Comments on: No, America Does NOT Need More Scientists and Engineers

By: Tyler Jonco

Tyler Jonco — Sat, 18 May 2013 05:30:00 +0000

If you were a real scientists you would cite your sources. Yes, america needs more real scientists and engineers.

By: calidad01

calidad01 — Sun, 05 May 2013 22:57:00 +0000

Considering how few scientists there were in Darwin’s time, relative to
now, this makes his discoveries (or those of his–by today’s
standards–small pool of co-discoverers) hard to account for. The actual number of scientists, in the modern sense, who had ever lived in human history when Einstein was born was probably not close to a billion.

Here is what I take to be the real issue: Darwin was given a
degree of leisure and intellectual freedom that the (by his standards)
massive pool of scientists and engineers today do not, and never will,
enjoy. If your job requires you to focus on a single part, or work only
to the specific expectations of your company’s immediate needs, there
is very little chance for a very radical innovation of the sort you want. Unfortunately, that is also true even in academia today, where “pure” research is supposed to be done. So it’s hard to say where, within the space in the current economy where scientists and engineers currently work, we’ve left room for the kinds of radical discoveries you are talking about, Julius. A trillion engineers constrained by very short-term corporate needs and goals WILL NOT, I would think, produce more innovation than a million engineers who are unconstrained. QED: I wouldn’t be too quick to disagree with the author, because the problem may not be one of numbers.

By: calidad01

calidad01 — Sun, 05 May 2013 22:42:00 +0000

I’m not sure that the author would disagree with you, based on what he has said. I’m not sure that minting a greater number of STEM graduates would by itself cause businesspeople to respect their STEM employees any more than they do. Hence you and the author can readily be on the same team. No insult, no foul.

By: milkyway way

milkyway way — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 08:36:00 +0000

We are on the same track here with different fields though. As long as engineering is concern, we are all on the same path.

————————–

Bright Heritage

By: Aaron Woodburn

Aaron Woodburn — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 03:12:00 +0000

This article is insulting. Corporate America has sweeping ownership rights on everything it pays for. There is no drive to invent anymore, no drive to be exceptional. If you don’t understand that then you are one of the lucky ones that hasn’t had the experience of an every-day boss sucking all of your credit away to glorify themselves. You want to know why you think that we have too many engineers? because we have too many business majors.

By: Seal Silver

Seal Silver — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 17:23:00 +0000

I agree with this statement.

By: Seal Silver

Seal Silver — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 17:21:00 +0000

Thank you for addressing this.

By: HawkFest

HawkFest — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 16:40:00 +0000

I don’t agree with your 1st paragraph : scientists and engineers are not “manufactured” in such a way that you can even dare to evoke some will to cut on the numbers, and assert about “tossable” mediocrity while doing this! This is like WISHING via some magic staff from Skyrim (more bugs and degradation than some promise of quality in the end). Your “method” is crippled with a ridiculously flawed reversed logic : having less scientists and better ones would be the phantasmagoria entertained by uneducated and thus close-minded accounting officer, believing that humans don’t interact nor exchange experiences so as to individually evolve, but act like Gods having deterministic levels of “Godliness”… Ridiculous.

Let’s be realistic… Without so-called “mediocre” scientists/engineers, there wouldn’t exist any “genious”. Einstein wouldn’t have existed without his “mediocre” pars who helped him out in those fields where he wasn’t very good like mathematics, or those who exchanged philosophical views with him at this little café where he used to go in his youth… Actually he was considered as a mediocre school-boy, up to university! Which in itself is in total contradiction with this article : Einstein would have never existed under such a narrow view and “measurement” of the World…In the end, the more you’ll have scientists, the more potential you’ll get at seeing one or two “absorbing entities” who will be able to synthesize all this into this new theory, or that new resulting technological method. It’s quite simple tu understand and observe, maybe too simple for some…

That scenario of day-dreaming about childishly “wishing” for less mediocre and better scientists/engineers, would actually solely suit the fact of saving money with a magic wand, period. Surely not for raising our scientific standards or levels of technological “efficiency”, it would actually result in the opposite!

However I agree with you last paragraphs.

By: HawkFest

HawkFest — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 19:40:00 +0000

(no genes nor DNA are “transmitted” as some copy from parents to children : there are NO duplicates, all have an amount of some “creativity” – the still unknown Delta between parents and children that we can however measure -, mostly determined by such factors as the environment, the food, etc.)

By: HawkFest

HawkFest — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 19:33:00 +0000

I agree : nothing in science is the “product” of a sole individual. It’s always a combination of past (or other’s current) experiences and observations, that in the end can lead one to this theorem, that theory, or this technology. As an example, Darwin was not the only one to work on the theory of Evolution. Even though he was “chosen” by his era (and politicians) to be THE sole one to be “right” in regards to the Theory of Evolution (we always silence all those who brought their own experimentations into the balance), actually nowadays we can see that Lamarck’s views were much closer to the current trend implying discoveries with genomes than was Darwin!…