Particle Physicists Facing Insane Competition For Work

Jim_Austin writes "Teams of hundreds of young scientists — including many grad students and postdocs — staffed the Large Hadron Collider and helped make one of the most important scientific discoveries in recent decades. Now they must compete for just a handful of jobs. Quoting: 'The numbers make the problem clear. In 2007, the year before CERN first powered up the LHC, the lab produced 142 master's and Ph.D. theses, according to the lab's document server. Last year it produced 327. (Fermilab chipped in 54.) The two largest particle detectors fed by the LHC, the A Toroidal LHC Apparatus (ATLAS) and the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS)—which both independently spotted the Higgs—boast teams of 3000 and 2700 physicists. By themselves, the CMS and ATLAS teams minted at least 174 Ph.D.s last year. That abundance seems unlikely to vanish anytime soon, as last year ATLAS had 1000 grad students and CMS had 900. In contrast, the INSPIRE Web site, a database for particle physics, currently lists 124 postdocs worldwide in experimental high-energy physics, the sort of work LHC grads have trained for. The situation is equally difficult for postdocs trying to make the jump to a junior faculty position or a permanent job at a national lab. The Snowmass Young Physicists survey received responses from 956 early-career researchers, including 343 postdocs. But INSPIRE currently lists just 152 "junior" positions, including 61 in North America.'"

Comments

Capacity

[girlintraining]

What this says is that every rich person in this country is lying through their teeth about needing immigrants. We have highly trained scientists and engineers. The percentages of people who have the right attitude and mental attributes to succeed in this line of work has remained constant for as far back as we've had standardized testing results. There has been no shift of the basic personality types from one to another; Each generation has had the same proportions as the previous.

What it means is that nobody wants to invest. And scientific progress is an investment. It doesn't give you the immediate payoff of, say, a sequel to the Fast and the Furious (what are they up to now, seven of those infernal movies?). Science isn't formulaic. There's no spreadsheet that says "And after you spend $100 million developing a drug for cancer, you'll get this as a reward. Spend $200 million, and you'll get a free t-shirt too." Science growth mirrors our own; We grow in spurts, with long periods where nothing seems to be happening, periods where change is slow, and occasional paradigm shifts.

This isn't very amiable to the current "get rich quick" culture the Boomers are espousing as they approach their retirement. They're sucking every corner of society dry looking for a quick way to monetize, any incremental way to earn a profit without much risk. And science... well, it's too risky for them. They don't care about future generations, or a cure for cancer, or putting men on the moon again. They want botox and comfortable retirements.

This is society reaching back and giving people who love science the middle finger. It's saying "We don't need you, because your contributions aren't immediate. You live in the future and we're trying to recapture our past." So unless science comes up with a cure for aging, or a time machine, it's not getting funding. And that's really all there is to this story. It's about greed, pure and simple. Nobody gives a damn about tomorrow, because for the people holding all the cash... their tomorrows are running out.

Re:Capacity

[mc6809e]

Ever think that maybe that prosperity was a result of theft and maybe it needs to be spread around instead of kept among white people? What's the racial makeup of those "scientists and engineers" anyway? How's the diversity quotient?

Prosperity is mostly a result of applied cleverness and knowledge and not theft. Iron and carbon don't become steel without cleverness and knowledge. Niagra falls doesn't create power for factories without cleverness and knowledge. Fast computer chips don't exist without cleverness and knowledge.

We've tried spreading cleverness and knowledge through public education.

Some people just don't seem to want what the government gives away for free.

Re:Capacity

[the gnat]

"America for Americans." It's not racist at all! Ever think that maybe that prosperity was a result of theft and maybe it needs to be spread around instead of kept among white people?

I didn't really detect any nativism in the GP post. I personally favor open borders, both for scientists and avocado pickers, as long as they obey a few basic rules (i.e. work hard, don't hurt anyone, contribute to the general welfare, etc.). If someone in China or India thinks he or she can do my job better or cheaper, they're welcome to try. But I also think the claims of a shortage are self-serving bullshit by a clique of plutocrats who would happily fuck their fellow citizens for a new private jet. The only shortage is of people willing to do first-world work for developing-world salaries. Pointing this out isn't picking on the poor would-be immigrants who only want the same opportunities I have - it's merely the product of frustration at seeing the rich and powerful game the system yet again, and do so by lying through their teeth. If we're going to open our doors to foreign technology workers, it shouldn't be because some technology or pharma executive wrote an editorial in the WSJ.

Doing what you love

[msobkow]

Doing what you love rarely puts bread on the table and a car in the garage. Just ask a musician.

Re:Doing what you love

[Prune]

General knowledge has value beyond mere practical applications. It is part of the generation and maintenance of human culture. Once society rises above the level of mere subsistence, culture is pretty much the entire point of human existence. And I say this as an engineer.

Re:Expect Great Things

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

With that kind of brainpower, there should be some startling developments in the next couple of decades.

It will be an interesting test of the fungibility of brainpower. You don't become some sort of high-powered physicist by being an idiot; but the process that produces physicists doesn't necessarily groom or evaluate candidates for doing not-physics, so we'll see what sort of not-physics they end up getting up to.

Funding pure research requires a wealthy society

[Kohath]

This should be no surprise, since these positions are for pure scientific research with no way to calculate the ROI for the money spent. Countries have debt problems caused by borrowing and their budgets are already stretched to pay benefits for retirees and other non-workers. Add a long recession, a weak recovery, and very little prospect for robust future economic growth, and ultimately you don't end up with the sort of fiscal environment that can support lots of pure research.

Wealthy societies have discretionary funds for things like pure scientific research. Poor societies have to struggle just to get by. If you want more pure research, you need more people in your society to be employed productively. And you need them to generate lots of wealth -- far beyond "the amount they need" or "their fair share" -- so there will be a lot extra left over for things like pure research.

Re:why not work for wall street?

[gtall]

Excuse me, the 60's are calling you back. Advances in cancer therapy with radiation, physicists involved. Guessing since this is slashdot, you are a male and stand a significant chance of prostate cancer in your dotage. There are other cancers for which it works.

And those naughty physicists who thought up quantum mechanics? Maybe you didn't get the memo, it's used in all the latest devices.

Lasers? Those naughty physicists again. Damn, they're everywhere.

GPS systems...damn, there they are again.

Jesus, grow a brain.

Re:why not work for wall street?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything you are saying is wrong. There are no positions anywhere for them. No postdocs, no staff scientists at national labs and no tenure track positions at research universities. That leaves tenure track at little colleges and uni's with no grad physics or research facilities, or adjuct anywhere. Either of those will effectively end a young scientists career. So they either keep waiting an starve/work as janitors or they take a minor academic position that will end their ability to advance. It is the same throughout most of the science disciplines, and is a embarrassment to all of western society.

Tech clustering have value...

[jopsen]

If we're going to open our doors to foreign technology workers, it shouldn't be because some technology or pharma executive wrote an editorial in the WSJ.

Well, said... As someone moving to SF on an H1B next month, I'm usually pro the H1B program :)
But I do want to point out that not everybody abuses the H1B program.
I'm not relocation from a third world country, or to work at a third world salary, in fact could get similar wage here... actually I could just do job remotely.
Or get a well paying job at a company here... but the job wouldn't be as fun :)

I think mobility is important for many reasons, in my considerations are things such as SF having a lot of tech companies, startups and etc...
I don't know if I'll apply for a permanent visa at some point, but if I move back the contacts I'll be making will be invaluable, on both ends.
At the end of the day, if you don't let tech workers from around the world in, tech workers from around the globe will cluster in another valley.

Note. with all the NSA scandals, lack of welfare, poor security, crime, human rights violations, war crimes, etc. that the US has got going, I'm starting to wonder why I'm relocation.
On the other hand, I did all the paper pushing... So I might as well try it out :)
Anyways, feel free to tell me why the US is so awesome, I kinda need it...

Re:s'cool, and it makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

No hints of physics beyond the standard model? Well, you should move to Japan and specialise in neutrino physics then. There's loads of weird shit beyond the standard model that the Super K managed to find. The fact that neutrinos have even been shown to have mass at all is a pretty damn big hint at physics beyond the Standard Model.