The Value of Scientists & Engineers

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I noticed my favorite cartoons and books will have a brainy, scientist character. When this character becomes incapacitated for whatever reason, other people panic and say something like "we're done for" or "we're finished" even though they never usually comment on the worth of that person.

A Lilo & Stitch/Recess Cross Over had a character Gretchen get hit by a "lazy ray". Upon being rendered useless another character wailed, "We're doomed!"

A more famous example is probably when the world is ending during an episode of The Simpsons. A rocket that going to Mars loaded people up to be saved. It wasn't the A-list celebrities being saved but rather scientists/engineers.

When I read books on war, I noticed that engineers are not "killed" but they are "captured". I don't know the statistics, but I am guessing engineers have a higher survival rate being a Prisoner Of War rather than the common soldier.

I think this would be interesting to talk about. What do you think is the value of an engineers and scientists are to society? Does this agree with how society treats people in these professions?

Personally, I always thought that scientists/engineers were the "quiet heroes" whose inventions, contributions, and impact to Peoplekind are never reflected by society's consciousness.

For example, when we have a vaccination to protect against a horrible disease, people rarely ask who(m) invented it, but people usually ask who the artist is for a catchy tune.

As a retired engineer, I really appreciate your comments. Thanks!

Have you noticed those web sites and some news articles that talk about all of those massive underground bunkers built to save the elite people (politicians, lawyers, etc.) in case of a disaster? What will they do after the disaster if they are the only ones who are saved? Without engineers, farmers, etc. they are doomed to die slowly. (Hmmm, and the problem is?)

I find that awesome. What engineering field were you in? I am an majoring in Computer Science at my University and specializing in computer security.



It seems people like that are trained to think "inside the box", so it doesn't surprise me such a plan is so incomplete and short-sighted.

If I was asked to build such a bunker, I would refuse. It gives people like that more of an incentive to help the world than hinder it.

I am/was an electrical engineer, but in reality I spent most of my time in the later years pounding code. Most was pure software, but a lot was microcode for processors.

I did industrial automation for 20 years...

Currently thinking of getting a tech-ed degree to teach people to do what I used to do (god help them).

I always felt like I was surrounded by Pakleds... Treacherous, ungrateful Pakleds.

Electrical Engineer here, and thank you for the comments!

I'll retire in about 10-15 years, and I often wonder who will replace me. Not that I'm anywhere near being Nobel Prize material, but that those whom I've interviewed for Junior Engineer positions are sadly lacking in both practical and theoretical understanding. Most can not identify standard electrical or electronic components - they don't know the difference between "NEMA-14" and "74LS14", for example - and these are people who have spent the last 4 to 5 years at university allegedly earning their Bachelor of Science degrees in Electrical Engineering!

Plus, if a person graduates high school, he or she is either on the "A-Track" to college, going into the military, or just hoping to find a sales job somewhere.

Whatever happened to Vocational-Technical education in high schools? Not everybody is engineer material, and not everybody else can get a job flipping burgers. Somewhere in the middle is a great lack of people that know how to do things, like run an NC machine, an injection molder, or a simple lathe. So why not offer more of these types of classes to high-school students?

And if they're offered, why don't more students take them?

I am learning so far in my undergraduate degree that one needs to have a passion for engineering to do well.

Good engineers not only learn inside the classroom but outside the classroom. It seems like you interviewed young people who did not delve any further than what their classes required.

I am curious, does the university a student graduates from hold weight in an interview? Say that there was a person who went to a state school and another went to MIT. If they had the same skill set, would you hire the MIT person or flip a coin or...?

I got my degree in astronomy, but I do mechanical design and machining these days. I'm not sure where that puts me on the scale, but I also thank you for the comments!

I'll second what you said about votech classes, Fnord. Even better is if scientists and engineers both take votech classes when they're in high school. There's nothing more baffling than finding a mechanical engineer who designs things that are either impossible to make, or needlessly difficult to make simply because they've never touched a machine tool and don't know how parts actually get made.

Part of the answer to why students don't take votech classes when they're offered is that for some reason high school career counselors made the distinction between college-bound and not college-bound students. College-bound students were encouraged to load up on academic electives and not to take votech classes. I was encouraged not to, and didn't. I'm still irritated and confused by this since I've enjoyed using my hands since before I started kindergarten! But I bought into it. I didn't get my first exposure to machine tools until college, and that was by skipping a class to watch, talk, and learn. In the end I flunked the class because I kept on skipping it, but gained my eventual career path. Had I taken votech classes in high school I might have had a six year jump on this and not flunked that class!

With schools participating in events like FIRST Robotics, it would make sense for MORE students to be enrolled in votech classes. Heck, make it a requirement. If you participate in a robotics or underwater ROV team, you must complete a basic shop course as a prerequisite. Schools could use this to upgrade their shop tools and to expand their votech curricula. Certainly the robotics and ROV teams would improve as a result!

Anyway, I'm getting off topic...

I do think society as a whole places value on science and engineering. Look at popular TV shows that revolve around that theme. The classic one is, of course, MacGuyver. And it was a popular show! More recent examples on the science end would include shows like Bones, or in the more speculative fiction sense, Eureka. There are other examples out there, too. This is just a small sample.

Even so, the subscription rate to magazines like Invention & Technology is a lot lower than, say, Rolling Stone. And I think there is still a weird bias that people in the science and engineering fields are, on the whole, rather boring. I can say first-hand from working with a bunch of scientists and engineers that this is far from the truth. So how are scientists and engineers treated by society? Certainly not like MacGuyver.

Unfortunately I can't lay this entirely at the feet of the popular media. Scientists and engineers are notoriously bad at playing up the highlights of their fields. There are some notorious exceptions here, such as Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Stephen Jay Gould. But most scientists and engineers aren't up to that level of eloquence. Many do come across as dry and boring, even when they aren't once you get to know them.

See? I'm doing it, too! I bet that was too dry and boring to read all the way through to here! Somebody loan me a Swiss army knife and some tin foil! I need to make a rocket!

It does matter to some degree. If someone went to an accredited university with a good solid program, that carries more weight than someone who took correspondence classes. But even more important, in my mind, is simply how the person comes across during the interview. I'll tell them a story and see if they laugh at the sticky parts, or I'll ask them to tell me a story and hear what they say. The former gives me a clue how well they know their field, and more important how much exposure they've had to different aspects of it. The second tells me if they'll be easy to work with.

That last bit probably needs a little explanation so it doesn't sound rude and judgmental, especially given the nature of the forum. When I ask someone to tell me a story, I'm not trying to find out how good their social skills are. What I want to hear is how things went wrong or how things became difficult, and how the solutions were found. If someone goes off on a long-winded success story filled with "And then I..." "But I was able to..." "And I was the only one who..." I'm not really interested. But if someone tells me a story where there was a real puzzler that had everyone stumped, that's better. Even if they weren't the ones who ultimately solved the problem, that's fine by me. They know how to identify a problem, they know the basics of troubleshooting, and they're willing to give credit where credit is due. I'll take that over a particular school any day.

I used to run into stuff like this all the time... Designs that worked great on paper but just didn't work in the real world.

Engineers would be baffled as to why their I/O transformers were eating fuses on the primary side. After having me replace two or three good transformers, they'd finally listen to reason and adjust start-up timings. It's easy to forget that it takes more current to start things than it does to run them when you only deal with virtual components...



Schools are beginning to do this...

One of the reasons I'm thinking of changing majors is because my uni's new tech-ed program emphasizes a "concept to completion" skill set. Basically the state wants applied science teachers that can show students what all that physics and math is good for. You design your projects on paper and then you build them in the real world.

That's the idea as pitched to me anyway... It's a good plan--if only the state will commit enough money to the schools to make it happen.

Whatever field of knowledge, if one truly wants to learn it, then their wanting must have the passion of true desire, complete with obsession, compulsion, and the delusion that their is no other way to live.

Pretty much. Most had hobbies like surfing, bicycling, and camping. None had hobbies like Amateur Radio, audio/video production, or "Robowars".

In a sense, yes. In reality, I've found that new hires with higher degrees tend to rely on the reputations of their schools more than their own skills, while a person with an Associate's Degree from ITT Tech or Bell & Howell tends to rely on his or her abilities instead of their schools' reputations. Personally, I'd rather hire B-average candidate with a Bachelor's Degree and an Amateur Radio license than an Honors Graduate from MIT with a fraternity pin. The former is likely to be more interested in finding the most practical solution, while the latter is more concerned with having the "right" answer.

The "right" answer is not always the best answer: a practical solution is economical, effective, and efficient; while the "right" answer may have only one of these - sometimes two - but never all.

the problem comes from having programs that force kids and young adults into systems where they're forced to learn everything and become good at nothing. we don't bother spending the time to teach them how to do these things. we just rush people from one class to another, 8 classes a day, and of course they never really learn the ins and outs of anything.

what happens is you have to teach them the ins and outs at the company. this is why companies should concentrate on making and keeping good employees. these people aren't geniuses. they may not have even had the time to properly learn the material while they were at school thanks to the lack to quiet places to study and sleep and the fact that they may have had to work in school. what you do is take the time to teach them all these details.



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most people weren't born with silver spoons in their mouths. hobbies like "Amateur Radio, audio/video production, or "Robowars"" cost a lot of damn money.

That's true. Our robotics club had to depend on sponsors for parts and travel costs.

Then again, it just takes some imagination too. I used to shop at thrift shops or salvation army to buy an old radios, tools, and computer parts for only $5 in total. Then, at home, I would take them apart and use some of the older LEDs in a breadboard I saved up for. I learned a lot for $5.

It might not be ideal since the technology is older but one can still learn a lot from it.

We don't teach people how to think anymore. Memorizing the formula for glucose does not contribute to an understanding of how photosynthesis works. You could say that it's the parents that need to teach their kids how to think (since schools never did teach thinking skills, only rote memorization) but it's not the parents as much as the workforce and work in general. People no longer work with their hands. Everything is too distant, whether it's working in an office sitting in front of a computer all day or having heavy machinery doing everything. This anti-social method of work and communication breeds impatience, and in order to learn this stuff, you have to be patient. Blame it on the kids all you want, but if you stick anyone from any time period in front of a computer screen and have them answer telephones all day, they won't know what to do in a face to face situation either.

Many people learn to think effectively all by themselves.

ruveyn