The U.S. and Syria - by Dia
Vivian on 19/9/2013 at 09:46
Sometimes. Let me put it this way. Is a trainee doctor a doctor?
SubJeff on 19/9/2013 at 10:28
Yes.
But I don't think you're using the term properly.
You have medical students, who are not doctors.
You have trainee doctors, who are doctors but they are training in a speciality with the aim of becoming a consultant. They are still doctors.
You have, in the UK, Staff Grades or Trust Grade doctors. They are doctors trained in a speciality to a certain point but who either haven't finished their UK training or who were trained overseas in a country where the training is not recognised for consultant posts. They may stay as SG or TG doctors for the rest of their career but they usually do further training and of course get more experience and so can become consultants that way.
You have consultants/attending physicians/specialists who have completed their speciality training/got in the SG route.
You have sub-specialists who are consultants who do subspecialty work. E.g. Specialist hip surgeons.
The subspecialty guys can get super specific.
This stratification is UK specific and I don't know how it mirrors academic research really.
Vivian on 19/9/2013 at 10:34
Right, well, take it from me. I've worked in a few labs and visited a lot more, I've been part of the hiring procedure from both ends, and I'm currently in my second professional research position. To get a job as a scientist, to be paid to do it, you have to have a PhD. I don't know what other definition of being a 'real scientist' you would use. Not having a PhD does not stop you being intelligent and does not stop you applying the scientific method, but it does mean people will always question your abilities and think it's a bit odd that you don't have a PhD, and it DEFINITELY stops you getting a job as a scientist. You get me?
SubJeff on 19/9/2013 at 10:44
Do you think that it's based on speciality then? I was working in a small department with 4 PhDs, 1 PhD student (with an MSc), 2 MScs, one MSc student, 4 lab techs. I had a choice - do a PhD or go do medicine. When I left my MSc place was taken by someone else with an MSc. This was behavioural pharmacology research, we all got paid except the MSc student.
Vivian on 19/9/2013 at 10:50
Hmm. Ok, maybe I'm wrong. It's deffo the case in biomechanics, palaeontology, general anatomy and earth sciences, in my experience.
SubJeff on 19/9/2013 at 10:55
Don't get me wrong - I was encouraged to do a PhD which was why I was even thinking about it really. It was along the lines of "you need to do a PhD if you want to be the head of your own team/lab/department one day". I saw it as the natural progression for me if I hadn't gone to do medicine, but where I worked (The Institute of Psychiatry in London) there were loooooads of people with BScs and MScs who were jobbing scientists. Some of them planned to go do PhDs, some of them didn't.
I've only got experience for the one place though.
Briareos H on 19/9/2013 at 11:23
Quote Posted by Vivian
Hmm. Ok, maybe I'm wrong. It's deffo the case in biomechanics, palaeontology, general anatomy and earth sciences, in my experience.
Add all applied and theoretical mathematics and physics including chemistry and other hard science fields to that list. You can be a scientist without a PhD, you can do research work without a PhD but you definitely can't call yourself a researcher (academic) without being post-doc. Well, you can, but nobody will take you seriously.
Jason Moyer on 19/9/2013 at 11:45
Quote Posted by faetal
It's pretty obvious that the entire world is going to immediately turn on anyone who does so and they haven't been used in a way which would confer any strategic benefit.
What strategic benefit did Saddam Hussein gain when he gassed the Kurds, and what sort of response did the world have to it? I think the answer to both parts of that question is the same.
Chade on 19/9/2013 at 12:09
Quote Posted by faetal
Consensus. It's not about opinions, it's about findings and analysis. You want a social policy which does X, you don't get some populist idiot saying something catchy, you want research which looks at how different variables have their impact.
Case in point: austerity as a response to financial crises - governments were repeatedly warned by economists that it would make matters worse and slow down recovery, but e.g. the UK government went ahead with it anyway.
Well hold on, now. Yes, you have a lot of economists predicting the slowdown. But there were also a lot of economists predicting the opposite. Guys from the world bank, well renowned researchers, lots of people with credentials that are just as good as the "good guys". You don't really seem to get consensus in macro-economics.
Speaking of which ...
Quote Posted by faetal
Academics don't just make discoveries up out of thin air and opinions - you have to interrogate existing knowledge, find something which requires an explanation, find rigorous ways to test it and then see what those tests say. What you're talking about above actually resembles the way political parties appear way more than e.g. science does.
This is harder to do (and often downright impossible) in the social sciences ... which is what the vast majority of government decisions would be based on. Plus, the incentives in science are currently politically neutral. I personally don't believe science would continue to work this way in practice if discoveries started to directly impact the way a country is run.
I suspect one reason it's hard to get consensus in macro-economics is that the field of study is comparatively close to the seat of power. I think if you were to turn other fields into politically important areas, you'd see the science done in those fields start to fracture along political lines too.
In other words, if we want to keep the politics out of science, it is probably necesary to keep science at arms length from politics!
Quote Posted by Vivian
Hmm. Ok, maybe I'm wrong. It's deffo the case in biomechanics, palaeontology, general anatomy and earth sciences, in my experience.
There are some well known computer science researchers without PhDs (well, I'm thinking of one off the top of my head, and I'm sure I could find more), but it's not the norm.
Gryzemuis on 20/9/2013 at 15:45
I'm sorry I didn't reply earlier. I had a really shitty day yesterday.
Quote:
No, but having a PhD does guarantee the aptitude past a certain threshold.
I am sure that in many research areas, having a PhD is necessary to carry any weight. But there are also areas where it means less. E.g. my area of expertise was computer networking. It was so new, that nobody could have studied it in detail in a PhD study anyway. Being smart and having fresh ideas was more important than any formal education.
Maybe new areas need more new laws and policies than old areas ? A certain amount of political decisions need to be made about new stuff, or stuff that has changed a lot. New areas. So new expertise is needed. Maybe less oldschool academic thinking.
Getting a PhD would not be similar to getting your "voting license". I don't think that's right. And I think it will be misused within years by all parties.
Medicine, biology, and also computer networking are areas where stuff can be tested easily. It works, or it doesn't work. Economy is not so easy. You think bailing out banks with stimulus money had a good impact on economy ? You don't know. Nobody did a double-blind test. Not all decision making can be backed up by scientific research. Ethical questions are even harder.
And I have absolutely no faith in anyone who is involved with sociology, political science, antropology and other such "soft" studies. Because most theories can't be tested. But also because the whole field seems to have a completely different attitude than "beta studies" (physics, math, chemisty, computer science, etc).
Quote:
Have you read a systematic review on climate science?
No. Because it hardly interests me. And because I don't know which sources or experts to believe. I don't think it matters. Even if global warming is true, and it is man-made, I don't think we can do anything about it. So it's a non-issue for me. Global warming will be a fact of life, and we'll just have to deal with it. No way we in the first world can convince 1B chinese and 1B indians to give up their new (or future) wealth, for a possible improvement in the future. And no amount of science or scientific proof is gonna change that.
Anyway, I didn't want to start a discussion on whether global warming. I just wanted to point out an example of where science can give us a well-accepted problem-description. But that doesn't mean they have an answer. Or are the right guys to determine how to construct/balance an answer. Their suggestions will be just as biased, unproven and random as the suggestions made by politicians.
The world community has not been able to solve hunger in the world. And that's a simple problem. There is enough food. It's only a matter of proper (re)distribution. And still people die of hunger, malnutrition and diseases linked to lack of proper food (and water). If we can't fix that, I am 100% sure we can't fix global warming neither.
