(sigh) sons of engineers or physicists become MDs or lawyers (but seldom engineers or physicists)

Are we STILL “clueless” ??

in part, I went into investment banking (periodically)—for “de money” !!!

QED, and SEMPER Fi (yes, former USMC too)

and why train/educate people for jobs which don’t (and/or won’t) exist ??

and do “we” still “pooh pooh” guys like Goddard (rocketry), Carlson (xerography) Armstrong (FM transmission), and Gould (certain basic lasers) ??

how “clueless” can we be ??

some three (3) “point five” degrees, and some 44 years later

do they (?) still pay teaching assistants around $1800 (not $18,000) per year “plus tuition” ??

does “Japan Inc” finance (in the USA) seed, or startup, deals ?? most VC people “stick” to mezzanine deals

Is/Are DARPA, and the SBIR programs, STILL underfunded ??

Is there STILL no “general” category in THEIR (DARPA or SBIR) “wish lists” ?? what do you guys think of HR 2795 (The Patent Act of 2005) ?? same is “pending”, and “coming around the bend”

The point I am trying to make, is that especially these days, a degree in science is often hard going, and frequently not rewarded very well in monetary terms. Thus, less people do such degrees. Why do a science degree then go and become a manager somewhere when you can either work up to such a job straight from school, or do a degreei n business studies and step straight into such a non science job with an even higher salary?

Then, I am aware of various people who have graduated, and taken several years to get a proper science related job. Myself included. Its taken 4 years to get a proper degree related job, and now I have it its great fun. (apart from the management, but hey, you get that everywhere.) This kind of problem leads to less people doing science degrees, because they cant see that they will get a good job at the end of one. It also leads to peopel moving into other areas. Now, what if these people did want to do scienctific work originally?
My point is that there would be more disgruntled people if they did science degrees because they were itnerestedin teh science, but when it came time to use the science in real life, in a job, they find they cant ebcause there are not enough jobs in the area they wish to work in, thats a problem.

I do totally agree about what needs to be done to produce numbers of working scientists. But to increase the number of scientifically educated people, all I can suggest is improving science education at school, and making everyone stay on until 18 so they have more time to learn science.

If you want to increase the number of working scientists, as opposed to the number of scientifically educated people, then you need to have consistent steadily increasing funding. Dumping a lot of money in the system rapidly leads to diminishing returns as you start to pay for bad science. Continuously changing direction and priorities introduces uncertainties and misdirected effort.
The time constant to make a scientist is long, ~ 10 years. You need consistency and reward on time scales longer than that.

Oh, and you need a competent pool people to recruit from, so you need a K-12 system that does not actively destroy mathematical ability or interest in science.

That is all.
$2000 per paper is too little to have any positive effect but large enough to cause trouble. But mostly it is irrelvant to the issue.

People will naturally vote with their feet. If they can get better salaries in non-science jobs, they will not do them. Plus there is a limited number of science jobs nowadays anyway, since our industry is shafted and even things like biotech have limited capabilities to absorb people.
The amount of scientific knowledge and interest in the UK is quite low- numbers taking chemistry etc at university are so low that some departments are closing. There are also insufficient jobs available for the graduates, who frequently end up in jobs that require some clear thought and numeracy, rather than actual science jobs. But at the same times, science Tv programs and magazines are moderately popular.

As for Belizean, economics is the problem indeed. Why employ a US graduate when you can take the same dollars from the USA and employ 8 in China? However, over the medium term, like 20 or 30 years, the situation will even out, as China comes up to the USA’s level and becomes a mature economy. Therefore this problem will not last forever, just long enough to eradicate large swathes of the scientifically educated and employed population, as has occured in the UK.

Belizean:
“Access unused scientific talent in the general population by paying for desired results.”

Except that these days, science is done by large corporations and universities for a reason. That reason is the capital invested in equipment, the time needed to learn how to use that equipment, the access to libraries and ability to stay cognisant of that field. Can you name many scientific (As opposed to engineering) advances from the past 50 years that came from the general public as opposed to university of corporation employed people? This is simply an effect of the increased specialisation necessary to do productive scientific work. Anyone watching the “intelligent design” debate will probably have seen people who are apparently scientifically educated, often even with PhD’s completely misunderstand the evidence for evolutionary theory and make a complete hash of attacking it.

Belizean:
“Pros have a much higher stake in getting their papers published than do amateur in this proposal.”

Professionals have higher career stakes; amateurs have higher emotional stakes. Anyone who’s seen the debates about free energy and suchlike, let alone people who think Einstein is utterly wrong, can see how people like that would deluge journals with papers “proving” that something is wrong, and would get really annoyed when they were turned down. Which is not to say there wouldnt be anything worth considering, just that there would be a lot of dross to sort through, and the situation would be quite confused.

Another problem is that it would probably be a public good for a large part of the population to be scientifically educated an aware. However, as Belizean says, this would on the face of it leave a lot of disgrunteld unemplyed people. In this I agree with him. The problem is instead how to inculcate scientific thought and critical thinking at school, without directing it towards any particular discipline. This would avoid the problem of surplus PhD’s.

Another of my pet niggles about the UK is that the gvt etc are trumpeting our wondeful research base. However, this comlpetely ignores that it is all very well providing a service to the rest of the world, namely research (when I was at uni, apparently british post docs were one of the cheapest forms of research in the world) but then the UK doesnt benefit because the spin off business’s are abroad, as well as the company headquarters, the associated service industries, the manufacturing etc. This is the side of globalisation they dont mention much.

“It would have a negligible effect on actual technical competence in the population.”
It would have the same effect on the population as board certification tests and bar exams have on the medical and legal professions respectively. It would guarantee a certain level of specialized knowledge. It would, moreover, combat the pervasive belief among many juveniles that studying isn’t cool. Getting $2000 is cool.

“As for the refereeing issue: authors currently take it very personally if you reject their paper, if they are amateurs and there is real money at stake I would expect them to become even more insistent. Who would referee a paper in such circumstance?”
Pros have a much higher stake in getting their papers published than do amateur in this proposal. The current system of refereeing and handling disputes seems to handle pros fairly well. There’s no reason to think that it would fail when applied to amateurs who have far less at stake and would be correspondingly less irate upon receiving a rejection. As usual, the anonymity of the referees will protect them.

“Fix the number of journals, someone will just increase volume size. The academic publishing industry is already aggressive and money driven enough.”
An increase in the number of volumes would be expected if the quantity of scientific output actually rises. The purpose of fixing the list of approved journals is to prevent the appearance “vanity” journals that only pretend to peer review.

“…the issue is the lack of a large population pool which has depth and technical competence in scientific matters….the total population in the US which has shown competence to [the Ph.D.] level… is …[a]… very small absolute number of people…”
It’s not clear that if there were suddenly 50 million physics Ph.D.s in America that it would be a great day for American physics. The degree would become worthless. You’d have disgruntled people who wasted four years getting this worthless degree. And salaries in the technology sector to which these people would naturally gravitate would plummet, their skills being a dime a dozen.

In summary, there were two question addressed in this thread, to which I’ll briefly state my answers:

Q1. How can scientific output by Americans be increased?
A1. Access unused scientific talent in the general population by paying for desired results.

Q2. How can technological innovation by Americans be increased?
A2. It can’t be done. Incentives would only have a marginal effect as they would be insignificant compared to rewards from the market. Increasing the technical education of the work force won’t work, because this would lower salaries and cause talent to flee the tech sector.

Unless we’re willing to totally isolate the American economy, we have to face the fact that the value of technical labor is falling due to its rising prevalence in the third world.

To stay competitive American tech companies will be forced to fire local Americans and hire remote third-worlders. Unless the American tech workers are willing to work for third-world wages, they need to find other lines of work.

As for the refereeing issue: authors currently take it very personally if you reject their paper, if they are amateurs and there is real money at stake I would expect them to become even more insistent. Who would referee a paper in such circumstance?

Fix the number of journals, someone will just increase volume size. The academic publishing industry is already aggressive and money driven enough.

This is gimmickry and doesn’t address the basic issue, which is not for a few people to find niches to make progress in, the issue is the lack of a large population pool which has depth and technical competence in scientific matters.
Either at the BSc or PhD level. By either measure, looking at the total population in the US which has shown competence to that level, in for example physics, the one thing that stands out is the very small absolute number of people involved.