes down to this: the propaganda being dished by The New York Times/CNN works well, but only for the retards. The kids you want to see building tomorrow's superweapons can think for themselves, and therefore see this shit for what it is.
And when you think about it, would you really have it any other way?
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You didn't know.
Copied verbatim from TFA:
If nothing else convinces you of the magnitude of this problem, consider the fact that The New York Times confused "lose" and "loose."
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The free market works. That's why our best and brighest are leaving Science. Dumbsh|ts!
I really don't feel that religion has anything to do with this. Most people, even the so called religions right are NOT anti-science. Actually, I could easily see any person living in the United States become deeply conserned in loosing its posisition as a top technological and scientific country, even those conservatives you speak of.
Realistically, the reason is the almighty dollar. Everything revolves around it, it always has and always will. In the US $$ speaks more than any religious morals.
Seriously, what other country disparages its "intellectual elite"?
Getting 10,000 new teachers into the school system isn't going to help if they have to teach religion in their science classes. Welcome to the US where 1 in 5 people believe the Sun revolves around the Earth.
Our problem isn't that we don't have enough teachers.
Our problem is that being smarter than the average makes those average people hate you. Most of them don't want to know that what they believe is wrong and they'll oppose anyone who tries to tell them differently. Which is why you see the fight to include things like "Intelligent Design" on the same level as tested and verified scientific findings.
How many corporations have scaled back or even eliminated their R&D departments because they won't turn a profit next quarter?
How much money does big oil spend to suppress new technologies?
Overly restrictive patents bar research by all who can't cough up the money to expand on somebody else's work.
Kids are actively discouraged from tinkering for fear of hurting themselves or hurting somebody else's bottom line. Want to experiment with chemistry? Here's some lemon juice and baking soda - but we'll arrest you if you put it into a plastic bottle. Want to play with model rockets? Prove you aren't a terrorist. Want to hack your X-Box and see how circuits work? The FBI'll be knocking on your door. Biology? Take pictures of a worm, but make sure it isn't endangered. Engineering? The city'll come and fine you for not building your treehouse to code.
When you get to college... how many professors actually teach science and how many spend all of their time seeking new grants to ensure the university can afford a new football stadium?
And of the precious little research that actually is happening, how much is classified and never sees the light of day
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
...where so many gadgets and inventions appear daily that continue to make science fiction into science fact, it is hard to motivate the younger generations to pursue the sciences. Why make a career out of a subject where you may never see the results of your work with your own eyes, when other fields have tangeble results from their work?
Other problems include:
- poor pay
- an increasing tendancy among scientists to take theory as fact
- increased outsourcing by american business
- unmotivated and/or knowledgable teachers(see poor pay as the reason for that)
- Greater competition by other countries
- The fanatical religious destruction of the scientific community.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
Now go and look at the history of those countries from the time when they decided that being one of the "intellectual elite" was a bad thing.
... unless they changed their opinion.
To me, it seems that they all declined pretty quickly and either vanished or are still on the bottom of the heap
You got two options people:
Either wise up and realize that being smarter is a good thing
or
Practice sucking up to whatever country will surpass us.
The MBAs comming out of business school tell me that in the future, the US will just be managers "managing" all the stuff being done overseas - I should be an MBA too, or I'll be obsolete. If that's the stuff they're teaching our business leaders of the future we're just screwed...
I don't think you're giving the political climate due consideration. While its effects are largely intangible, there's a creeping contempt for science that's gaining ground at all levels of government. What does your typical individual going to think about the value of science in general when a person no less than the president himself routinely and blithely disregards solid scientific findings in favor of ideological beliefs?
We are watching a slow and painful relegation of science to the role of munitions manufacturer for various political interests. When was the last time you heard a major political figure say, "You know, I always thought that X was the case, but recent studies have led me to believe otherwise"?
Remember, too, that school administrations and school boards are political institutions and have become increasingly politicized over the years.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Years and years ago I read a great article by this title. Consider, that their are a small but finite number of smart students who have the potential to become scientists and engineers. Consider that they are smart enough to look at what is happening in the US. American society rewards people who can a) entertain the masses, b) move money around from one place to another while extracting a portion for themselves, or c) extract money from others via the legal system. Scientists and engineers must spend years in expensive and difficult training to qualify for their fields. Spend many hours a year keeping up with their fields. Work very long hours. Risk unemployment from changing corporate or government priorities. And worry about their career disappearing when industry decides to outsource overseas. So scientist / engineer vs. athlete / entertainer / financier / lawyer. For many smart students it's a no-brainer.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I really don't feel that religion has anything to do with this.
You are wrong, as are the people you cite who are "not anti-science." Even if they dispute natural selection and genetics, they of course are pro-science when they are taking an ibuprofen or getting their children vaccinated or getting their yearly flu shot. And no one with a job or an investment portfolio wants to see America lose its technological edge.
But you, like these people, are not drawing the connections between their actions and the results. Science is not just a collection of facts. You cannot just choose to support the knowledge that benefits you (flu vaccines) and fight against the knowledge that disagrees with your beliefs (carbon dated fossils, genetic evolution). Science is first and foremost a PROCESS (not a collection of "facts"), and if you attack the process you are attacking the development of the knowledge that benefits you as well as the knowledge you don't like.
Developing an effective flu vaccine every year is absolutely impossible without basis in the theories of genetic inheritance and natural selection. These theories were not just proposed and voted on by scientists--they have resulted from and withstood investigation from the process of science, conducted by millions of independent scientists over decades.
Attacking the theories in the way that many conservative religious groups have, is to attack the validity of the scientific process itself. It's pretty hard to do a good job educating and encouraging future scientists when the very concept of science is being subverted for religious or political ends.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
When every other country has a cushy tenure system and you're a top scientist who can work anywhere, why would you refuse tenure? You must think top scientists are stupid. Do you really think they like constantly updating their CV and preparing for, and doing, "productivity reviews"? Fornunately, what good scientists like is doing science, not constantly elbowing for position with their peers. That's a part of the whole point of tenure.
The other part is that tenure insulates the scientist from the political fashions. Scientists research what they like, and whether or not it's popular with the current administration, their position is secure. If it weren't for that security, do you really think they'd work here?
#1: Absolutely not. If you think teachers just regurgitating what they're told to teach is a problem today, removing tenure would make it a hundred times worse. Tenure is what allows teachers to exert control over what happens in the classroom and to avoid being bound to someone else's agenda. This is why ID is being legislated into classrooms, because you can't just order them to put it in the curriculum.
And besides, it's incompatible with your point #2. If a kid fails a class, who gets to decide if it was because he couldn't handle it or because the teacher was incompetent?
Capitalism has a slight case of ADHD, and companies are no longer worth more than the margin of profit you can rake home in between buying it and selling it. Whatever they produce is irrelevant, as are their workers.
Thus, capitalism is killing itself, because it promotes short term goldfish-like behavior. Investors invest in a range of companies, out of which a certain % is doomed beforehand and the loss is regarded as natural.
What does this mean in the long term? well for one thing it stiffles innovation, no incitaments for long term research, those who holds the whip and wrings results out of the peons (scientists and engineers) becomes far more important. In the long term brands are also becoming irrelevant, as the market moves faster and faster and no-one has a personal vested intrest in them they just dont have continuity or stability. Here one day, gone the next.
Ah... You're going to double their pay (or halve the class size) also?
Teachers are LEAVING the profession. After investing years in preparation, they are leaving when they find out the system they are expected to work with. There's no trouble getting rid of the bad ones, they don't want to stick around either.
The feds have designed a "testing" system that guarantees that all schools will fail, because they must do better each year than they did the previous year. This can only be done for a few years, and it's already claimed a huge number of casualties. Some of which are students that nobody wants to take, because they don't want to risk dragging their scores down. In programming something much milder than this is known as a "death march".
Currently the only people even considering becoming teachers either have no alternative, or have blinded themselves as to what they are getting into.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.