careers

Five years ago I blogged about a study by the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education, identifying the higher education degrees that were likely to give you the best chances of a Swedish job in the period 2010-2020. This was because I complain a lot here on the blog about how useless a degree in anything even remotely similar to archaeology is, and I wanted to say something positive for a change. The careers that looked promising in 2010 were in lower-paying positions in healthcare, education and tech. Now the Swedish Public Employment Service has published a similar study of what…

There are two recent studies of gender disparities in science and technology (referred to by the faintly awful acronym "STEM") getting a lot of play over the last few days. As is often the case with social-science results, the data they have aren't quite the data you would really like to have, and I think it's worth poking at them a little, not to deny the validity of the results, but to point out the inherent limitations of the process. The first is a study of lifetime earnings in various fields that includes this graph showing that women with a Ph.D. earn about the same amount as men with a…

In keeping with this week's unofficial theme of wibbling about academia, there's an article at The Nation about the evils of graduate school that's prompted some discussion. Sean says more or less what I would, though maybe a little more nicely than I would. I wouldn't bother to comment further, except this spurred Sean to solicit career advice for scientists looking to leave the academic track. Which reminded me that a couple of years ago, I did a bloggy Project for Non-Academic Science (name chosen to have the same acronym as a prestigious journal, because it amused me to do so), where I…

Wired Campus shared an interesting story this morning about a career site for female science / engineering professionals. The site is called ASU CareerWISE and its mission is to help women with problem solving. I like the idea and I like that they built the site in Drupal, since I've become a big Drupal fan over the past year, but I think they've missed the point in a big way. You see, every link on the front page leads me to this: Now, I could be wrong, and I do understand the need for password protection in sensitive matters, but if I were looking for help with problem solving, and I…

Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics) shared this wonderful Lady Gaga lab spoof on Twitter the other day. It rocks. And, it makes me wonder if my pals who've been thinking about getting students interested in careers by having scientists talk on camera might be going at this the wrong way. Sure, videos of scientists talking are totally fascinating (yawn..) and... Oh right, where was I? Well, here's the thing. If you want to get kids interested in something, you have to use something that interests them. Your strategy isn't going to work unless the kids find it intriguing enough to go watch…

Tommaso Dorigo has an interesting post spinning off a description of the Hidden Dimensions program at the World Science Festival (don't bother with the comments to Tommaso's post, though). He quotes a bit in which Brian Greene and Shamit Kachru both admitted that they don't expect to see experimental evidence of extra dimensions in their lifetime, then cites a commenter saying "Why the f*** are you working on it, then?" Tommaso offers a semi-quantitative way to determine whether some long-term project is worth the risk, which is amusing. I was reminded of this when I looked at the Dennis…

tags: The Secret Life of Scientists, careers, Webby Awards, scientists, public outreach, educational, funny, documentary, NOVA, PBS, streaming video Okay, my peeps, I need your help. PBS is airing a NOVA series called "The Secret Life of Scientists." This miniseries has been nominated for a Webby Award for the Best Documentary Series, and is almost tied with a David Lynch film. We need your help to push this one over the top and give it the support of the people! I've embedded a clip below that I know you will enjoy (interestingly, I know several of these scientists in real life, too). So…

(I had this whole post ready talking about flexible representations, but now my computer is borked -- stupid monitor! -- so this is going to have to do.) Tyler Cowen over at Marginal Revolution links to a piece by a former editor at American Economic Review telling all about how papers are accepted for publication. In economics this process may be slightly different, but I found the piece addressed several questions I had about the process. I reject 10-15% of papers without refereeing, a so-called "desk rejection." This prompts some complaints - "I paid for those reviews with my submission…

Mark Buchanan, quoting Lee Smolin, on how big science may be biased against innovative iconoclasts: Some scientists, he suggests, are what we might call "hill climbers". They tend to be highly skilled in technical terms and their work mostly takes established lines of insight that pushes them further; they climb upward into the hills in some abstract space of scientific fitness, always taking small steps to improve the agreement of theory and observation. These scientists do "normal" science. In contrast, other scientists are more radical and adventurous in spirit, and they can be seen as "…

A few days ago I wrote about The Problem of the Problem of Motherhood in Science, a post inspired by Meg Urry's book review of Motherhood, the Elephant in the Laboratory by Emily Monosson. A vigorous discussion ensued in the comments - thank you all for participating! It turns out the author of the book was paying attention, and she contacted me by email. Emily Monosson told me she feels her book was misrepresented in Meg Urry's review. I agreed to post here the contents of her email to me. Here's the email: I am writing, as editor of Motherhood the Elephant in the Laboratory, in…

The blogosphere is buzzing over the new middle school aged Dora The Explorer because of her recently released silhouette. Over at Packaging Girlhood, Lynn and Sharon suggest: If the original Dora grew up, she wouldn't be a fashion icon or a shopaholic. She'd develop her map reading skills and imagine the places she could go. She'd capitalize on those problem solving skills to design new ways to bring fresh water to communities in need around the world. Maybe she'd become a world class runner or follow her love of animals and become a wildlife preservationist or biologist. Wait... what?! We'…

In comments to last week's rant about the low esteem in which science is held, taffe writes: Ok then, what should scientists be doing, individually or as a community? Maybe the masses just plain find political info more interesting. I mean hell, you had to use dog fans as a hook for your popular book, right? One of the maddening things about blogging as a medium is the way its ephemerality leads to repetition. I feel like I've written this before, but it's unreasonable for me to be peeved about it, because there's no reason why anybody commenting last week would've seen the earlier post. So…

Education & Careers "Inspecting an optical circuit after the wafer dicing saw step. Many labor tasks - from retail to security to manufacturing - seemed to go for triple redundancy." From Flickr, by jurvetson “The double-talk: We won't fund you if you have been around since the first ice-age, but we don't take that into account, but having a big name PI on your grant helps'.AGGHH...its enough to make your head spin.“ Dr. Zeek on Is this affirmative action for younger investigators or something else?

Our new Scibling, Jane, is a real life computer scientist. If you've ever wondered what computer scientists really do during the day, Jane will set you straight (I guess they're not playing Nintendo. Darn! Another illusion shattered, just like that.) Jane has also promised to explain why computer science is a science and not engineering. That part hasn't happened yet, but I work with software engineers and I have written a bit about the mysterious things that they do. Databases need to vacuumed? Who knew? I'm looking forward to hearing Jane describe answer the question from the…