Jake Young is a 
Anne Casselman at Inkling has this hysterical article on scientists/physicians with beards. Here's a bit on why some public health experts want doctors to lose the beard:
Fast forward to 1967, when three scientists from the Industrial Health and Safety Office in Maryland tested their hypothesis that "a bearded man subjects his family and friends to risk of infection if his beard is contaminated by infectious microorganisms while he is working in a microbiological laboratory." The result of their studies was a paper published in Applied Microbiology titled "Microbiological Laboratory Hazard of Bearded Men."
And I must admit, it was creatively thorough in its methods. Part of the experiment consisted of exposing the natural hair beard of a mannequin (see photo) to a virus, then getting baby chicks to nestle their cute fluffy heads against the beard, and later killing them to see if they caught the virus from their stints of beard nuzzling. Two of the three chicks caught the disease.Now I have to dwell on this for a second because who, in their right mind, other than some maniacal sick twisted scientists with an easter fetish, would hug baby chicks to his bristled cheek in the lab, like ever??? Maybe the moral isn't to shave but to not rub your face against baby chicks. In which case one could take this a step further and say, don't hire crazy bearded people in your lab. (Emphasis mine.)
LOL.
I was also struck by this bit looking at why facial hair runs rampant in science departments:
So where does this leave the populace? Well, John Curran, an anaesthetist at Nottingham City Hospital and Brian Pollard, a senior lecturer in anaesthesia at Manchester Royal Infirmary found themselves disagreeing over what a beard really meant; Curran asserts that "they are dirty, suiting woolly minded academics disinclined to arise for the morning ablutions" while Pollard "believes that beards, a natural state of affairs, signify wisdom". So like any responsible scientist in a tiff, they conducted a controlled study and aired the results, and their debate in the December issue of the British Medical Journal.
I attribute it more to the laziness than the desire to look wise.
Being a grad student (or a medical student) is not an environment that tends to inspire excellent hygiene -- and this includes shaving. I spend most of my day training filthy animals in a private room. Who the hell am I supposed to please? More than that, it is a bad idea to wear nice clothes to the lab. I can't even count the number of times I had a shirt ruined by chemicals, effluvia, etc. Thus, I am fairly regularly sporting the 5 day mini-beard and dressed in clothes from the savers bin at the Salvation Army.
Doctors and scientists being themselves former students are more likely to continue in their slovenly ways.
All I have to say is first it's the ties, then it's the beards, and soon we all look like Che Guevara.
Definitely, read the whole thing.
Education & Careers
Comments
I have a beard because it makes me look older - people tend to underestimate my age and I'm not old enough to find that flattering yet. I can see how a beard would be useful for the same reason in academic culture - the further you are along a relatively standard progression, the more seriously people take you, so adding a few years to people's estimates of your age can influence their assesment of your likely credentials.
Posted by: MattXIV | March 25, 2008 2:00 PM
admit it Jake, you are just joining the "slam PZ" band wagon. First he is (gasp) an evil earth destroying atheistic asteroid who can't frame and likes the word fuck, and now he is a bearded typhoid Mary.
Posted by: rb | March 25, 2008 3:17 PM
My brother and I have had beards most of our adult lives but we have occasionally gone clean-shaven. We are both at the age where our beards are essentially gray. At one time when my brother was shaving, he had to make a business trip to Japan. He regrew his beard because he said the Japanese respect age, and it made him look older.
Posted by: Mark P | March 25, 2008 6:39 PM
I attribute it more to the laziness than the desire to look wise.
Yeah, it's just a fashion thing, and looking dirty and lazy is "in" with academics now. Look through a "hall of scientific geniuses" and damn few will have beards.
It also hides a soft jawline, which you would only do if you were overweight and didn't have good neck / jaw differentiation, or if you did but had low testosterone and thus a girly jaw.
Posted by: agnostic | March 25, 2008 9:57 PM
Yes, I'm sure that ties and beards harbor bacteria.
I'm a girl, and I'll bet that my waist-length hair does, too. Do we all have to shave our heads?
That said, I also noticed (anecdotal evidence) that when I was taking bacteriology lab in undergrad, lo, many moons ago, that the days when I wore full make-up and bent over the Petri dishes, I tended to have contamination issues. When I gave up make-up, my contamination problems went away.
But then I went to grad school for virology and did 99% of my work in a tissue culture hood, so I could wear make-up again.
TK Kenyon
http://science4non-majors.blogspot.com/
Posted by: TK Kenyon | March 25, 2008 10:36 PM
Hey Jake,
Thanks for the praise! I'm glad the article appealed to you cleanshaven of men. I must admit I couldn't tell enough people in my office about those crazy beard/innocent baby chick slaughter shenanigans. I mean, who comes up with that crazy stuff??
Happy to have entertained you,
Anne
Posted by: Inky Anne | March 25, 2008 10:49 PM