Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Is there a decline of interest in science in the west?

I read a while back that the # of chem engineers in UK was 1/6th the # of psych majors. There's serious concern about how they're going to be able to maintain their competitive edge.

In the U.S. we have a lack of people going on for advanced degrees in the sciences. Seems like most of the people in the PhD programs are foreign students. (Not bad that there's a lot of foreigners. Bad that we americans don't seem very interested in it.) This is partly understandable - in some technical fields at least, the payoff is bigger for a masters than for a PhD.

There's an obvious problem with various political- religious groups trying to sneak religion into the science classroom (e.g. intelligent design), but I'm not sure that this is what's affecting things today. While ID's temporary successes are depressing, I see this as more of a potential problem in the future.

Have the numbers of people in the hard sciences declined? Have the numbers of people with advanced degrees in those fields declined? Leaving for a few days. But when I come back, I'm going to peruse the fedstats. and nas.edu for some specific info. Hope my impressions are wrong.

A healthy, vigorous, growing society needs engineers to make things and scientists to discover new ones. A sick, dying, contracting scoiety needs managers to hide things and lawyers to steal them. A good society takes risks to become better. A bad society enforces morality to prevent change.

According to the American Chemical Society, chemical employment is ~93%. If you consider employment to be a full time job in your chosen career with no expiration date, with benefits, the real rate is less than 70%. Do you want fries with that?

Slaves (credentialed workers), enforcers (management, law), parasites (Welfare, religion), clowns (entertainment, sports), rulers (politics). Who makes the easy money and who gets to keep it? Not the slaves. Rather than foster brilliance, we allocate for its suppression - American zero-goal education. We will lower the average until very child is above it.

Uncle Al says, "Surf, don't swim - and sure as Hell don't row the boat (the Captain always wants to go water skiing).

Parasites (Corporate Welfare Bums). Clowns (politicians). Criminals (the cops).

Are you dreaming !!
Quantum Mechanics is not Crashing ...and it is not going to crash....
Quantum Mechanics is the real dual picture of the world with which some people disagree (even violently!)

While some are still trying to sell the hopelessly muddled Copenhagen Interpretation of QM, others have quietly moved on:

(1) The Transactional Interpretation of QM - John Cramer.
Cramer continues the (intelligent) agenda of Whitehead Bohm Bell Stapps.
(2) Collective Electrodynamics - Carver Mead.
Mead carries out Feynman's dream and plan.

'Orthodox' QM is dead.

Searched the Net and I found following interpretations:
1) Copenhagen intepretation
2) Many worlds interpretation
3) Many-minds interpretation
4) Transactional interpretation
5) Modal interpretation
6) Decoherence
7) Everett's relative state
8) Bohmian mechanics
9) Zeilinger's principle
10) Relational quantum mechanics

"Decoherence" is the most sound of these proposals...
I have not really gone deep into the meaning of all the interpretations but would like to ....
do you know any interesting website on the topic?

It is misleading to present these as simple alternative choices: They should be arranged in an evolutionary tree, with some marked as dead ends.

What a perverted view! Morality is good for society and for science, and for progress

ES

Although i am going out of the topic.. but I guess what Uncle AI meant was a change should not be resisted physically or violently even if it is a moral shift...
Any kind of change should be valued at its merit and should be fought at the level of its utility for the mankind by allowing discussions and debates without holding any grudge...

I'm reminded of what Carl Sagan wrote in the chapter of Cosmos entitled "Who Speaks for Earth?"

"We accepted the products of science; we rejected its methods."

This will be our epitaph if the yahoos on the KS schoolboard get their way.

Graduate students in science and engineering have declined by a huge percentage (close to 20%) recently.

http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/infbrief/nsf03315/start.htm

"A good society takes risks to become better. A bad society enforces morality to prevent change"

Mm, who most often takes the risks for society? It's funny that the peope who usually have to take the risks, the 'slaves' as you call them, are often the ones that end up screaming for morality. And if not them directly, then those who advocate on their behalf.

FallibleFiend,

I haven't checked this, but do you think it might be a reduction in science ed funding, or encouragement, that is partly to blame? If there is such a decline, that is.

I think science funding has gone up, though I can't locate precise stats at the moment.

I doubt there's a lack of encouragement.

I think that people just don't want to devote so much time to hard majors.

Maybe it's how science is mediatised. Kids are so often force-fed a diet of pseudo science in popular culture that perhaps the desire to take up real science has ebbed away. Maybe real science doesn?t seem as dynamic; or romantic.

I agree that a lot of people can't tell the difference between real science and fake science. Hell, even very well-informed people have a difficult time - even scientists find it difficult outside their own fields (or, in some cases, subfields).

There is some hint of your idea in the situation in UK where there is a shortage of chem ENGes and a huge number of people going into psychology.

First, people think psychology is largely scientific and second, they think it's more relavent. Psychologists get good press - as in "Good Will Hunting."

But I think the part of the popular culture that is the most depressing is the expectation of getting things without effort. This comes about partly because of the trend to promote self-esteem even among students who aren't trying, but also the tendency of humans in general to do what is easiest unless there is some motivation to take a harder path. Right now, tech pays a lot more than basic research in most cases.

I don't have any evidence to support my assertions. I could be wrong. But it *seems* like I'm right.