I was not involved in the decision to cancel funding for Voyager, but I have had some involvement in the process that NASA uses to review missions and decide which spacecraft operations to keep funding. I'm relatively low on the totem pole, so don't blame me if you don't like the funding decisions NASA makes. I don't always like them either!
I suspect that some of the issues considered were the numbers of new publications from Voyager data compared to the more recent missions, the status of Voyager's instruments, and the ability of our ground stations to pick up signals from the spacecraft. These issues come up with any older NASA mission and are not unique to Voyager.
I agree that the data from Voyager about the termination shock are important - this was one of the reasons why funding to operate Voyager has continued as long as it has. However, there aren't really a whole lot of data from the termination shock, so a relatively small group of people are studying this data. This means a lower science return for the money spent, at least in terms of the numbers of papers published using new Voyager data. Some of the more recent unmanned spacecraft are also in danger of being cut, and there are still hundreds of scientists around the world working on data from these missions.
While it is true that Voyager is providing a unique data set, the data from this spacecraft are from older instruments that may not be running at their optimal capacity. We have missions with newer, far superior instruments studying other regions of our solar system right now. So which does NASA choose to keep operating - the older spacecraft with limited capabilities, or the newer missions with greater potential for science? When you look at it this way, it doesn't seem quite so bad to cut funding for Voyager, even though the recent discoveries from Voyager have been very newsworthy.
One of the other posts claimed that the termination shock is the only astrophysical shock we can study so we need to keep funding Voyager. It isn't entirely true that the termination shock between our heliosphere and the interstellar wind is the ONLY astrophysical shock we can study. A shock in a space plasma is a shock no matter where it is, and they all are pretty similar. The same physical processes happen in coronal mass ejections from the Sun, at the Earth's bow shock, at the bow shocks of Saturn and Jupiter, and near the heliosphere's termination shock. The main differences between these shocks are the magnetic field strengths and the scale sizes of the shocks. Other than that, the physics is pretty much the same. So NASA has to make a choice - spend the money to support research on all of these other things, or spend it to keep an aging spacecraft going to study just one region of space.
Don't get me wrong - I'm sad to see the Voyager mission winding down. It would be great to see more discoveries from beyond the boundaries of our solar system. Unfortunately, we can't keep Voyager going forever. We just have to leave some discoveries for future generations.
There has been controversy over Pluto's status as a planet for several years. Many scientists now believe that Pluto should be more properly classified as the largest
Kuiper Belt Object ever found. This is due to Pluto's size, its unusual composition, and odd orbit. Pluto's orbit is actually sort of like that of a Kuiper Belt object. Some comets do come from the Kuiper Belt, but I don't think people would actually classify Pluto as a comet because its orbit never takes it close enough to the Sun for Pluto to develop the classic comet tail.
I am a scientist working at a university and my salary comes entirely from research grants. Thanks to the Bush administration's bad attitude towards science, my funding will run out in a few months. I have written new grant proposals, applied for government research jobs and teaching jobs, but so far have had no luck at all. There are so many people out there right now who are in a similar situation, and many of them have even more experience than I do, so I really don't have a chance at competing with them.
The article commented about visa restrictions preventing talented people from coming to the U.S. to study or do research. I just don't see that at all. In my field, there are tons of foreign post-docs working in the U.S., and many them decide to stay here after their post-doctoral appointments are done. Ironically, I have been told by many people in my field that I should look for a job overseas, since I can't find one here. Instead of trying to cultivate the talent that is already here in the U.S., our government's policies and the hiring practices of many institutions are bringing in foreign scientists while American scientists are being told to look to other countries for employment. In principle, I'm not against bringing foreign talent to the U.S. to help with scientific research. I just don't think it makes sense to do this on a large scale when U.S. scientists are struggling to survive.
I've also heard the complaint from many industry leaders that they can't find Americans with the right technical and scientific skills to fill job openings, so they need to bring in foreign talent. I've started looking into industry jobs, and I'm beginning to realize that computerized resume searches may be partially to blame for the apparent lack of qualified applicants. Most of the job descriptions are so specialized that I don't think there would be anyone in the entire world who fit the job exactly and would have all the right keywords in their resume. It doesn't matter if corporations look for employees in the U.S. or in other countries if they aren't willing to invest in training their staff. The executives and upper level managers of most corporations probably don't have a lot of technical experience themselves, and yet they expect a prospective employee to show up at their first day of work and know everything there is to know about the corporation's products. This is unreasonable and impossible, given that this type of information is often proprietary and available only to people who already work at the company.
I think that there are plenty of talented scientists, engineers, and programmers in the U.S. but the policies of our government and the practices of large corporations make it nearly impossible for us to actually find work in our chosen fields. Until we fix these problems, the U.S. is going to get further and further behind the rest of the world.
I think refusing to acknowledge that religious extremists are influencing science funding and science education in the U.S. is just silly. I believe that it is possible to be a scientist AND a religious person, but the negative effects of ignorant, poorly-educated people who use religion as an excuse to discredit science are all around us. These people are still in the minority, but they are very vocal and growing in number. I wish that there were more people in the world who could find a balance between their faith and science like your father-in-law.
I do however, agree with you that scientists and engineers are not valued by society in general. I have a Ph.D. in physics, and there are probabably only about 10 other people in the world who have similar scientific expertise to mine. I think the same thing could be said about most people who have a Ph.D. in any particular scientific or engineering field. In spite of our rare and unique knowledge, a lot of scientists are paid rather poorly compared to university or government administrators who may only have a bachelor's degree. It's really scary to think that some of these people are making decisions about science funding and science education right now, when they don't really have the knowledge needed to do so.
Because scientists' knowledge is so rare and special, you would think we be valued by society, not scorned. Unfortunately, science often provides people with answers that they don't like or don't understand. People fear what they don't understand, and science and technology are just progessing to fast for most people to keep up.
James Doohan didn't save my life, but he did inspire me to pursue a career in science. I remember watching re-runs of Star Trek when I was a kid and wanting to be an engineer just like Scotty. When I went to college I planned to major in aerospace engineering, but ended up going into the space sciences instead. My eventual career path ended up being more like Spock's position on the Enterprise, but it would have been a lot different if it wasn't for Scotty. I was always interested in space exploration, but for some reason I never really thought about it as a career until my friends and family got me interested in Star Trek.
I wonder how many other people reading/. decided to go into technical fields because of Star Trek, or became engineers because of Scotty.
This might make a good topic for a poll.
The girl in the article is obviously very gifted and skilled with computers, in spite of coming from a poor country in which there are not many opportunties for women.
It just kills me to see posts doubting women's abilities on Slashdot. Likewise for posts that ask why more women don't go into computer science. The answer to that question is right here in front of us all.
If the girl in the article really is very skilled with computers, how do you all know that she doesn't read Slashdot herself? How do you know that she isn't reading all of the comments posted on Slashdot regarding the article about her right now?
If she were to read some of the negative, sexist, and racist comments posted here she probably would feel very hurt. She might possibly even be discouraged enough to give up her dreams of having a career in computer science.
Many of us who read Slashdot, both male and female, have had someone tell us that we couldn't do something that we really wanted to do for completely stupid and irrelevant reasons at some point in our lives. I'm sure every one of us here can remember a time when we have been told that we were too short, or too tall, or too nerdy, etc. by people who didn't appreciate our abilities or care about our dreams.
If you could look her in the eye and tell her that in spite of her knowledge and accomplishments she has no future in computer science because she is a girl, you are completely lacking in compassion. I think she deserves an apology from many of the people who have posted comments here today.
The article said: The new finding could upset existing theories that planets usually form out of gas and dust circling a single star, and could lead scientists to look in new places for planets.
Even though our current theories of planetary formation were designed primarily to explain our own solar system, there isn't any reason why the same general ideas don't apply elsewhere in the universe. The scientific theories of how our solar system formed usually begin with a rotating interplanetary cloud of gas and dust (a nebula) that contracts gravitationally.
Since our solar system only has one sun, the theory says that a single proto-sun condenses at the center of the nebula. The energy for the proto-sun initially comes from the conversion of gravitational energy into heat as it contracts - a process called Kelvin-Helmholtz contraction. Eventually the proto-sun becomes hot enough for nuclear fusion to occur and it becomes a star.
Terrestrial planets form from the nebular material when tiny bits of dust collide and stick together to make a bigger clump of dust. The clumps start sticking together to make bigger, and bigger clumps. Through collisions and accretion of material due to gravity, planet-sized objects can eventually be formed.
There are different theories about how the Jovian planets (Jupiter, Saturn, etc.) formed. They may have formed when a slightly more dense region in the nebula began to contract gravitationally, in much the same way the proto-star formed. However, in the case of Jupiter, the planet never reached a large enough size for nuclear reactions to occur in its core. This is probably because there just wasn't enough material at that location in the nebula to be pulled into Jupiter. Jupiter's Galilean moons probably formed from dust and gas orbiting around Jupiter during its formation, much like a miniature solar system. Jupiter's moons Ganymede and Callisto are almost as big as the planet Mercury.
If the composition of the nebula from which our solar system formed was just a little bit different, Jupiter could have become another star, rather than just a really, really big gaseous planet. This star would have formed a binary system with the sun, and would have had its own planets orbiting around it.
The discovery of some of these extra-solar planets doesn't necessarily bring the theories of how our solar system formed into doubt, but it does mean that sometimes we need to consider other possibilities. Some of the extra-solar planets discovered are in orbits close to their stars that are more consistent with a terrestrial planet than a gas giant. This is a big puzzle to scientists. One theory suggests that maybe these giant planets formed further away from the star and gradually spiraled inwards as they lost energy through collisions with gas and dust in the nebula.
The article wasn't necessarily wrong about this discovery's affect on our theories, but it didn't exactly tell the whole story either.
If you want your daughter to stay interested in computers, then you need to find computer-based activities she enjoys and actually encourage her to participate in them.
When I was in graduate school, I did a paper for a seminar on women in science about the reasons why girls just do not seem as interested in computers as boys do. The answers were kind of surprising.
After reading a lot of literature on the topic in various education journals, I found that one of the reasons was the most of the computer games were first-person shooter or other action games aimed at boys. Girls generally preferred role-playing games in which the characters and the relationships between the characters were important - for example, games like the Sims. Having female lead characters was also a big factor in whether or not girls were interested in playing a video game. Most first-person shooter games have male characters, so of course a young girl is not going to be interested, since she can't identify with the main character of the game. Lara Croft in Tomb Raider is a character that some young girls might identify with, but then again, Lara Croft has an unrealistic "Barbie Doll" physique that might scare away some girls.
One of the other interesting differences between boys' and girls' computer usage was that girls often viewed the computer as just a tool, where many boys only wanted to play video games. A lot of girls don't like computer games at all, and would rather use the computer to send messages to friends, make stickers and greeting cards, keep a diary or blog, and other such activities. It's kind of ironic that girls often view computers in more practical terms than boys, but girls still don't choose to pursue careers in computers and science.
I also interviewed the person in charge of youth programs at a local museum for my paper. She told me that to increase the enrollment of girls in their computer classes for kids, they started having "girl-friendly" classes on things like making greeting cards, graphics design, keeping an online diary and making a web site. They had a hard time filling these classes. They discovered that most parents did not generally think their daughters would like a computer class because they thought it would be too hard for them. They also noticed that teachers were not referring bright female students to the programs offered by the musuem - teachers generally referred only boys, because they also thought girls would think a computer class was too hard or too boring.
The kinds of computer activities available and the attitudes of parents and teachers have an awful lot of influence on young girls' interest in computers. So if you want your daughter to stay interested in computers, find computer related activities that she likes and that you can do together. Maybe your daughter would like being in charge of the family web site. You could start her out using templates in software like Dreamweaver, and then encourage her to start creating her own designs and writing her own HTML code. Maybe she'd like doing animations in Flash. Or maybe she'd rather use design software to re-arrange the furniture. If you really try, you can probably find a way to keep her interested in computers.
The sources of realtime data mentioned in the post by Hoi Polloi are great - if you understand space weather and how to correctly interpret these data. I would guess that the average Slashdot reader does not.
spaceweather.com and
the main NOAA Space Environment Center are slightly better sources for a layperson. The Education and Outreach section of the Space Environment Center gives a good overview explaining what the geomagnetic indices actually mean.
I'm always excited when we can see the aurora in the continental U.S., but I'm not quite sure I understand all the buzz about this geomagnetic storm. As far as I can tell, according to NOAA, this was only a G2 storm. This is a relatively minor event! It is near solar minimum, so geomagnetic storms of any magnitude are not very common right now and this was a special event in that sense. However, I don't remember seeing anything on Slashdot last November when similar levels of geomagnetic activity occurred. I have to admit I am a little perplexed by all of the sudden interest.
Unfortunately all this sudden interest in space weather is a bit too late - NASA is probably going to cut funding for a lot of the programs that fund scientists who study the Earth's magnetosphere and space weather.
I totally agree with parker9! Einstein's contributions to science were important, but people seem to think that he did his work completely alone and without building upon the work done by other noteworthy scientists. If you believe what you see in the popular media (I consider anything on PBS to be part of the popular media), Einstein invented ALL of physics. This is totally untrue!
Most physicists, and anyone who has taken a college course in the history of science, realize that Einstein was not the only great physicist of the 19th and 20th century. What about Fermi, Bohr, Gamov, Bethe, Heisenberg, Meitner and Schroedinger to name a few? All of these people had a hand in developing quantum mechanics, which was just as revolutionary as Einstein's theory of relativity.
It was Otto Hahn who received the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering nuclear fission of heavy nuclei, not Albert Einstein. However, if you ask any person on the street, they would probably attribute this discovery to Einstein (assuming they know what nuclear fission is!) as well as the development of quantum mechanics.
I doubt that Einstein would appreciate being called "the opera singer super model brain surgeon sports star." The things I have read about Einstein suggest that while he was very opinionated (what scientist isn't) he was also quite humble and gave credit to other scientists where credit was due. Einstein just happened to come along at the right time, when the groundwork for scientific revolution in many areas of physics had been gradually laid out throughout the 19th century. Einstein's greatest contributions were not his original ideas, but the novel way he was able to put together the work of those who came before him.
The nature of science has changed considerably since Einstein did his theoretical work. There still are a few theorists who work mostly on their own, sitting at a desk with a piece of paper and a pencil, thinking deep thoughts. There are also still a few experimental physicists (mainly condensed matter) who do meaningful laboratory work in small collaborations with only a few people. However, most scientists today cannot do their work without massive computing power or huge experiments that involve collaborating with large groups of other scientists. Take a look at the how the lengths of physics Ph.D. theses have changed over the last 50 years. In our library, many of the Ph.D. theses from the 60s and 70s are less than 100 pages long. My Ph.D. thesis was a whopping 200 pages, and many other recent theses are of similar length.
I don't think there will ever be another scientist like Einstein (or Newton or Galileo for that matter) who can single-handedly change the way we think about the universe with his or her research. The problems scientists are studying today are so big that one person cannot possibly hope to solve them all alone. Expecting every scientist to be an "Einstein" is extremely insulting, since there are so many people who are brilliant in their own way.
I don't want to be an "Einstein" anyway - he had bad hair and no fashion sense! His personal life was pretty messed up too.
it's not that physicists hate Einstein, it's more they hate how people view Einstein. it's mostly because Einstein became the poster-boy for the media about modern physics. as we know, the media tends to simplify things and so it suggests that Einstein did relativity, photoelectric effect, etc. by himself.
I once participated in a seminar on "Women in Science" where we talked about the "Marie Curie Effect" as a reason why more women do not pursue careers in science. Because Marie Curie was such an outstanding scientist in a time when there were only a handful of women scientists around the world, people started expecting any woman who tried to pursue a career in science to make earth-shattering discoveries like Marie Curie did. Rather than improving the situation for women scientists, Marie Curie's success actually made it worse.
Most scientists, whether they are male or female, will never make the kinds of discoveries that are worthy of a Nobel prize or a lot of media attention. Most of us just plug away each day, making small advances that might eventually contribute to the next great paradigm shift (or not!). When a physicist says they hate Einstein or Curie, or when an astronomer says they hate Sagan, the real reason could be that they dislike the way the rest of the world sees these scientists. No real scientist can live up to the fantasy images of these people presented by the
mass media and popular culture. It's kind of like the way real women don't look like the supermodels in Sports Illustrated, and most men aren't like the muscular athletes who get paid millions of dollars to advertise shoes.
When I was in college, a couple of guys we'd just met decided to sit with me and my friends at lunch in the dorm cafeteria. The two guys were taking "Physics for Poets" and tried to impress us girls by showing how smart they were. They started talking about Einstein's theory of relativity, which had been the topic of that day's lecture. The conversation went something like this -
Cool Dude #1: Man, that Einstein's theory of relativity is pretty intense.
Cool Dude #2: Yeah, the part about the moving clocks running slow is a real mindblower.
Cool Dude #1: I wonder if Einstein ever bothered to work out a mathematical formula for it.
(I almost blew milk out my nose at that one!)
Cool Dude #2: Yeah, anyone who figures out the math behind that would win a Nobel Prize for sure!
(At this point in the discussion, my friends were watching me closely for signs that my head was about to explode, since they all knew I was a physics major.)
Me: Well, there have been equations describing relativistic effects on mass and energy around for years.
Cool Dude #1: Really? I'll bet that the equations are extremely nasty.
Me: Well, the special theory of relativity isn't too difficult. The mathematics behind the general theory of relativity is a bit more complicated.
Cool Dude #2: Wow, have you taken physics?
My friends: Arrgggghhhh!
(I was on the floor completely incapacitated with laughter.)
Just FYI, Einstein wasn't awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on the theory of relativity. Einstein received the award "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect." I think that a lot of people believe he won the Nobel Prize for the work on relativity, since that is the idea that gets the most attention in popular science literature.
As for the "well-respected" scientist who published a paper I thought was total garbage mentioned in my earlier post, I am afraid to say who it was in a public forum. It wouldn't be that difficult for someone reading my posts on Slashdot to figure out who I am, and giving such a strong opinion of this person publically could ruin my career. I think the paper was garbage because it was not based on data analysis or simulations of any kind. The paper did cite many older papers, but it was not intended to be a review, as the well-respected scientist basically re-interpreted all of the earlier papers into a really bizarre framework that had no bearing on reality or the currently accepted paradigms. If I or another junior scientist had submitted this paper, it would have been rejected immediately because the theory had no support and the paper was not very well written. Because the scientist was alredy well-established when the paper was written, it appears that it was accepted by the journal editor mainly based upon the scientist's reputation. I have not seen this person publish anything else similar, and he continues to be highly regarded within the space sciences community.
When I read papers, I often will look up some of the papers cited. I have a whole file cabinet full of papers I have looked up as well as a big disk full of pdf files. I have discovered so many papers that incorrectly summarize the results of the papers they cite that I have lost count. I even reviewed a paper once that incorrectly cited one of my own papers. It sure feels horrible when the only person who bothers to cite your paper misrepresents it and may not have actually read it. Some papers that are commonly cited in the space science journals are in obscure journals or conference proceedings that are extremely difficult or even impossible to obtain. I have been told many times by senior scientists in my field that everybody thinks people should reference some of these "classic" papers, but that no one really goes back and reads all of them.
I have had my Ph.D. for about 5 years and I am still stuck working as a post-doc due to the politics of the space sciences, in spite of having published several long papers and giving dozens of presentations at scientific meetings. I get asked to review journal articles/proposals every couple of months, so people know I am here. On the surface it might seem like I am becoming established in my career, and I am earning the respect of the scientific community. However, if you dig a little deeper, you will see otherwise. Even though the reviewers of my papers generally have had good things to say about my work, my papers have not been cited much at all. There are so many papers published in the space sciences, it is difficult for a younger scientist to be noticed among all of the famous names.
It sounds like you are having a much more positive experience as a graduate student in your field than I did in the space sciences. There recently was a big report on ethics in Physics Today, I think in either the October or November 2004 issue. I have either witnessed a lot of the types unethical behavior described in this article myself, or know other scientists who have been victims of it. It sounds like you work in a pretty good group now, but you may not be so lucky later on in your career. I suggest taking a look at the Physics Today article on ethics to prepare yourself for the vast scientific battlefield that lies ahead.
One such method to determine relative 'goodness' of an author, or a paper, is to see how many times it is cited by another paper. In fact, one of my former professors at U. Penn was one of the motivators for this method because she experienced alot of discrimination trying to get a faculty job. (In the old days, and even today to a smaller extent, female PhD physicists are underrepresented). She had to use these citation numbers to prove her work was as influential as some of the top men in the field.
I am a female physicist and I think using the number of times a paper was cited as the sole
test of how good the work was is a dangerous
idea. In the space sciences, there are so many papers published every year, in many different journals, that it is impossible for anyone to read them all. What happens is that a lot of scientists will only read papers by established, experienced scientists that have built a strong reputation over many years. This means that the papers cited most often tend to be written by older men, and papers written by younger scientists and women tend to be cited far less often.
I find this quite disturbing, since when I recently did a journal article search for papers on a particular topic, I found an article published by a well-respected scientist in a reputable, peer-reviewed journal that was total garbage. In spite of the fact that the paper was just terrible, it had been cited many times. I know a lot of people who will cite a paper in their own work that was cited in a paper they recently read without bothering to check the original paper first.
I wonder how many people have actually read some of these papers that have been cited more than 100 times. Probably less than 50% of the people who cite a particular paper have actually bothered to look up the paper and read it carefully.
You are forgetting about something called "export control." When I was a post-doc at NASA we all had to fill out an "export control" form to obtain permission to travel to meetings outside of the country. They were afraid that we would give away NASA's secrets or something, even though our work was already published in the scientific literature for all the world to see.
I'm sure that if NASA goes to the X-Prize approach and the runners-up start selling their technology to other countries, somebody in Congress is going to complain that these companies are helping nations that are in direct competition with our space program. Pretty soon there will be strict legislation about where US-based companies can sell technology to prevent the exportation of "sensitive" information.
I also don't think that this type of thing could be applied across the board to all NASA contracts. A lot of NASA contracts are not awards for building big projects like a satellite or space shuttle. Some contracts are just to contribute one component to a satellite, and I think it is relatively easy for a small business or a laboratory at a university to compete for this kind of contract. The current system actually helps small businesses and businesses owned by minorities because of this. Many of the big NASA contracts also go to companies who provide personnel to NASA for a useful service, such as computer support or scientific data analysis. The X-Prize approach would not work for these types of contracts - it would be like not paying a scientist or programmer unless they make a Nobel Prize winning discovery or invent some awesome new algorithm or develop a new software package. Most scientists never make a Nobel-worthy discovery in their entire lifetime. If NASA starts taking the X-Prize approach to big projects like developing a new launch vehicle, its only a matter of time before it starts filtering throught to other aspects of the work done by NASA.
I'm sure that a lot of people on/. would say that they love computers and programming so much that they would do it for free. Yeah, right. I enjoy programming and analyzing scientific data, but I'm sure not doing it for free. Being a scientist is a full time job, and you don't become internationally recognized by only doing research in your free time. I still have to pay my mortage and I like eating a couple times a day. If NASA comes to this, I'm going quit being a scientist and get a job selling life insurance.
I acknowledge that the current system sometimes favors companies located in Congressional districts or states that have Representatives or Senators with a lot of power and seniority. However, peer review of proposals by scientists and engineers can help to counteract this kind of bias. The biggest problem facing NASA right now is that many of the politicians and administrators who have the power to make the final decisions on our government's budget and awarding NASA contracts are ignorant about what is technologically feasible and scientifically possible. If scientists and engineers had more power, we would all be a lot better off!
Every time I hear one of these stories about companies having a hard time filling tech jobs, I can't help thinking that part of the problem is the way companies screen applicants. I can remember a time not too long ago, when the problem was that the human resources people who were in charge of hiring often did not understand enough technical jargon to find applicants who might be able to do the job, but whose qualifications did not exactly match the description given to them. Now the same thing is still happening, only your resume or application is never read by an actual person - just screened for keywords and phrases by a computer program that understands the skills needed even less than the human resources people did. A friend of mine recently tried to hire a programmer, and their automatic applicant screening program decided she needed someone who was qualified to maintain underground storage tanks or something equally absurd and inappropriate. No wonder people have a hard time hiring qualified people, and techies can't find jobs.
Sorry, but I thought the whole point of the article is that when journalists attempt to bring balance to scientific stories by showing an opposing point of view, they can introduce a lot of misconceptions to the public, even though the journalists' intentions were good.
Suppose Scientist A goes on TV and says there is overwhelming evidence that if you jump off a 20 story building gravity will cause you to fall to the ground and die. Suppose Scientist B thinks that this gravity thing is all a sham and it's ok to go jump off of 20 story buildings without any kind of safety equipment to break your fall, even though he has little evidence to support this claim. Scientist B is not about to go try this himself, but he maintains that he still has a right to believe whatever he wants and tell other people about his ideas.
According to your fairness doctrine, a responsible journalist who wants to present a balanced view would give Scientist B the airtime to present his incorrect (and dangerous) point of view.
I agree that fairness is definitely important for political journalism, but this isn't necessarily the case for science journalism. Sometimes the opposing point of view is just plain wrong. Read the post from DollyTheSheep just above yours. Of course there needs to be a forum for people with ideas outside of current scientific paradigms to present their work. Unfortunately, journalists and the general public do not usually have the knowledge to separate a promising new idea from potentially dangerous pseudo-science.
The problem is not just that there is an enormous gulf between the knowledge of lay people and
scientists. Human nature is also part of the problem.
I have a Ph.D. in physics, but I don't consider myself to be a god-like, super-genius who knows all there is to know about everything. However, every time I meet someone for the first time and they discover what I do, the typical reaction is that I am all-knowing and all-seeing. They then proceed to ask me about anything and everything, from Steven Hawking's theories about time and whether or not cell phones cause cancer. Most of the things non-scientists ask me about are things that are so far outside my area of expertise that
I know just as little as they do about the topic.
People are in awe of scientists because they have terrible misconceptions about what kind of people choose careers in science and what scientists actually do at work all day. They also tend to think that we get paid way more than we do!
The awe that people have for scientists can lead journalists to consult scientists who know absolutely nothing about the topic of their story. Journalists are not immune to the "someone who has a Ph.D. in physics must know everything" syndrome. I remember seeing a story on TV
when Cassini was launched in which the journalist consulted an "expert" on the issue of whether
the radioactive material Cassini used as a power source posed a significant danger if something
went wrong during the launch. The "expert" was
a scientist, however he was a string theorist.
If the journalist had even a little knowledge of the issues involved, they would have consulted
an aeronautical engineer AND a nuclear physicist
AND a medical doctor AND a meteorologist to help
assess the risk. String theory has nothing to
do with any of these things!
Everyone, even some scientists, tend to react emotionally when they hear certain words and phrases. Some examples: "radiation," "cancer", "anthrax," and "giant asteroid passing within 10,000 miles of Earth." Journalists and politicians know this well, and use it to their advantage every chance they can get. Unscrupulous
scientists also know how people react to these things and do not feel guilty about using the public's fear and lack of understanding to promote themselves. The scientist I saw on TV for the Cassini story should have
admitted to the journalist that he was not an expert on spacecraft design.
Until the public at large learns more about science and how to determine if someone is really
an expert, politicians and journalists will always be able to manipulate science to their advantage. Scientists can help by trying to educate people, but they also have to be willing
to admit when they don't know something.
I really liked the episode of Enterprise with the freighters too. It kind of reminded me of a book I read by C. J. Cherryh a while back, but I can't remember the title.
There have been some good episodes of Enterprise, but a lot of them have been disappointing. I think that what the producers of Star Trek really need to do is hire people like C. J. Cherryh, Lois McMaster Bujold, Orson Scott Card, David Brin, etc. to write episodes for Enterprise. I'd definitely watch if they did this, and I'm sure a lot of other people would too. Most of the people who watch Star Trek also read science fiction novels, so bringing in a few major authors as writers for the show could be a big draw for viewers. Personally, I think this would work a lot better to attract viewers than female Vulcans in heat or sexy Borg. Not all Star Trek fans are male. Better writing would encourage a much broader audience to watch the show.
I agree! I've read some of the Star Trek books, and I think that Peter David creates interesting characters and excellent plots. He also has a sense of humor, which is something I think has been lacking in Star Trek lately. Enterprise would be a lot better if Peter David was in charge!
Maybe Star Trek would be good again if they could get some of the best science fiction writers to write a few episodes. I think that too many of the people currently involved with Star Trek have only ever written stories in the Star Trek universe. It would be a lot better if writers who had experience creating their own universes were to take over. For example, Peter David has also written some amusing fantasy novels. He knows the Star Trek universe, but he is more than capable of coming up with his own ideas.
If a teenage girl who was interested in majoring in computer science were to read the comments posted in response to this story, she would be completely scared away from this field.
Nearly every message board on/. is full of masturbation jokes, sexist or stereotypical remarks about women, and other miscellaneous juvenile comments. Women who post comments on/. are often ridiculed. And you people wonder why more women do not pursue degrees in computer science, or science and engineering in general.
The answer is right here on the screen in front of you.
We all believe in stereotypes, whether we realize that we do or not. For example, when I read some of the posts on this message board, I found myself making judgements about the people who posted them. Some examples - pimply-faced teenage boys who can't get a date and spend all day long playing video games; frustrated men who have lost their tech jobs due to out-sourcing; or
incompetent white men with outdated skills who lost a promotion to a more qualified woman and are looking to blame someone else for their failure.
Most/. readers would resent being placed into these stereotypical nerd categories, even if there is an element of truth to them. Stop trying to do the same thing to women who are interested in computer science. We do exist and
we read/. often. I am a woman, I write code and I LIKE it. I've considered changing careers, not because I don't enjoy the work, but because I am sick to death of putting up with misogynistic garbage like most of the postings on this page.
Slashdot Mirror
I was not involved in the decision to cancel funding for Voyager, but I have had some involvement in the process that NASA uses to review missions and decide which spacecraft operations to keep funding. I'm relatively low on the totem pole, so don't blame me if you don't like the funding decisions NASA makes. I don't always like them either!
I suspect that some of the issues considered were the numbers of new publications from Voyager data compared to the more recent missions, the status of Voyager's instruments, and the ability of our ground stations to pick up signals from the spacecraft. These issues come up with any older NASA mission and are not unique to Voyager.
I agree that the data from Voyager about the termination shock are important - this was one of the reasons why funding to operate Voyager has continued as long as it has. However, there aren't really a whole lot of data from the termination shock, so a relatively small group of people are studying this data. This means a lower science return for the money spent, at least in terms of the numbers of papers published using new Voyager data. Some of the more recent unmanned spacecraft are also in danger of being cut, and there are still hundreds of scientists around the world working on data from these missions.
While it is true that Voyager is providing a unique data set, the data from this spacecraft are from older instruments that may not be running at their optimal capacity. We have missions with newer, far superior instruments studying other regions of our solar system right now. So which does NASA choose to keep operating - the older spacecraft with limited capabilities, or the newer missions with greater potential for science? When you look at it this way, it doesn't seem quite so bad to cut funding for Voyager, even though the recent discoveries from Voyager have been very newsworthy.
One of the other posts claimed that the termination shock is the only astrophysical shock we can study so we need to keep funding Voyager. It isn't entirely true that the termination shock between our heliosphere and the interstellar wind is the ONLY astrophysical shock we can study. A shock in a space plasma is a shock no matter where it is, and they all are pretty similar. The same physical processes happen in coronal mass ejections from the Sun, at the Earth's bow shock, at the bow shocks of Saturn and Jupiter, and near the heliosphere's termination shock. The main differences between these shocks are the magnetic field strengths and the scale sizes of the shocks. Other than that, the physics is pretty much the same. So NASA has to make a choice - spend the money to support research on all of these other things, or spend it to keep an aging spacecraft going to study just one region of space.
Don't get me wrong - I'm sad to see the Voyager mission winding down. It
would be great to see more discoveries from beyond the boundaries of our solar system. Unfortunately, we can't keep Voyager going forever. We just have to leave some discoveries for future generations.
There has been controversy over Pluto's status as a planet for several years. Many scientists now believe that Pluto should be more properly classified as the largest Kuiper Belt Object ever found. This is due to Pluto's size, its unusual composition, and odd orbit. Pluto's orbit is actually sort of like that of a Kuiper Belt object. Some comets do come from the Kuiper Belt, but I don't think people would actually classify Pluto as a comet because its orbit never takes it close enough to the Sun for Pluto to develop the classic comet tail.
I am a scientist working at a university and my salary comes entirely from research grants. Thanks to the Bush administration's bad attitude towards science, my funding will run out in a few months. I have written new grant proposals, applied for government research jobs and teaching jobs, but so far have had no luck at all. There are so many people out there right now who are in a similar situation, and many of them have even more experience than I do, so I really don't have a chance at competing with them.
The article commented about visa restrictions preventing talented people from coming to the U.S. to study or do research. I just don't see that at all. In my field, there are tons of foreign post-docs working in the U.S., and many them decide to stay here after their post-doctoral appointments are done. Ironically, I have been told by many people in my field that I should look for a job overseas, since I can't find one here. Instead of trying to cultivate the talent that is already here in the U.S., our government's policies and the hiring practices of many institutions are bringing in foreign scientists while American scientists are being told to look to other countries for employment. In principle, I'm not against bringing foreign talent to the U.S. to help with scientific research. I just don't think it makes sense to do this on a large scale when U.S. scientists are struggling to survive.
I've also heard the complaint from many industry leaders that they can't find Americans with the right technical and scientific skills to fill job openings, so they need to bring in foreign talent. I've started looking into industry jobs, and I'm beginning to realize that computerized resume searches may be partially to blame for the apparent lack of qualified applicants. Most of the job descriptions are so specialized that I don't think there would be anyone in the entire world who fit the job exactly and would have all the right keywords in their resume. It doesn't matter if corporations look for employees in the U.S. or in other countries if they aren't willing to invest in training their staff. The executives and upper level managers of most corporations probably don't have a lot of technical experience themselves, and yet they expect a prospective employee to show up at their first day of work and know everything there is to know about the corporation's products. This is unreasonable and impossible, given that this type of information is often proprietary and available only to people who already work at the company.
I think that there are plenty of talented scientists, engineers, and programmers in the U.S. but the policies of our government and the practices of large corporations make it nearly impossible for us to actually find work in our chosen fields. Until we fix these problems, the U.S. is going to get further and further behind the rest of the world.
I think refusing to acknowledge that religious extremists are influencing science funding and science education in the U.S. is just silly. I believe that it is possible to be a scientist AND a religious person, but the negative effects of ignorant, poorly-educated people who use religion as an excuse to discredit science are all around us. These people are still in the minority, but they are very vocal and growing in number. I wish that there were more people in the world who could find a balance between their faith and science like your father-in-law.
I do however, agree with you that scientists and engineers are not valued by society in general. I have a Ph.D. in physics, and there are probabably only about 10 other people in the world who have similar scientific expertise to mine. I think the same thing could be said about most people who have a Ph.D. in any particular scientific or engineering field. In spite of our rare and unique knowledge, a lot of scientists are paid rather poorly compared to university or government administrators who may only have a bachelor's degree. It's really scary to think that some of these people are making decisions about science funding and science education right now, when they don't really have the knowledge needed to do so.
Because scientists' knowledge is so rare and special, you would think we be valued by society, not scorned. Unfortunately, science often provides people with answers that they don't like or don't understand. People fear what they don't understand, and science and technology are just progessing to fast for most people to keep up.
James Doohan didn't save my life, but he did inspire me to pursue a career in science. I remember watching re-runs of Star Trek when I was a kid and wanting to be an engineer just like Scotty. When I went to college I planned to major in aerospace engineering, but ended up going into the space sciences instead. My eventual career path ended up being more like Spock's position on the Enterprise, but it would have been a lot different if it wasn't for Scotty. I was always interested in space exploration, but for some reason I never really thought about it as a career until my friends and family got me interested in Star Trek. I wonder how many other people reading /. decided to go into technical fields because of Star Trek, or became engineers because of Scotty.
This might make a good topic for a poll.
I recall reading someplace that Nichelle Nichols helped recruit women and minorities to work for NASA many years ago.
The girl in the article is obviously very gifted and skilled with computers, in spite of coming from a poor country in which there are not many opportunties for women.
It just kills me to see posts doubting women's abilities on Slashdot. Likewise for posts that ask why more women don't go into computer science.
The answer to that question is right here in front of us all.
If the girl in the article really is very skilled with computers, how do you all know that she doesn't read Slashdot herself? How do you know that she isn't reading all of the comments posted on Slashdot regarding the article about her right now?
If she were to read some of the negative, sexist, and racist comments posted here she probably would feel very hurt. She might possibly even be discouraged enough to give up her dreams of having a career in computer science.
Many of us who read Slashdot, both male and female, have had someone tell us that we couldn't do something that we really wanted to do for completely stupid and irrelevant reasons at some point in our lives. I'm sure every one of us here can remember a time when we have been told that we were too short, or too tall, or too nerdy, etc. by people who didn't appreciate our abilities or care about our dreams.
If you could look her in the eye and tell her that in spite of her knowledge and accomplishments she has no future in computer science because she is a girl, you are completely lacking in compassion. I think she deserves an apology from many of the people who have posted comments here today.
The article said:
The new finding could upset existing theories that planets usually form out of gas and dust circling a single star, and could lead scientists to look in new places for planets.
Even though our current theories of planetary formation were designed primarily to explain our own solar system, there isn't any reason why the same general ideas don't apply elsewhere in the universe. The scientific theories of how our solar system formed usually begin with a rotating interplanetary cloud of gas and dust (a nebula) that contracts gravitationally.
Since our solar system only has one sun, the theory says that a single proto-sun condenses at the center of the nebula. The energy for the proto-sun initially comes from the conversion of gravitational energy into heat as it contracts - a process called Kelvin-Helmholtz contraction. Eventually the proto-sun becomes hot enough for nuclear fusion to occur and it becomes a star.
Terrestrial planets form from the nebular material when tiny bits of dust collide and stick together to make a bigger clump of dust. The clumps start sticking together to make bigger, and bigger clumps. Through collisions and accretion of material due to gravity, planet-sized objects can eventually be formed. There are different theories about how the Jovian planets (Jupiter, Saturn, etc.) formed. They may have formed when a slightly more dense region in the nebula began to contract gravitationally, in much the same way the proto-star formed. However, in the case of Jupiter, the planet never reached a large enough size for nuclear reactions to occur in its core. This is probably because there just wasn't enough material at that location in the nebula to be pulled into Jupiter. Jupiter's Galilean moons probably formed from dust and gas orbiting around Jupiter during its formation, much like a miniature solar system. Jupiter's moons Ganymede and Callisto are almost as big as the planet Mercury.If the composition of the nebula from which our solar system formed was just a little bit different, Jupiter could have become another star, rather than just a really, really big gaseous planet. This star would have formed a binary system with the sun, and would have had its own planets orbiting around it.
The discovery of some of these extra-solar planets doesn't necessarily bring the theories of how our solar system formed into doubt, but it does mean that sometimes we need to consider other possibilities. Some of the extra-solar planets discovered are in orbits close to their stars that are more consistent with a terrestrial planet than a gas giant. This is a big puzzle to scientists. One theory suggests that maybe these giant planets formed further away from the star and gradually spiraled inwards as they lost energy through collisions with gas and dust in the nebula.
The article wasn't necessarily wrong about this discovery's affect on our theories, but it didn't exactly tell the whole story either.
If you want your daughter to stay interested in computers, then you need to find computer-based activities she enjoys and actually encourage her to participate in them.
When I was in graduate school, I did a paper for a seminar on women in science about the reasons why girls just do not seem as interested in computers as boys do. The answers were kind of surprising.
After reading a lot of literature on the topic in various education journals, I found that one of the reasons was the most of the computer games were first-person shooter or other action games aimed at boys. Girls generally preferred role-playing games in which the characters and the relationships between the characters were important - for example, games like the Sims.
Having female lead characters was also a big factor in whether or not girls were interested in playing a video game. Most first-person shooter games have male characters, so of course a young girl is not going to be interested, since she can't identify with the main character of the game. Lara Croft in Tomb Raider is a character that some young girls might identify with, but then again, Lara Croft has an unrealistic "Barbie Doll" physique that might scare away some girls.
One of the other interesting differences between boys' and girls' computer usage was that girls often viewed the computer as just a tool, where many boys only wanted to play video games. A lot of girls don't like computer games at all, and would rather use the computer to send messages to friends, make stickers and greeting cards, keep a diary or blog, and other such activities. It's kind of ironic that girls often view computers in more practical terms than boys, but girls still don't choose to pursue careers in computers and science.
I also interviewed the person in charge of youth programs at a local museum for my paper. She told me that to increase the enrollment of girls in their computer classes for kids, they started having "girl-friendly" classes on things like making greeting cards, graphics design, keeping an online diary and making a web site. They had a hard time filling these classes. They discovered that most parents did not generally think their daughters would like a computer class because they thought it would be too hard for them. They also noticed that teachers were not referring bright female students to the programs offered by the musuem - teachers generally referred only boys, because they also thought girls would think a computer class was too hard or too boring.
The kinds of computer activities available and the attitudes of parents and teachers have an awful lot of influence on young girls' interest in computers. So if you want your daughter to stay interested in computers, find computer related activities that she likes and that you can do together. Maybe your daughter would like being in charge of the family web site. You could start her out using templates in software like Dreamweaver, and then encourage her to start creating her own designs and writing her own HTML code. Maybe she'd like doing animations in Flash. Or maybe she'd rather use design software to re-arrange the furniture. If you really try, you can probably find a way to keep her interested in computers.
The sources of realtime data mentioned in the post by Hoi Polloi are great - if you understand space weather and how to correctly interpret these data. I would guess that the average Slashdot reader does not. spaceweather.com and the main NOAA Space Environment Center are slightly better sources for a layperson. The Education and Outreach section of the Space Environment Center gives a good overview explaining what the geomagnetic indices actually mean. I'm always excited when we can see the aurora in the continental U.S., but I'm not quite sure I understand all the buzz about this geomagnetic storm. As far as I can tell, according to NOAA, this was only a G2 storm. This is a relatively minor event! It is near solar minimum, so geomagnetic storms of any magnitude are not very common right now and this was a special event in that sense. However, I don't remember seeing anything on Slashdot last November when similar levels of geomagnetic activity occurred. I have to admit I am a little perplexed by all of the sudden interest. Unfortunately all this sudden interest in space weather is a bit too late - NASA is probably going to cut funding for a lot of the programs that fund scientists who study the Earth's magnetosphere and space weather.
I totally agree with parker9! Einstein's contributions to science were important, but people seem to think that he did his work completely alone and without building upon the work done by other noteworthy scientists. If you believe what you see in the popular media (I consider anything on PBS to be part of the popular media), Einstein invented ALL of physics. This is totally untrue!
Most physicists, and anyone who has taken a college course in the history of science, realize that Einstein was not the only great physicist of the 19th and 20th century. What about Fermi, Bohr, Gamov, Bethe, Heisenberg, Meitner and Schroedinger to name a few? All of these people had a hand in developing quantum mechanics, which was just as revolutionary as Einstein's theory of relativity.
It was Otto Hahn who received the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering nuclear fission of heavy nuclei, not Albert Einstein. However, if you ask any person on the street, they would probably attribute this discovery to Einstein (assuming they know what nuclear fission is!) as well as the development of quantum mechanics.
I doubt that Einstein would appreciate being called "the opera singer super model brain surgeon sports star." The things I have read about Einstein suggest that while he was very opinionated (what scientist isn't) he was also quite humble and gave credit to other scientists where credit was due. Einstein just happened to come along at the right time, when the groundwork for scientific revolution in many areas of physics had been gradually laid out throughout the 19th century. Einstein's greatest contributions were not his original ideas, but the novel way he was able to put together the work of those who came before him.
The nature of science has changed considerably since Einstein did his theoretical work. There still are a few theorists who work mostly on their own, sitting at a desk with a piece of paper and a pencil, thinking deep thoughts. There are also still a few experimental physicists (mainly condensed matter) who do meaningful laboratory work in small collaborations with only a few people. However, most scientists today cannot do their work without massive computing power or huge experiments that involve collaborating with large groups of other scientists. Take a look at the how the lengths of physics Ph.D. theses have changed over the last 50 years. In our library, many of the Ph.D. theses from the 60s and 70s are less than 100 pages long. My Ph.D. thesis was a whopping 200 pages, and many other recent theses are of similar length.
I don't think there will ever be another scientist like Einstein (or Newton or Galileo for that matter) who can single-handedly change the way we think about the universe with his or her research. The problems scientists are studying today are so big that one person cannot possibly hope to solve them all alone. Expecting every scientist to be an "Einstein" is extremely insulting, since there are so many people who are brilliant in their own way.
I don't want to be an "Einstein" anyway - he had bad hair and no fashion sense! His personal life was pretty messed up too.
it's not that physicists hate Einstein, it's more they hate how people view Einstein. it's mostly because Einstein became the poster-boy for the media about modern physics. as we know, the media tends to simplify things and so it suggests that Einstein did relativity, photoelectric effect, etc. by himself.
I once participated in a seminar on "Women in Science" where we talked about the "Marie Curie Effect" as a reason why more women do not pursue careers in science. Because Marie Curie was such an outstanding scientist in a time when there were only a handful of women scientists around the world, people started expecting any woman who tried to pursue a career in science to make earth-shattering discoveries like Marie Curie did. Rather than improving the situation for women scientists, Marie Curie's success actually made it worse.
Most scientists, whether they are male or female, will never make the kinds of discoveries that are worthy of a Nobel prize or a lot of media attention. Most of us just plug away each day, making small advances that might eventually contribute to the next great paradigm shift (or not!). When a physicist says they hate Einstein or Curie, or when an astronomer says they hate Sagan, the real reason could be that they dislike the way the rest of the world sees these scientists. No real scientist can live up to the fantasy images of these people presented by the mass media and popular culture. It's kind of like the way real women don't look like the supermodels in Sports Illustrated, and most men aren't like the muscular athletes who get paid millions of dollars to advertise shoes.
When I was in college, a couple of guys we'd just met decided to sit with me and my friends at lunch in the dorm cafeteria. The two guys were taking "Physics for Poets" and tried to impress us girls by showing how smart they were. They started talking about Einstein's theory of relativity, which had been the topic of that day's lecture. The conversation went something like this -
Cool Dude #1: Man, that Einstein's theory of relativity is pretty intense.
Cool Dude #2: Yeah, the part about the moving clocks running slow is a real mindblower.
Cool Dude #1: I wonder if Einstein ever bothered
to work out a mathematical formula for it.
(I almost blew milk out my nose at that one!)
Cool Dude #2: Yeah, anyone who figures out the math behind that would win a Nobel Prize for sure!
(At this point in the discussion, my friends were watching me closely for signs that my head was
about to explode, since they all knew I was a physics major.)
Me: Well, there have been equations describing relativistic effects on mass and energy around for years.
Cool Dude #1: Really? I'll bet that the equations are extremely nasty.
Me: Well, the special theory of relativity isn't too difficult. The mathematics behind the general theory of relativity is a bit more complicated.
Cool Dude #2: Wow, have you taken physics?
My friends: Arrgggghhhh!
(I was on the floor completely incapacitated with laughter.)
Just FYI, Einstein wasn't awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on the theory of relativity. Einstein received the award "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect." I think that a lot of people believe he won the Nobel Prize for the work on relativity, since that is the idea that gets the most attention in popular science literature.
As for the "well-respected" scientist who published a paper I thought was total garbage mentioned in my earlier post, I am afraid to say who it was in a public forum. It wouldn't be that difficult for someone reading my posts on Slashdot to figure out who I am, and giving such a strong opinion of this person publically could ruin my career. I think the paper was garbage because it was not based on data analysis or simulations of any kind. The paper did cite many older papers, but it was not intended to be a review, as the well-respected scientist basically re-interpreted all of the earlier papers into a really bizarre framework that had no bearing on reality or the currently accepted paradigms. If I or another junior scientist had submitted this paper, it would have been rejected immediately because the theory had no support and the paper was not very well written. Because the scientist was alredy well-established when the paper was written, it appears that it was accepted by the journal editor mainly based upon the scientist's reputation. I have not seen this person publish anything else similar, and he continues to be highly regarded within the space sciences community.
When I read papers, I often will look up some of the papers cited. I have a whole file cabinet full of papers I have looked up as well as a big disk full of pdf files. I have discovered so many papers that incorrectly summarize the results of the papers they cite that I have lost count. I even reviewed a paper once that incorrectly cited one of my own papers. It sure feels horrible when the only person who bothers to cite your paper misrepresents it and may not have actually read it. Some papers that are commonly cited in the space science journals are in obscure journals or conference proceedings that are extremely difficult or even impossible to obtain. I have been told many times by senior scientists in my field that everybody thinks people should reference some of these "classic" papers, but that no one really goes back and reads all of them.
I have had my Ph.D. for about 5 years and I am still stuck working as a post-doc due to the politics of the space sciences, in spite of having published several long papers and giving dozens of presentations at scientific meetings. I get asked to review journal articles/proposals every couple of months, so people know I am here. On the surface it might seem like I am becoming established in my career, and I am earning the respect of the scientific community. However, if you dig a little deeper, you will see otherwise. Even though the reviewers of my papers generally have had good things to say about my work, my papers have not been cited much at all. There are so many papers published in the space sciences, it is difficult for a younger scientist to be noticed among all of the famous names.
It sounds like you are having a much more positive experience as a graduate student in your field than I did in the space sciences. There recently was a big report on ethics in Physics Today, I think in either the October or November 2004 issue. I have either witnessed a lot of the types unethical behavior described in this article myself, or know other scientists who have been victims of it. It sounds like you work in a pretty good group now, but you may not be so lucky later on in your career. I suggest taking a look at the Physics Today article on ethics to prepare yourself for the vast scientific battlefield that lies ahead.
One such method to determine relative 'goodness' of an author, or a paper, is to see how many times it is cited by another paper. In fact, one of my former professors at U. Penn was one of the motivators for this method because she experienced alot of discrimination trying to get a faculty job. (In the old days, and even today to a smaller extent, female PhD physicists are underrepresented). She had to use these citation numbers to prove her work was as influential as some of the top men in the field.
I am a female physicist and I think using the number of times a paper was cited as the sole test of how good the work was is a dangerous idea. In the space sciences, there are so many papers published every year, in many different journals, that it is impossible for anyone to read them all. What happens is that a lot of scientists will only read papers by established, experienced scientists that have built a strong reputation over many years. This means that the papers cited most often tend to be written by older men, and papers written by younger scientists and women tend to be cited far less often.
I find this quite disturbing, since when I recently did a journal article search for papers on a particular topic, I found an article published by a well-respected scientist in a reputable, peer-reviewed journal that was total garbage. In spite of the fact that the paper was just terrible, it had been cited many times. I know a lot of people who will cite a paper in their own work that was cited in a paper they recently read without bothering to check the original paper first.
I wonder how many people have actually read some of these papers that have been cited more than 100 times. Probably less than 50% of the people who cite a particular paper have actually bothered to look up the paper and read it carefully.
You are forgetting about something called "export control." When I was a post-doc at NASA we all had to fill out an "export control" form to obtain permission to travel to meetings outside of the country. They were afraid that we would give away NASA's secrets or something, even though our work was already published in the scientific literature for all the world to see. I'm sure that if NASA goes to the X-Prize approach and the runners-up start selling their technology to other countries, somebody in Congress is going to complain that these companies are helping nations that are in direct competition with our space program. Pretty soon there will be strict legislation about where US-based companies can sell technology to prevent the exportation of "sensitive" information.
I agree that this could be a really bad thing!
/. would say that they love computers and programming so much that they would do it for free. Yeah, right. I enjoy programming and analyzing scientific data,
I also don't think that this type of thing could be applied across the board to all NASA contracts. A lot of NASA contracts are not awards for building big projects like a satellite or space shuttle. Some contracts are just to contribute one component to a satellite, and I think it is relatively easy for a small business or a laboratory at a university to compete for this kind of contract. The current system actually helps small businesses and businesses owned by minorities because of this. Many of the big NASA contracts also go to companies who provide personnel to NASA for a useful service, such as computer support or scientific data analysis. The X-Prize approach would not work for these types of contracts - it would be like not paying a scientist or programmer unless they make a Nobel Prize winning discovery or invent some awesome new algorithm or develop a new software package. Most scientists never make a Nobel-worthy discovery in their entire lifetime. If NASA starts taking the X-Prize approach to big projects like developing a new launch vehicle, its only a matter of time before it starts filtering throught to other aspects of the work done by NASA.
I'm sure that a lot of people on
but I'm sure not doing it for free. Being a scientist is a full time job, and you don't become internationally recognized by only doing research in your free time. I still have to pay my mortage and I like eating a couple times a day. If NASA comes to this, I'm going quit being a scientist and get a job selling life insurance.
I acknowledge that the current system sometimes favors companies located in Congressional districts or states that have Representatives or Senators with a lot of power and seniority. However, peer review of proposals by scientists and engineers can help to counteract this kind of bias. The biggest problem facing NASA right now is that many of the politicians and administrators who have the power to make the final decisions on our government's budget and awarding NASA contracts are ignorant about what is technologically feasible and scientifically possible. If scientists and engineers had more power, we would all be a lot better off!
Every time I hear one of these stories about companies having a hard time filling tech jobs, I can't help thinking that part of the problem is the way companies screen applicants. I can remember a time not too long ago, when the problem was that the human resources people who were in charge of hiring often did not understand enough technical jargon to find applicants who might be able to do the job, but whose qualifications did not exactly match the description given to them. Now the same thing is still happening, only your resume or application is never read by an actual person - just screened for keywords and phrases by a computer program that understands the skills needed even less than the human resources people did. A friend of mine recently tried to hire a programmer, and their automatic applicant screening program decided she needed someone who was qualified to maintain underground storage tanks or something equally absurd and inappropriate. No wonder people have a hard time hiring qualified people, and techies can't find jobs.
Sorry, but I thought the whole point of the article is that when journalists attempt to bring balance to scientific stories by showing an opposing point of view, they can introduce a lot of misconceptions to the public, even though the journalists' intentions were good.
Suppose Scientist A goes on TV and says there is overwhelming evidence that if you jump off a 20 story building gravity will cause you to fall to the ground and die. Suppose Scientist B thinks that this gravity thing is all a sham and it's ok to go jump off of 20 story buildings without any kind of safety equipment to break your fall, even though he has little evidence to support this claim. Scientist B is not about to go try this himself, but he maintains that he still has a right to believe whatever he wants and tell other people about his ideas.
According to your fairness doctrine, a responsible journalist who wants to present a balanced view would give Scientist B the airtime to present his incorrect (and dangerous) point of view.
I agree that fairness is definitely important for political journalism, but this isn't necessarily the case for science journalism. Sometimes the opposing point of view is just plain wrong. Read the post from DollyTheSheep just above yours. Of course there needs to be a forum for people with ideas outside of current scientific paradigms to present their work. Unfortunately, journalists and the general public do not usually have the knowledge to separate a promising new idea from potentially dangerous pseudo-science.
I have a Ph.D. in physics, but I don't consider myself to be a god-like, super-genius who knows all there is to know about everything. However, every time I meet someone for the first time and they discover what I do, the typical reaction is that I am all-knowing and all-seeing. They then proceed to ask me about anything and everything, from Steven Hawking's theories about time and whether or not cell phones cause cancer. Most of the things non-scientists ask me about are things that are so far outside my area of expertise that I know just as little as they do about the topic. People are in awe of scientists because they have terrible misconceptions about what kind of people choose careers in science and what scientists actually do at work all day. They also tend to think that we get paid way more than we do!
The awe that people have for scientists can lead journalists to consult scientists who know absolutely nothing about the topic of their story. Journalists are not immune to the "someone who has a Ph.D. in physics must know everything" syndrome. I remember seeing a story on TV when Cassini was launched in which the journalist consulted an "expert" on the issue of whether the radioactive material Cassini used as a power source posed a significant danger if something went wrong during the launch. The "expert" was a scientist, however he was a string theorist. If the journalist had even a little knowledge of the issues involved, they would have consulted an aeronautical engineer AND a nuclear physicist AND a medical doctor AND a meteorologist to help assess the risk. String theory has nothing to do with any of these things!
Everyone, even some scientists, tend to react emotionally when they hear certain words and phrases. Some examples: "radiation," "cancer", "anthrax," and "giant asteroid passing within 10,000 miles of Earth." Journalists and politicians know this well, and use it to their advantage every chance they can get. Unscrupulous scientists also know how people react to these things and do not feel guilty about using the public's fear and lack of understanding to promote themselves. The scientist I saw on TV for the Cassini story should have admitted to the journalist that he was not an expert on spacecraft design.
Until the public at large learns more about science and how to determine if someone is really an expert, politicians and journalists will always be able to manipulate science to their advantage. Scientists can help by trying to educate people, but they also have to be willing to admit when they don't know something.
I really liked the episode of Enterprise with the freighters too. It kind of reminded me of a book I read by C. J. Cherryh a while back, but I can't remember the title.
There have been some good episodes of Enterprise, but a lot of them have been disappointing. I think that what the producers of Star Trek really need to do is hire people like C. J. Cherryh, Lois McMaster Bujold, Orson Scott Card, David Brin, etc. to write episodes for Enterprise. I'd definitely watch if they did this, and I'm sure a lot of other people would too. Most of the people who watch Star Trek also read science fiction novels, so bringing in a few major authors as writers for the show could be a big draw for viewers. Personally, I think this would work a lot better to attract viewers than female Vulcans in heat or sexy Borg. Not all Star Trek fans are male. Better writing would encourage a much broader audience to watch the show.
I agree! I've read some of the Star Trek books, and I think that Peter David creates interesting characters and excellent plots. He also has a sense of humor, which is something I think has been lacking in Star Trek lately. Enterprise would be a lot better if Peter David was in charge!
Maybe Star Trek would be good again if they could get some of the best science fiction writers to write a few episodes. I think that too many of the people currently involved with Star Trek have only ever written stories in the Star Trek universe. It would be a lot better if writers who had experience creating their own universes were to take over. For example, Peter David has also written some amusing fantasy novels. He knows the Star Trek universe, but he is more than capable of coming up with his own ideas.
If a teenage girl who was interested in majoring in computer science were to read the comments posted in response to this story, she would be completely scared away from this field. Nearly every message board on /. is full of masturbation jokes, sexist or stereotypical remarks about women, and other miscellaneous juvenile comments. Women who post comments on /. are often ridiculed. And you people wonder why more women do not pursue degrees in computer science, or science and engineering in general.
The answer is right here on the screen in front of you.
We all believe in stereotypes, whether we realize that we do or not. For example, when I read some of the posts on this message board, I found myself making judgements about the people who posted them. Some examples - pimply-faced teenage boys who can't get a date and spend all day long playing video games; frustrated men who have lost their tech jobs due to out-sourcing; or
incompetent white men with outdated skills who lost a promotion to a more qualified woman and are looking to blame someone else for their failure.
Most /. readers would resent being placed into these stereotypical nerd categories, even if there is an element of truth to them. Stop trying to do the same thing to women who are interested in computer science. We do exist and
we read /. often. I am a woman, I write code and I LIKE it. I've considered changing careers, not because I don't enjoy the work, but because I am sick to death of putting up with misogynistic garbage like most of the postings on this page.