
Why did the social prestige of science and engineering decline in the US? - scritic
http://cogsciresearch.blogspot.com/2011/04/why-did-prestige-of-science-and.html
======
kmfrk
Read Anti-Intellectualism in America by Richard* Hofstadter; it's as true and
relevant today, as it was back then.

The decline, if any, probably has to do with the fact that there wasn't a Cold
War where scientists could participate directly against a tangible threat and
common purpose:

“The Sputnik was more than a shock to American national vanity: it brought an
immense amount of attention to bear on the consequences of anti-
intellectualism in the school system and in American life at large. Suddenly
the national distaste for intellect appeared to be not just a disgrace but a
hazard to survival. After assuming for some years that its main concern with
teachers was to examine them for disloyalty, the nation now began to worry
about their low salaries. Scientists, who had been saying for years that the
growing obsession with security was demoralizing to research, suddenly found
receptive listeners. Cries of protest against the slackness of American
education, hitherto raised only by a small number of educational critics, were
now taken up by television, mass magazines, businessmen, scientists,
politicians, admirals, and university presidents, and soon swelled into a
national chorus of self-reproach. Of course, all this did not immediately
cause the vigilante mind to disappear, nor did it disperse anti-
intellectualism as a force in American life; even in the sphere most
immediately affected, that of education, the ruling passion of the public
seemed to be for producing more Sputniks, not for developing more intellect,
and some of the new rhetoric about education almost suggested that gifted
children were to be regarded as resources in the cold war. But the atmosphere
did change notably. In 1952, only intellectuals seemed much disturbed by the
specter of anti-intellectualism; by 1958, the idea that this might be an
important and even a dangerous national failing was persuasive to must
thinking people.”

~~~
jerf
Part of the problem is that the American distrust of intellectualism is itself
not the irrational thing that those sympathetic to intellectuals would like to
think. Intellectuals killed by the millions in the 20th century, and it
actually takes the sophisticated training of "education" to work yourself up
into a state where you refuse to count that in the books. Intellectuals
routinely declared things that aren't true; catastrophically wrong predictions
about the economy, catastrophically wrong pronouncements about foreign policy,
and just generally numerous times where they've been wrong. Again, it takes a
lot of training to _ignore_ this fact. "Scientists" collectively were
witnessed by the public flipflopping at a relatively high frequency on
numerous topics; how many times did eggs go back and forth between being
deadly and beneficial? Sure the media gets some blame here but the scientists
played into it, each time confidently pronouncing that this time they had it
for sure and it is imperative that everyone live the way they are saying
(until tomorrow). Scientists have failed to resist politicization across the
board, and the standards of what constitutes science continues to shift from a
living, vibrant, thoughtful understanding of the purposes and ways of science
to a scelerotic hide-bound form-over-substance version of science where papers
are too often written to either explicitly attract grants or to confirm
someone's political beliefs... and regardless of whether this is 2% or 80% of
the papers written today it's nearly 100% of the papers that people hear
about.

I simplify for rhetorical effect; my point is not that this is a literal
description of the current state of the world but that it is _far more true_
than it should be. Any accounting of "anti-intellectualism" that fails to take
this into account and lays all the blame on "Americans" is too incomplete to
formulate an action plan that will have any chance of success. It's not a one-
sided problem.

If you want to fix anti-intellectualism, you first need to fix intellectualism
and return it to its roots of dispassionate exploration, commitment to truth
over all else and bending processes to find truth rather than bending truth to
fit (politicized) processes, and return to great, foundational humility that
even the press could not overplay into hubris. And they need to drop their
blinders whereby they excuse away the damage that intellectuals have done
while ignoring these ancient precepts and only crediting themselves their
successes, because it cuts themselves off from the very object lessons that
could help them return to this time-tested approach to science, which they
still flatter themselves that they follow. If you fail to fix the
intellectuals first, then all your effort to fix "Americans" is going to fail;
you'll bend your efforts towards getting them to look at intellectuals
seriously, but they'll end up coming to the same conclusions they already have
about the value of intellectuals and you'll have wasted your shot.

I'm not holding my breath.

~~~
jtolle
Wait a second. Maybe I need some reeducation myself here, but you're pinning
the mass-murders of the 20th century on "intellectuals"? And then saying
that's the explanation for the present day trend of distrust in science?
(Well, that plus the egg flip-flop.) I'm not granting the premise, but even if
I did, it's quite a non-sequitur.

You blame scientists for "fail[ing] to resist politicization" without
mentioning that one of our major political parties and it's major financial
backers _hate the policy implications of some important scientific
conclusions_. The coal lobby, etc. have to attack science as a discipline
precisely because the science is so clear. (Part of that is of course claiming
that those nasty scientists are raking in the big grant $$$ as a reward for
their dishonesty.)

(Re: the murdering, I think it's giving the murderers way too much credit to
take whatever intellectual justifications they offer at face value. Sure
Stalin _claimed_ to be furthering the revolution or whatever, but he
exterminated an awful lot of non-Russians who had traditionally resisted the
central Russian state. The rise of the modern state enabled ideological mass-
killing, but that just added another reason to all the other ones - ethnic,
religious, colonial conquest, etc. - that predate a _literate_ class, let
alone an "intellectual" one.)

~~~
Parziva1
Here's the thing about the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming. It rests on
the assumption that uniformitarianism (the doctrine that is the basis for the
entire science of Geology) is false. It does not attempt to prove this, it
merely assumes it. Much like the Young Earth Creationists.

All the CO2 currently sequestered in fossil fuels used to be part of our
atmosphere. We know what the climate was like before this happened through
fossils, changing sea levels, and evidence of glaciation, all recorded in the
rock. The climate has followed a predictable and remarkably constant
warming/cooling cycle as far back as we can reliably measure. If the
sequestration of CO2 in fossil fuels had an impact, it's below our level of
precision.

Could the release of CO2 make a slight difference at the margins? Sure it
could. The ice age we've got coming down the pike in a few thousand years
could possibly be partially mitigated. But the sackcloth, ashes, and cries of
"The End is Nigh! Repent, Ye Sinners!" is stuff and nonsense.

Many of the highest profile advocates of AGW are charlatans. This has been
demonstrated time and time again.

Let's take a look at the IPCC report that was so loudly praised by AGW
supporters. There are any number of problems with it, but for argument's sake,
we'll accept it at face value as the worst-case scenario. It concluded that
over the course of several decades that the globe had warmed 0.8 degrees, and
stated with 90% confidence that man's influence was responsible for (wait for
it) less than one tenth of one degree. That's not a sound basis for wailing
and rending of clothes.

Like it or not, CO2 is a trace gas that comprises significantly less than 0.1%
of our atmosphere, and will remain so in any realistic projection. Ice cores
have shown little or no correlation between CO2 and temperature. AGW
proponents state that this will change soon. But this is a statement based
upon faith, not one based on evidence.

Of course, I could ramble on at more length about the difficulties in finding
an extremely faint signal amongst mind-boggling amounts of noise. The pretense
of a precision that does not exist. The claims of knowledge that is not
actually known. And the perfidy of the vocal AGW proponents. (The last one is
especially fun.) But I don't think I'd be adding much by doing so. All of that
is easily addressed with simple search strings.

~~~
obvioustroll
> All the CO2 currently sequestered in fossil fuels used to be part of our
> atmosphere.

That's an interesting assertion. I'm not a biologist, but I suspect quite a
lot of the carbon in hydrocarbons was locked into other carbon compounds
before being taken up by plants and animals.

Consider: the carbonaceous compounds in the shells of mollusks do not come
from C02 but from other disolved carbon compounds in the water.

You could just as easily argue that all the carbon in limestone used to be in
the atmosphere.

------
dwc
Two books I've recently read are _The Age of American Unreason_ by Jacoby [1]
and _Unscientific America_ by Mooney & Kirschenbaum [2]. Both are worth
reading, but Jacoby gives a deeper and more thoughtful analysis and spends
considerable time on historical roots and trends.

This topic is tied heavily to politics, and I hesitate to get into that here.
I will say this: science is about exploring, like math is about exploring.
Viewing science and math as pragmatic skills reduces them to engineering and
accounting. Now there's nothing _wrong_ with engineers and accountants and we
desperately need and value their skills. But we also need scientists and
research mathematicians who explore mysteries for the sake of discovery. There
are a lot of subtle implications of that which are completely lost on people
who think of science and math as purely functional, vocational pursuits. The
benefits of science and math that have been capitalized on by engineers are
spin-offs of people with curiosity exploring for exploration's sake. When
exploration for its own sake is devalued, the engineers of the world find once
fertile ground growing barren.

1\. [http://www.amazon.com/Age-American-Unreason-Susan-
Jacoby/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Age-American-Unreason-Susan-
Jacoby/dp/0375423745)

2\. [http://www.amazon.com/Unscientific-America-Scientific-
Illite...](http://www.amazon.com/Unscientific-America-Scientific-Illiteracy-
Threatens/dp/0465013058)

~~~
caseysoftware
We have a government that generally believes we can legislate our problems
away and that most people are incapable of taking care of themselves. When you
start from that premise, everything that you do "for the good of society" or
"because it's fair" ends up stepping on someone, usually those closer to the
top. Alternatively, when you have leadership coming from fields where reason
and making things better by creating are valued, you get a different result.

Oddly enough, I'll cite China as an _improving_ example of this and I think
it's due to the make up of their leadership:

* In the US, the top of the Obama Administration is mostly lawyers and/or mostly from Harvard. Over half the Senators were/are lawyers. The last President with technical/scientific training past Chem 101 was Herbert Hoover.. 80 years ago.

* On the other hand, China's president was a hydraulic engineer and the Communist Politburo is eight engineers and a lawyer. Their previous president was an electrical engineer.

Source: <http://www.economist.com/node/13496638>

Which country do _you_ think values scientists and engineering more? Which
country do _you_ think understands science and engineering better and pushes
to strengthen those fields or at least gets the hell out of the way?

(Now I feel dirty for celebrating something about China's political
leadership.)

~~~
jleyank
No, Jimmy Carter was a nuc. Navy, selected by Rickover, etc.

~~~
alexgartrell
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter#Naval_career>

------
zaidf
My pediatric surgeon dad who deals with kids everyday loves to chat with kids
about their aspirations. In the US, vast majority of the kids want to become
firefighters or cops. In contrast, when my dad practiced in India, majority of
kids wanted to become doctors or engineers.

It's probably hard to tell the cause from the effect. May be they both have a
little bit to do with each other. But in Indian movies, for example, the
doctor and engineer or businessman usually gets the hot chick--not the macho
cop or firefighters.

~~~
jseliger
_In the US, vast majority of the kids want to become firefighters or cops. . .
. It's probably hard to tell the cause from the effect._

I think it's easy: jobs as scientists in the U.S. suck relative to other jobs.
See here: [http://www.miller-mccune.com/science/the-real-science-
gap-16...](http://www.miller-mccune.com/science/the-real-science-gap-16191/)?
for more. Basically, if you have the chops to get a job in science, you're
probably better off doing something else (like med school; lots of people want
to be doctors).

Consider that firefighters or cops get paid reasonably well; effectively can't
be fired after a short probationary period unless they do something incredibly
egregious because they're protected by unions; have jobs that demand physical
activity, so they aren't just sitting in front of a screen all day; and, in
the case of firefighters, have a level of social prestige that means (male)
firefighters are almost universally admired by women.

Wanting to be a cop or firefighter requires a two-year degree, if that.
Wanting to be a pediatric surgeon takes a minimum of 12 (four for undergrad,
four for med school, four for residency, although I think it's more than
four). Wanting to be an engineer takes at least four.

~~~
orijing
> I think it's easy: jobs as scientists in the U.S. suck relative to other
> jobs. Consider that firefighters or cops get paid reasonably well;
> effectively can't be fired after a short probationary period unless they do
> something incredibly egregious because they're protected by unions; have
> jobs that demand physical activity, so they aren't just sitting in front of
> a screen all day; and, in the case of firefighters, have a level of social
> prestige that means (male) firefighters are almost universally admired by
> women.

But do you think the "vast majority of kids" take that as their main reason?
Do you think they know the labor market dynamics? That the job is incredibly
secure? Not so mentally demanding? Requires only a two-year degree?

I think that kids in majority think mostly about the act of _being a police
officer_ , rather than the auxiliary benefits of being one (financial security
being one). Perhaps they are drawn by the power, the apparent admiration, or
some desire to "serve his/her country."

~~~
keiferski
_But do you think the "vast majority of kids" take that as their main reason?_

No, but many adults take it as their main reason, which leads to more
potential "role-models" becoming police officers/fire fighters, which leads to
more kids wanting to be like these particular role models. Example: kid grows
up admiring his uncle the fireman, who has nice things (always employed) and
makes a difference in his community. His uncle might have simply taken the job
because of the benefits mentioned in the grandparent post.

Kids don't necessarily need to know the labor benefits of a job, but (I think)
they know the types of people that take these jobs, and want to be like them.
Of course, it doesn't mean that they'll actually _become_ firemen, but we're
talking about the "what do you want to be when you grow up" question, not
necessarily what they end up doing.

------
seltzered
Read iTulip.com / the book "The post-castastrophy economy"

I'd argue it was the rise of the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate)
economy that grew very rapidly over the past 30 years. The FIRE economy is
opposite to the classical producer - consumer economy.

There's plenty of times I sometimes wish I just made money like my friends
doing trading/finance/etc. instead of studying electrical engineering. I'd get
to work downtown instead of in a far away suburb too.

~~~
BrentRitterbeck
There are people with strong scientific, mathematical, and technological
backgrounds working in the FIRE space. This is directly the result of a lack
of funding for traditional science. FIRE didn't take people from traditional
science. FIRE absorbed scientifically-inclined people who otherwise wouldn't
have a place to put their background to use.

Fund traditional science more, and the prestige will come back. Traditional
scientific research is expensive.

EDIT: Here's a recent link (a few months ago) that illustrates my point:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/the-tevatron-is-shutting-
down...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-tevatron-is-shutting-
down-2011-1#ixzz1CgbVHPia)

------
tsotha
I don't see any reason to believe the social prestige of science and
engineering is actually _declining_. It's never been very high. You can go
back to popular culture references in the '50s to see that.

People aren't avoiding STEM majors in college because of a lack of prestige.
It's because science and technology is hard work and there's not a lot of
money in it. If you're willing to put in that kind of time there are other,
easier ways to make more money.

Outside of a small slice of the population in media and entertainment, "social
prestige" is nothing more than how much money you make . Investment bankers
don't get a lot of interest from women because investment banking is
interesting or investment bankers are seen to be somehow better than other
people.

------
known
Study Suggests U.S. Could Use Fewer, Not More Science Students
[http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/10/study-
argu...](http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/10/study-argues-
us.html)

~~~
Detrus
This is a crucial point. "More is better" is a naive notion, but it's easier
to promote than "quantity over quality."

When mathematicians get jobs in Wall Street by the thousands, there are either
too many mathematicians churned out by the education system, too few problems
or both. They're not getting those jobs to work on theories about complex
systems like a few physicists did in the 1980's. The new generation is there
to get respectable wages.

The ending is gold:

 _"claims of shortage are "often issued by parties of interest" such as
employer associations. In the past, some U.S. businesses have been accused of
using the shortage argument to justify outsourcing and hiring of foreign
workers.

Susan Traiman of the Business Roundtable criticizes the new study, saying that
it gives an illusion of a robust supply because it bundles all STEM fields
together. There may be an oversupply in the life sciences and social sciences,
she argues, but there is no question that there are shortages in engineering
and the physical sciences. The findings "are not going to make us go back and
re-examine everything we've been been calling for," she says."_

------
kleiba
I thought about the same question before, or in particular the social prestige
of computer scientists. My best shot is: because you cannot make cool TV shows
about computer scientists.

There are lots of shows in which specific professions come across as cool -
doctors, cops, lawyers (of all things)... on the other hand, whenever a
computer scientist is portrayed in a show or a movie, what you get is the
stereotypical nerd. And there are some good shows, too - but they're mostly
_funny_ shows, not cool as in "I want to be like that".

And what's better suited to shape the youth's role models than the media they
consume? And I don't blame the networks or screenwriters or anything - I've
tried to come up with a good concept for a show myself and couldn't do it.

Yet I've always found it puzzling that the person who simply buys the latest
iPhone is considered hip, while the people who actually build and program them
are looked down on...

~~~
karolisd
Doctors, cops, and lawyers interact with other people in interesting ways.
Scientists and engineers generally interact with machines in interesting way.
Much more difficult to make a story about that.

~~~
WalterBright
I'm sorry, I can't do that, Dave.

~~~
kleiba
I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

------
igorlev
Tyler Cowen's essay was mentioned here before and I think it's a pretty good
way to frame your thinking about the subject. The reason the prestige of
science and engineering declined is because the direct and visible impact on
every day life of those professions has also declined. A lot of technical
areas have matured since the 1950's and are offering mostly incremental
improvements.

Not to say that the 'actual' impact has declined, but people in the United
States are no longer impressed by a greener plastic or a slightly newer
satellite being lofted into space. Compare that to places like China or even
India that are somewhat behind in bringing industrialization to the entire
population and you have engineers make visible impact to every day life and
therefore rationally have more importance and thereby prestige. I'm sure that
in a few decades once they start catching up, engineering will also start
declining as a prestigious profession.

There are lots of other intellectually demanding professions such as law,
medicine and even finance that have droves of bright students signing up. I
think that while they attract students, and are useful at all stages of
development, they really come up to the top once you have a stable political
system, and a relatively wealthy population. Once technical change stops being
radical you enter a maintenance phase. If you have basic health needs met you
start trying to squeeze out more and more advances in medicine to prolong the
life of a relatively healthy population. Once new products become mostly
enhancements of old ideas, trying to compete using the law can be more
efficient in terms of effort expanded to results achieved.

I think that trying to use marketing or propaganda to try and raise the
prestige of scientists can only go so far. Technology needs to offer radical
and easily visible everyday impact to outshine the other intellectual
professions.

~~~
scritic
Interesting. So the decline of the "low-hanging fruits" of technology is the
cause, and not the effect, of the decline in the social prestige of science
and technology, if I'm understanding you right.

------
patrickgzill
Lawyers and MBAs made twice to 10x the money for the same or less amount of
work.

~~~
tzs
I don't think lawyers do the same or less amount of work than scientists and
engineers. I've watched up close a big patent suit (I was one of the inventors
named on the patent, and the only one available for the trial), and at least
in that area of law, the lawyers worked more hours sustained than any
scientist or engineer I've known.

When I was in my early 30's I got burned out on programming, and went to law
school with the intent of going into patent and copyright law. However, after
the third year, when I had one paper to write to graduate, I went back to my
old job for the summer. I was no longer burned out on programming, and I also
had the worst case of writers block in the history of the universe, so never
got around to writing that last paper.

Having watched the lawyers during the patent suit, I am pretty sure I dodged a
bullet by not becoming a lawyer.

~~~
patrickgzill
Having family members who are/were high powered lawyers (working for
international firms, taking home 300K UKP per year or more), they certainly
spend very long hours and lots of time in meetings, and certainly have to read
a great deal in order to review carefully very long documents.

However I would make a distinction between hours spent in meetings, talking,
and reviewing documents, vs. bringing as much brainpower as you can to solve a
problem and do something new. Somehow the job of the scientist or engineer
seems much harder - perhaps this is just my perception however.

------
dnautics
Why? Too many scientists. Federal funding (and funding of other nations
seeking to improve prestige) has inflated a science bubble. naturally, the
number of mediocre scientists has increased like crazy. The low reputation of
scientists is well deserved. In fact, I believe it should be even lower.
Having many non-science friends, they are very surprised when I inform them
that there actually is a ton of fraud and misconduct in science.

Other side effects: Being a scientist is awful. Right now, I've got a PhD, I
get paid $20/hour for 40 hours of work a week (I actually put around 70 hours
of work in the lab). I don't have health insurance (the irony, I'm being paid
by the DOE) and this job actually pays better than the last. I don't have time
to date. I want to start a company but I can't because I don't have the
finances to do simple experiments at home. My life is basically being
deferred.

~~~
moultano
That seems more like the result of too little funding than too much. I don't
understand how you square these too statements.

 _Too many scientists. Federal funding (and funding of other nations seeking
to improve prestige) has inflated a science bubble._

 _Being a scientist is awful._

To me it seems that the more likely explanation is that people who would have
made great scientists aren't attracted to the profession.

------
bradshaw1965
The percentage of smart people working in finance trended much higher then
science and engineering. Fake disciplines like "Financial Engineering" thus
became paramount. Institutions supported these changes.

~~~
awarzzkktsyfj
Just because people are making a lot of money in finance does not mean they
are smart, or would be capable working as an engineer or scientist.

~~~
wtn
Many of the best entry-level jobs in finance go to top engineering graduates.

------
arethuza
It's not just the US - it happened in the UK at the same time. Although it is
very obvious that in places like Germany this decline never happened (or at
least not to the same extent).

Interestingly enough, in a fairly recent poll of the Top 100 Britons an
engineer came second, only problem is he lived in the 19th century:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel>

------
triviatise
People chase what inspires them. The problem is that there are no heroes in
science like there are in sports. Here are a couple of ways to inspire people:
1) Huge prizes like the X prize for a variety of breakthroughs (milestones in
energy independence) Prizes should be 10M+ so they get a lot of media
attention. Turn the scientists into media celebrities. The main benefit is
that the government gets huge leverage for every dollar spent and doesnt spend
any money until a milestone is reached. 2) Create competitions for students to
teachers to professionals to compete in at every level similar to sports.
Televise (reality tv) and make the competitions fun. Make the prizes 100K
plus.

\---------------------- This is happening already with entrepreneurs - a few
young hotshots getting really wealthy in technology startups should generate
interest in science/math/tech. But definitely have inspired a generation to
start their own tech businesses.

Dancing with the stars, american idol, all the chef shows - have all increased
interest in those fields/hobbies.

------
obvioustroll
You might want to review the history of industrial pollution in the US - and
remember that it was all the miraculous promises of science that brought us
TMI, Love Canal, mercury poisoning in fish, smog and everything else.

To the average person, it seems obvious to them that "scientists" are why
companies can strip away entire mountains, it was "scientists" that killed all
the eagles with DDT, and, above all, it's "scientists" who assure us that
"ingredient X" give us cancer, or high blood pressure, or whatever, and then,
10 years later its "scientists" who then turn around and hail "ingredient X"
as the a panacea that will ensure you live a long and healthy life.

Now, you and I both know that's not how science works - but that's certainly
how it's perceived.

------
juiceandjuice
<http://www.phds.org/reading/schwartz/market.pdf>

[http://departments.colgate.edu/physics/miscelanneous/aiprep0...](http://departments.colgate.edu/physics/miscelanneous/aiprep02.pdf)

<http://physics.tsu.edu/Academics/EDphysund07.pdf>

Some good examples of how degrees in physics have changed relative to
population, enrollment, job markets, etc...

------
rospaya
First thought: the US no longer produces like before. Services have taken over
manufacturing.

~~~
thecabinet
> the US no longer produces like before

You're right about that, but not the way you meant:
[http://mercatus.org/publication/us-manufacturing-output-
vs-j...](http://mercatus.org/publication/us-manufacturing-output-vs-jobs-1975)

The US produces twice what it did in 1975 using a third fewer people.

------
karolisd
Was the social prestige of science and engineer higher before? I'm not sure if
I actually buy the premise.

~~~
Lost_BiomedE
I think there were a few times when we had blips higher. In the late 1800s and
early 1900s and during the space race. I can't find specific data on it, so it
is possible that re-written history has led me astray on this point.

I also think, given the pipeline visible in research, we will have a
resurgence in a decade or two.

~~~
dnautics
Your assumption is that an increased labor force will result in an increase in
productivity.

~~~
Lost_BiomedE
I wasn't thinking in terms of labor force. I was assuming current research
could lead to tech that has a very large impact on our daily lives, and that
this impact would increase positive perception the public has of scientists
and engineers. I think this happened in the early 1900s and could happen
again.

------
ronnier
Changing population base and other ways to make more money faster.

------
szany
Looking forward to China's inevitable Sputnik moment.

