Evil monkey's pissed off about how scientists are viewed and treated. To hell with the nerdy sterotypes, the unrealistic portrayals in the movies and TV. Who are we really?
So who am I? I'm tenacious. I can be ground down but never stopped. Repeated setbacks fuel my desire to overcome an obstacle and solve the problem. I am calculating; after dusting myself off, I plan a new approach before trying again. I show up to work every day because ultimately my job gives me a chance to improve lives. It isn't about money but the excitement of discovering something completely new and the prospect of alleviating human suffering. Sure I can withdraw into my work, oblivious to the world around me. But isn't that a good thing? Lives are improved by informed experts who fully immerse themselves in a problem. Does that make me arrogant? Maybe. Any headstrong person who speaks with well-earned authority can labeled "arrogant". Force-of-will is what it takes to succeed in this racket and to foster progress. And that is a good trait to have. Problems only get solved when tackled head-on.
Much more good stuff at the link. Preach it, brotha.
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Heh...this is a fun follow-on to the article in Slate yesterday, which largely attributed libertine sexuality among the 20th century greats (from Mme. Curie through Feynman) to the same kind of confident(optimistic) persistence...I'll leave the conjectured correlation to other aspects of the fundamentalist/science divide to readers. Happy Friday!
Smart AND sexy?
Everybody knows scientists are hot. Well Hollywood doesn't - but Hollywood thinks that American soldiers are killing Iraqis so that Jewish doctors can harvest their organs too.
I am a scientist and I am hot. So there....
I find that although male scientists tend to be treated in the fashion of absent-minded Dr. Nerdy McDork by Hollywood, female scientists tend to be young and attractive. Even when they appear plain and wearing big glasses with their hair done up, when it's time to dress for the party, they look like The Bachelorette.
These are female scientists as portrayed in the movies:
Congo (Laura Linney)
Contact (Jodie Foster)
Gorillas in the Mist (Sigourney Weaver)
Jurassic Park (Laura Dern)
Medicine Man (Lorraine Braco)
Outbreak (Rene Russo)
The Saint (Elisabeth Shue)
Sphere (Sharon Stone)
Tears of the Sun (Monica Belluci)
Twister (Helen Hunt)
Volcano (Ann Heche)
Hot, hot, HOT!
Heck, even that scientist chick in Tremors was young and hot. And don't get me started on all the CSI babes.
Clearly, we men got the short end of the stereo-stick.
....or did we? :)
I won't go as far as Bora and say I'm hot, but I can assure you that my wife is hot.
She tells me that I looked hot when I was drawing a plasmid construct map and helping her purify a poly-His-tagged protein from E. coli lysate on a Ni-NTA column. (Insert joke about her now helping me with my column).
I am a scientist and I am hot.
See, this is where layering can be helpful...
As in this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layering
An obsession with microbes is something that everyone should have, regardless of if they are a scientist or not.
Oh, my. I tend to also be a naive hero worshiper.
Someone once told me that more times than not, such unilateral dedicated individuals are arrogant, selfish, insensitive to others, have a superiority complex and are generally a misfit.
Thus the need for moving through many test cases to find the right partner if they ever do.
Oh, my goodness, I covered my ears and heard between two fingers as they continued---
Power corrupts, whether it is driven by economic or intellectual wealth, to one extent or another. It is not the rare case that the first longsuffering mate that sacrificed for the pinnacle achieved is cast off for the next once the accolades begin.
Polly
[Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart--Anne Frank]
What about the Michael Crichton stereotype. Crichton's heros are individualistic unorthodox scientists that fight against the conservative dogmatic establishment. In his stories the renegade is always right.
Every scientist would like to be an Einstein but very few of the scientists that challenge the consensus turn out to right.
His heros might make exciting books and movies but only add to the false stereotypes that are already there. They also lead to further misunderstandings of science.
His view is summed up in this quote.
"There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it
isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period."
http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote04.html
Michael Crichton is so full of sh*t as to qualify as an anti-authority on science. Besides his public statements, I've read a few of his books, and the plots consistently depended on their scientists being utter idiots, fools, and/or nutjobs.