Science Says We Must...

Ecton said:
But science is complicated and detailed. And most people don't want to follow all of those details. They want it condensed. It cannot often truly be condensed. Many important ideas have no simple closed form. And those that do are often mathematical in nature. People don't want the math and they want abstractions that are inherently inaccurate. I would contend that until society owns up to the WORK that is science, they will never master it, and always be the slaves of the ideologues.
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I run across this every day in my job. Management, marketing/sales, and even the customers themselves don't want to know how or what I do in my job ... they just want the end product to work and look pretty. They haven't a clue how I make it work, nor do they seem to care to learn even a rudimentary concept of how it works. The cluelessness with which they make decisions about what we will do is sometimes mind-boggling. Very few people seem to care to educate themselves about even the things they work with on a daily basis.
 
It takes a lot less sophistication to pull a trigger than it does to build a gun.

What's your work where you're interacting with all these people as a scientist, by the way, if you don't mind me asking?
 
frozen_water said:
It takes a lot less sophistication to pull a trigger than it does to build a gun.

What's your work where you're interacting with all these people as a scientist, by the way, if you don't mind me asking?
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Excellent metaphor :)

Software engineer by trade ... used to be have a more of a scientist bent, but now I'm just an online store and websheet creator.
 
Thanks.

wow... almost exactly like me, haha. In school for physics, but decided to do computational physics (requiring lots of programing), and now starting to realize that I like building software a whole lot more... so that's likely what I'll end up doing for job (or maybe grad school. Dunno yet).

On one hand I can see where you're coming from, because it is frustrating when people don't know and don't care to know how things work when they use them every day...... but on the other hand, I eat every day and drink water from a faucet, and (when not at college) drive a car, and I haven't made the slightest effort to learn where any of those things come from or how they work either, so... *shrugs*. We're all kinda in the same boat with different subjects.
 
frozen_water said:
wow... almost exactly like me, haha. In school for physics, but decided to do computational physics (requiring lots of programing), and now starting to realize that I like building software a whole lot more... so that's likely what I'll end up doing for job (or maybe grad school. Dunno yet).
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I also started with something different ... electrical engineering ... and realized that I liked the software part of things a lot more than my core courses, so I switched over. Creating software can be a lot of fun. :)

On one hand I can see where you're coming from, because it is frustrating when people don't know and don't care to know how things work when they use them every day...... but on the other hand, I eat every day and drink water from a faucet, and (when not at college) drive a car, and I haven't made the slightest effort to learn where any of those things come from or how they work either, so... *shrugs*. We're all kinda in the same boat with different subjects.
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You make a very good point. I also use a lot of products ... concrete and virtual ... for which I have little or no idea how they are constructed, transported, processed, or even utilized. My INFJ Honey is trying to get me to check out more of them and not be so myopically fixated on just my field. I guess what gets under my skin though, about my profession, is that there are people making decisions about how and what I produce, with little to no inkling of what is involved. The sales guys, in particular, will promise the client a starship predicated on the budget and timeline for a volkswagon. Conversely, some really cool work that we could do, like Business Intelligence, is dismissed out of hand because they don't even know it exists and therefore cannot sell it. Trying to educate them on it is often a lost cause. They mostly understand only what they see, which consists of pretty web pages. Some of the managers are a bit better. At least they try to understand and run interference.
 
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Doesn't it kinda depend on where you are in the pecking order? I have always been amazed how far up the ladder pedantic thinking can take some of these people. Talk about The Peter Principle in action.
 
deadred said:
Doesn't it kinda depend on where you are in the pecking order? I have always been amazed how far up the ladder pedantic thinking can take some of these people. Talk about The Peter Principle in action.
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Exactly. I opted out of management many years ago. Was a manager all through my 20's, but tired of the constant, messy people issues when I just wanted to engineer and create things. True to my INTP nature, I suppose. When I reinvented myself in my early 30s, I switched to a purely scientific role. I am much happier with that, but it does come with the consequence of losing some of my ability to direct my own actions. It's been a decent trade off, depending on where I've worked. My current job allows me a lot of autonomy on how to do things, but not enough on "what" to do for my tastes. Not sure I'll ever get that. The bills have to be paid and that often dictates what the client wants, not necessarily a cool system that has little monetary value in the real world.

I have known a fair number of people that illustrate the Peter Principle. Wanting to manage and knowing how to do it well are two different things. If found that managers of scientific endeavors often do well when they rise up from the ranks of the scientists and can walk the walk. Unfortunately, I've seen not many scientists have the desire to manage others.
 
Where I interned last summer (/am still working currently), my boss is one of those guys, a computational quantum chemist. I actually can't imagine much of a better way to manage people. He's won enough respect from the people above him that, it's more like... he suggests a starship, and says it'll take a long time, but be worth it in the end, and they trust him. Consequently, he gave me a very long leash (once he established that I was being productive).

The thing I learned from him about managing is that 90% of the job is going out of your way to make life easy for your subordinates. This may have been just because I'm still in college and literally had no relevant work experience (just class-learning)... but I was pleased when he offered me the job, then pleased when he held the 'interview' (kind of) out at starbucks instead of in the office, then pleased when he was lax on all the "office-wide" rules, then again when he called me up (he was out of town) to offer suggestions before a presentation I had to give (when I told him I was practicing it and having a hard time), and pleased when he pointed me to another research organization (where he was on the committee of people choosing who got into the program) and told me I should apply because it wouldn't increase my work very much, but would give me another additional thing to put on my resume, etc.

The list goes on and on. Not all of that happened immediately, but basically, by the time I actually started work, I was so overwhelmed by how much effort he put into me first that it would have been impossible for me not to try my hardest at the job. Then my initial progress stunned him (quite frankly... I'm very good at programming/problem solving), and it turned into a "whatever you think would be good for this project: go ahead and do it" kind of thing--the INTP dream-job.

Bottom line is: if I ever end up in a position where I can manage people, I'm going to try to absorb every ounce of his style that I can, haha, because it was wildly successful. If I had to guess, I'd call him ENFP... which also might have something to do with it, because I have great success in getting along well with them.
 
frozen_water said:
The thing I learned from him about managing is that 90% of the job is going out of your way to make life easy for your subordinates.
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Bingo! That's how I saw my role when I was in management ... to be a giant s**tscreen (for lack of a better word) to protect my soldiers from undue harrassment or harm. I respect managers I've run into who do the same thing. Ironically, I ran into more of that type in the military than have in civilian life.

I was so overwhelmed by how much effort he put into me first that it would have been impossible for me not to try my hardest at the job.
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I've been lucky enough to have a few bosses like that ... very few actually, but memories of them have stuck with me over the years.

Oh my ... I seem to have succeeded in derailing this thread. *Tries desperately to find a tie in to science and falls short* *slinks away*
 
Good article, especially the bit on authoritarian "global warming" demands and scare language used by the media. That stuff drives me nuts.
 
Hawk, I don't think you've done anything of the sort. The list of human frailities cuts evenly across all disciplines. Even very advanced minds have a few loose bricks in their walls. Add emotions to the equation and the list grows. The people at the higher levels don't always have the integrity we would expect them to have. Why would we have any reason in reality to expect more of them on this level of personal faults than anyone else up or down the pile? Look at what the negative implications of power have done to people throughout history. You can be a genius at anything, but that does nothing to accurately predict anyone's level of personal integrity. It is very frustrating.
 
deadred said:
Hawk, I don't think you've done anything of the sort. The list of human frailities cuts evenly across all disciplines. Even very advanced minds have a few loose bricks in their walls. Add emotions to the equation and the list grows. The people at the higher levels don't always have the integrity we would expect them to have. Why would we have any reason in reality to expect more of them on this level of personal faults than anyone else up or down the pile? Look at what the negative implications of power have done to people throughout history. You can be a genius at anything, but that does nothing to accurately predict anyone's level of personal integrity. It is very frustrating.
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Yes indeed. I know power corrupted me when I had it ... and I started believing my own BS. Took a big fall to bring me back to reality. I suppose, at times, I do have some unrealistic expectations of those in positions of authority. After all, they are only human as are we all. I imagine that applies to the sciences as well as other areas. A lot of people do the best that they can ... and sometimes they get tired.
 
Well, I'm in the same boat as you guys. It is hard to be the keeper of the details... that is for certain. You never, ever, know what a marketing guy is going to promise the customer. Reality is not correlated.

Hawk, its good that you recognize what happened when you had power. If it arises again I bet you will handle it differently. There was just a big article in the WSJ about how people given management power start failing basic judgment tests, with the failure rate going up with the amount of power accrued. Apparently it is a very hard thing to conquer. The researchers recommend, open, honest, friendly oversight as the only known solution.

As far as the original article and my defense of "The Scientist" as an archetype: Obviously there are failings here that are leaving everyone frustrated. People don't want to be preached to by scientists. They just want the facts. Scientists feel like they are being manipulated and 'managed' by political factions. If they just report the facts, they are distored in some twisted game of political telephone. Meanwhile, some scientists are idealogists with an agenda. Finally, some political groups believe the ends justifies the means. Very messy out there. I'd just conclude by saying I wouldn't want to preach science at people. That would be awful and pompous, as well as a personal hubris that would serve no one in the long term. But I might be inclined to start hitting politicians and think tanks with bats when they distort honest science. And I'd also take bats to all of the lying scientists out there who fudge data, promote flimsy conclusions, hide systematic errors in self-produced group reports, or lead conclusion-first soft-science studies.
 
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Ecton said:
Hawk, its good that you recognize what happened when you had power. If it arises again I bet you will handle it differently. There was just a big article in the WSJ about how people given management power start failing basic judgment tests, with the failure rate going up with the amount of power accrued. Apparently it is a very hard thing to conquer. The researchers recommend, open, honest, friendly oversight as the only known solution.
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Do you remember off-hand... did they give those judgment tests to the same people beefore and after they have power, and find that after being promoted they do worse, or do they give them to many people at different posititions within a company, and find that the managers just have much worse judgment overall?
 
Ecton said:
Hawk, its good that you recognize what happened when you had power. If it arises again I bet you will handle it differently. There was just a big article in the WSJ about how people given management power start failing basic judgment tests, with the failure rate going up with the amount of power accrued. Apparently it is a very hard thing to conquer. The researchers recommend, open, honest, friendly oversight as the only known solution.
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Took me a while to realize it and it was a big wakeup call. I was definitely guilty of some poor judgement calls when I was in power. Another part of power (and the fall from) that blind sided me is how many "friends" I had when I was in a position of power ... and how many of them melted away after the fall. The world is full of sycophants, it seems. Makes me appreciate the genuine people all that much more nowadays.
 
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