US losing lead in science and engineering

[Petyr Baelish]

Way to go ID! Teaching the "controversy" makes us stronger!

US losing lead in science and engineering: study

A study has found that US dominance in science and engineering may be slipping, as America's share of graduates in these fields falls, in comparison to Europe and developing nations.

The study, written by Richard Freeman at the US National Bureau of Economic Research in Washington, warned that changes in the global science and engineering job market may require a long period of adjustment for US workers.

Moves by international companies to shift jobs in information technology, high-tech manufacturing and research and development to low-income developing countries were just "harbingers" of that longer-term adjustment, Mr Freeman said.

He says urgent action was needed to ensure that slippage in science and engineering education and research, a bulwark of the US productivity boom and resurgence during the 1990s, did not undermine America's global economic leadership.

The United States has had a substantial lead in science and technology since World War II.

With just 5 per cent of the world's population, it employs almost a third of science and engineering researchers, accounts for 40 per cent of research and development spending and publishes 35 per cent of science and engineering research papers.

Many of the world's top high-tech firms are American, and government spending on defence-related technology ensures the US military's technological dominance on battlefields.

But the roots of this lead may be eroding, he says.

Numbers of science and engineering graduates from European and Asian universities are soaring while new degrees in the United States have stagnated - cutting its overall share.

In 2000, the paper said, 17 per cent of university bachelor degrees in the US were in science and engineering compared with a world average of 27 per cent and 52 per cent in China.

The picture among doctorates - key to advanced scientific research - was more striking.

In 2001, universities in the European Union granted 40 per cent more science and engineering doctorates than the United States, with that figure expected to reach nearly 100 per cent by about 2010, the study showed.

The study said deteriorating opportunities and comparative wages for young science and engineering graduates has discouraged US students from entering these fields, but not those born in other countries.

- Reuters

Source (http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200507/s1410561.htm)

[Sulla the Dictator]

In 2000, the paper said, 17 per cent of university bachelor degrees in the US were in science and engineering compared with a world average of 27 per cent and 52 per cent in China.


Don't let Dan find out. He's not going to take it well.

[A. Radek]

Most people in the U.S. smart enough to go to college and major in science and engineering are smart enough to figure out there are better paying careers that can't be outsourced to foreign students, and the results of this policy by American corporations is the best and brightest go into Law or tax accounting or entertainment or finance, or even food service, as in Cordon Bleu chef schools or something, rather than waste a tremendous amount of intellectual effort on engineering and science degrees, training for jobs that will automatically go to much cheaper foreign grads.

The universities themselves started this trend back in the early 1980's, by replacing Americans in grad school teaching assistant positions rather than raise the base pay for assistant instructors. At UT, you couldn't hardly find a physics lecturer who could speak decent enough English to even answer questions in class; they just started this 'physics open lab' thing, where they paid a work-study grunt to answer student questions and help them with homework problems. Forget even finding your Middle Eastern or Chinese grad student 'teacher' even having office hours, or even an office.

There was an hilarious spot on Lou Dobbs one night, where some pro illegal immigrant criminal was mouthing about how the schools are weak and 'nobody in the U.S. is taking science and math', followed just 30 seconds later by waxing poetic hyperbole on how there are all these foreign students coming to the U.S. to major in just those subjects. They contradict themselves constantly on this absolute BS about American education. You can't have it both ways; the schools and students are bad on the one hand, but then to make another 'point' later in the same segment that all these 'better educated, superior foreign students' are being hired from the very schools you just blasted 30 seconds before. Sounds like the same 'logic' used by the 'We're doing jobs Americans won't do' criminal lobby.

They people mouthing this stuff are obviously not smart enough to have a clue whether the schools they're lying about are bad or not. The morons on that segment certainly didn't have a clue they had just contradicted themselves, and need a refresher in high school logic.

[A. Radek]

I would add that the people I know with engineering degrees are constantly being laid off, or working on 'temp assignment's', as 'contractors', etc. they constantly move every year trying to stay employed, sometimes three or four times a year. It's ridiculous, and after all that, they end up facing the horrendous age discrimination by the time they are in their 40's, quite a few companies consider 35 to be 'washed up'. The companies spouting this nonsense of a 'labor shortage' are bald faced liars.

[A. Radek]

The study said deteriorating opportunities and comparative wages for young science and engineering graduates has discouraged US students from entering these fields, but not those born in other countries.


Yes, indeed ...

" Just yesterday, I was stealing goats in my village in Turkey! Today, I'm a consulting Physicist for Sandia Labs! $300 a month, like clockwork, and room over my boss's garage all to myself!!! I love this country!". - Pakwar Amed

[Petyr Baelish]

Most people in the U.S. smart enough to go to college and major in science and engineering are smart enough to figure out there are better paying careers that can't be outsourced to foreign students, and the results of this policy by American corporations is the best and brightest go into Law or tax accounting or entertainment or finance, or even food service, as in Cordon Bleu chef schools or something, rather than waste a tremendous amount of intellectual effort on engineering and science degrees, training for jobs that will automatically go to much cheaper foreign grads.

I absolutely agree. These days, the only worthwhile career to be pursued with a science degree is medicine, which, incidentally, requires 10+ years of additional education and training, thus deterring many potential applicants. Unfortunately, even doctors aren't safe from the outsourcing plague nowadays:

Outsourcing Medical Care to India (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6160812/site/newsweek/)


...
With broadband Internet and the latest digital imaging equipment, Indian hospitals can now send X-rays to Mass Gen in Boston or MRI scans to Guy's Hospital in the U.K. for consultations. Combined with the country's low labor costs, that's drawing an increasing number of patients from abroad to Indian hospitals.

The trend is driven in part by long waiting lists and high costs in countries like Britain and Canada. Like software outsourcing firms, Indian hospitals offer quality at Third World prices. The number of foreign patients seeking treatment in India—now 100,000—is growing by 12 percent to 15 percent a year, says the Indian Healthcare Federation.
...

What am I to do with my training in the life sciences? I am considering applying to medical school, but who knows how much of medicine will be outsourced 10 years from now? I certainly can't stomach the fact of going through four years of medical school and five years of residency to find out that my potential earnings have been slashed in half because Rajiv in Bombay can do my job for a tenth of the price.

[A. Radek]

What am I to do with my training in the life sciences? I am considering applying to medical school, but who knows how much of medicine will be outsourced 10 years from now? I certainly can't stomach the fact of going through four years of medical school and five years of residency to find out that my potential earnings have been slashed in half because Rajiv in Bombay can do my job for a tenth of the price.

Go for plastic surgery, or pick up some Botany classes, greenhouse training, and:

http://www.nirvana-shop.com/

this forum can help you out getting started:

http://forum.cannabis-seeds.cc/

Even Pharmacology grads these days are ending up at Wally World for $30-$40k; not anywhere near worth the cost of school. You can make that managing a Taco Bell or even more driving a truck, where training is free and lasts about 3 months.

Start with the 'PPP(fem)' from this page, or, if you're in the U.S./N.A. area, the purple skunk is very popular.

http://www.nirvana-shop.com/ppp-fem-p-101.html

[Petr]

Way to go ID! Teaching the "controversy" makes us stronger!
Laughable non sequitur scapegoating, but what else can you expect from an obsessed materialist reductionist. :rolleyes:


Petr

[Petyr Baelish]

Go for plastic surgery, or pick up some Botany classes, greenhouse training, and:

http://www.nirvana-shop.com/

this forum can help you out getting started:

http://forum.cannabis-seeds.cc/


A novel idea, but where I live, cannabis cultivation was outsourced to Mexico ages ago.

[Petyr Baelish]

Laughable non sequitur scapegoating, but what else can you expect from an obsessed materialist reductionist. :rolleyes:


Petr

Do you deny that the anti-scientific sentiment popularized by ID ("science is godless", etc...) has the effect of portraying science in a negative light to impressionable, religious American teenagers?

[Petr]

Do you deny that the anti-scientific sentiment popularized by ID ("science is godless", etc...) has the effect of portraying science in a negative light to impressionable, religious American teenagers?
You evos seem to believe in your own silly strawmen.

Intelligent design doesn't teach that "science is godless". It says that wild speculations about spontaneous evolution are bad science. If in power, ID would probably make science more efficient than ever.

But ID is not yet even remotely in power, so how can you scapegoat it on this? :rolleyes:


Petr

[Petyr Baelish]

You evos seem to believe in your own silly strawmen.

What is an 'evo'? Is it a Finnish word that does not translate directly into English? Please enlighten me.

Intelligent design doesn't teach that "science is godless"

This is patently false. As memos such as the infamous "Wedge document" as well as countless quotations by notable IDiotist spokespersons such as Behe and Dembski make clear, IDiotism is totally opposed to what they term "scientific naturalism", which is a euphemism for the scientific method. While IDiotists concentrate their attacks mainly on the theory of evolution, one of the strongest scientific theories in existence, it should be noted that most Cretinist groups take their hatred of science further, by denying all of mainstream astrophysics (modern cosmology does not agree with a 6,000 year-old universe), chemistry (dating methods are a bitch when they refute your religion's creation myths), geology (modern geology does not support a 6,000-year-old earth), and other fields of science. To simply wrap all of these disparate disciplines into one package and call them "evolution" would be dishonesty at its worst; it should be obvious to any rational observer that what Cretinists/IDiotist are really struggling against is any explanation of natural phenomena that does not make reference to the supernatural. Since science concerns itself only with natural, empirical phenomena, the reason why Cretinists/IDiotists hate it so much is self-evident.

It says that wild speculations about spontaneous evolution are bad science.

That is something you and I can both agree on; wild speculations about anything are bad science. Thankfully, very little of what is done in modern evolutionary biology today is "wild speculation"; we have over a century of research in developmental biology, genetics, microbiology, biochemistry, paleonthology, and geology to use as guideposts in research. On the other hand, ID, despite claiming to be a 'scientific movement', bases most of its claims on arguments from ignorance and flawed anaologies (e.g. "My flawed calculations tell me that it was extremely unlikely for this biological mechanism to have evolved, therefore Biblegod did it" or "My computer is complex, and I built it. That flower over there is complex, therefore Biblegod built it"). IDiotism is unfalsifiable and is consistent with every conceivable state of affairs. These traits, coupled with the fact that ID has not generated a single experiment or peer-reviewed research paper, move it firmly out of the realm of science and into the realm of religious pseudoscience. Although the fact that an anti-scientific movement refuses to engage in science is not at all surprising, it only serves to re-inforce the correct impression that IDiotism is not, and has never been a scientific movement, but is rather a fundamentalist Christian reaction to forces that threaten the fundamentalist worldview, badly masquerading as science.

If in power, ID would probably make science more efficient than ever.


Allowing "God did it" as the explanation for anything we do not completely understand would indeed make science "more efficient" in the sense that it would put an end to all scientific enquiry. You for instance, have, time and time again, demonstrated woeful and inexcusable ignorance of the basic tenets of science (e.g. ignorance of falsifiability), and indeed, a hatred for science itself. Would instituting doctrines formulated by those who hate the methods of science and everything science stands for really make science "more efficient than ever"?

But ID is not yet even remotely in power, so how can scapegoat it on this?


ID, being anti-scientific (not simply unscientific, mind you) is universally rejected by the scientific community; it has never been a scientific movement, however - its influence lies in its ability to influence the opinions of those, who, like yourself, are religious, and completely ignorant of science (i.e. the American public).

[Petyr Baelish]

IDiotist guru Michael Behe acknowledges that ID is as scientific as astrology:


Astrology would be considered a scientific theory if judged by the same criteria used by a well-known advocate of Intelligent Design to justify his claim that ID is science, a landmark US trial heard on Tuesday.

Under cross examination, ID proponent Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, admitted his definition of “theory” was so broad it would also include astrology.

The trial is pitting 11 parents from the small town of Dover, Pennsylvania, against their local school board. The board voted to read a statement during a biology class that casts doubt on Darwinian evolution and suggests ID as an alternative.

The parents claim this was an attempt to introduce creationism into the curriculum and that the school board members were motivated by their evangelical Christian beliefs. It is illegal to teach anything with a primarily religious purpose or effect on pupils in government-funded US schools.

Supporters of ID believe that some things in nature are simply too complex to have evolved by natural selection, and therefore must be the work of an intelligent designer.
Peer review

Behe was called to the stand on Monday by the defence, and testified that ID was a scientific theory, and was not “committed” to religion. His cross examination by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Eric Rothschild of the Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton, began on Tuesday afternoon.

Rothschild told the court that the US National Academy of Sciences supplies a definition for what constitutes a scientific theory: “Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.”

Because ID has been rejected by virtually every scientist and science organisation, and has never once passed the muster of a peer-reviewed journal paper, Behe admitted that the controversial theory would not be included in the NAS definition. “I can’t point to an external community that would agree that this was well substantiated,” he said.

Behe said he had come up with his own “broader” definition of a theory, claiming that this more accurately describes the way theories are actually used by scientists. “The word is used a lot more loosely than the NAS defined it,” he says.
Hypothesis or theory?

Rothschild suggested that Behe’s definition was so loose that astrology would come under this definition as well. He also pointed out that Behe’s definition of theory was almost identical to the NAS’s definition of a hypothesis. Behe agreed with both assertions.

The exchange prompted laughter from the court, which was packed with local members of the public and the school board.

Behe maintains that ID is science: “Under my definition, scientific theory is a proposed explanation which points to physical data and logical inferences.”

“You've got to admire the guy. It’s Daniel in the lion’s den,” says Robert Slade, a local retiree who has been attending the trial because he is interested in science. "But I can’t believe he teaches a college biology class."

The cross examination will continue Wednesday, with the trial expected to finish on 4 November.
...

Source (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8178)

[Hippias]

IDiotism is totally opposed to what they term "scientific naturalism", which is a euphemism for the scientific method.

That's not accurate. Naturalism is a metaphysical position, not a method. It holds that nothing exists apart from the natural world of matter in motion. It is assumed by philosophically naive scientists who regard the scientific method as the epistemic gold standard based on its success at discovering and explaining empirical phenomena.

While IDiotists concentrate their attacks mainly on the theory of evolution, one of the strongest scientific theories in existence, it should be noted that most Cretinist groups take their hatred of science further, by denying all of mainstream astrophysics (modern cosmology does not agree with a 6,000 year-old universe), chemistry (dating methods are a bitch when they refute your religion's creation myths), geology (modern geology does not support a 6,000-year-old earth), and other fields of science.

I don't think Intelligent Design advocates are trying to prove that the earth and universe are six thousand years old. What they're arguing is that an account of the natural world that purports to explain its origins in terms of non-personal causes is an inadequate explaination.

[Petyr Baelish]

That's not accurate. Naturalism is a metaphysical position, not a method.

The scientific method is based on naturalist assumptions.

It holds that nothing exists apart from the natural world of matter in motion.

Correct. This is slightly modified in the scientific methods to "science does not investigate the question of what may or may not exist outside of the natural world."

It is assumed by philosophically naive scientists who regard the scientific method as the epistemic gold standard based on its success at discovering and explaining empirical phenomena.

The scientific method is held as the epistemic gold standard because it's the only method that works.



What they're arguing is that an account of the natural world that purports to explain its origins in terms of non-personal causes is an inadequate explaination.

There is no logical reason to believe this to be the case. Intelligent Design advocates are, without exception, motivated not by scientific or philosophical qualms with the scientific method, but rather, by their religous convictions.

[A. Radek]

True. All the ID's have proven is that they have absolutely no clue whatsoever about what science is supposed to do and how it does it. They are merely an ideological farce.

[Hippias]

The scientific method is based on naturalist assumptions.

It shouldn't be. The scientific method tests only a small subset of nature.

The scientific method is held as the epistemic gold standard because it's the only method that works.

The scientific method works well at explaining empirical, material phenomena. That does not mean that anything that cannot be detected through empirical, scientific investigation does not exist or is not meaningful. For example, our mental states cannot be known empirically. Certainly there is a correlation between my physical brain states and my thoughts. For instance, when I think of something like a building, or how to solve a calculus problem, there is some neuronal activity in the brain these thoughts are associated with; but the electro-chemical events in my brain that my thoughts trigger are not the same thing as my thoughts because the properties they possess are different than those found in the physical brain. Furthermore, we know logical truths like 2+2=4 and the law of noncontradiction through the faculty of reason, not empirical investigation. So it is not true that the only meaningful knowledge we can possess is knowledge gained from empirical investigation. The scientific method will only turn up empirical data because that is what it is supposed to find.


There is no logical reason to believe this to be the case. Intelligent Design advocates are, without exception, motivated not by scientific or philosophical qualms with the scientific method, but rather, by their religous convictions.

The ID advocates take issue with naturalism, not the scientific method.

[Petyr Baelish]

It shouldn't be. The scientific method tests only a small subset of nature.

The scientific method is, in theory, capable of empirically verifying any natural phenomenon.

The scientific method works well at explaining empirical, material phenomena.

Correct. The evolution of modern life forms is one of these phenomena.

That does not mean that anything that cannot be detected through empirical, scientific investigation does not exist or is not meaningful.

That is a non sequitur. Anything that has an impact upon our material universe can be detected empiricially; if something cannot have a detectable effect on our universe, it is, for all intents and purposes, nonexistent.

For example, our mental states cannot be known empirically.

That's an argument from ignorance. The fact that we've (thankfully) not yet developed technology that allows us to do this does not mean that it can not be done. We already have technology that can test certain states of mind - for instance technology that can detect whether someone is lying, or whether someone is a sociopath.

Furthermore, we know logical truths like 2+2=4 and the law of noncontradiction through the faculty of reason, not empirical investigation.

Precisely my point. In order to arrive at anything resembling knowledge, we must apply an internally consistent system of investigation to our data. Aristotlean logic is such a system applied to reasoning, and the scientific method is one such system applied to empricial phenomena.


The ID advocates take issue with naturalism, not the scientific method.

Naturalism is as integral to the scientific method as the three analytic truths are to Aristotlean logic. If any one of the three analytical truths is removed, the entire Aristotlean system implodes; likewise, removing naturalism from the framework of the scientific method accomplishes the same reductio ad absurdum. The scientific method is the only internally consistent method of empirical investigation that we know of which consistently returns accurate and verifiable results. Unless IDiotists/Cretinists can come up with a demonstrably superior method of empirical inquiry, the scientific method should be used by default.