TownieDeac
words are futile devices
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2011
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Hey man, get your own thread.
You're right. My bad.
Hey man, get your own thread.
I guess NPR's been doing a series on the (sad) state of science funding in the US since last week:
U.S. Science Suffering From Booms and Busts in Funding
When Scientists Give Up
I guess NPR's been doing a series on the (sad) state of science funding in the US since last week:
U.S. Science Suffering From Booms and Busts in Funding
When Scientists Give Up
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/201...university-jobs-for-americas-young-scientists
Imagine a job where about half of all the work is being done by people who are in training. That's, in fact, what happens in the world of biological and medical research.
In the United States, more than 40,000 temporary employees known as postdoctoral research fellows are doing science at a bargain price. And most postdocs are being trained for jobs that don't actually exist.
Academic institutions graduate an overabundance of biomedical Ph.D.s — and this imbalance is only getting worse, as research funding from the National Institutes of Health continues to wither.
Not "fuck you" yet, but if a particle accelerator creates a black hole that swallows the earth, then, yeah, "fuck you, science."
That's just the tip of the iceberg. Many PhD candidates are kept on a slow track so their advisers can get extra years of insanely cheap research labor out of them. 20k/year stipend for a 5th or 6th year doctoral student is cheaper than paying a postdoc fellow. And those people are very actively discouraged from moonlighting. I've know quite a few who picked up adjunct work at Forsyth Tech or WSSU to make some extra money and caught hell for it.
I got spoiled by the COL in Winston-Salem, big time. Living on a $24k/year stipend there is a breeze compared grad students' living situations in other cities, especially in the north. Up here, where the going rate for a dilapidated 1BR is about $1100, the grad students in my department mostly live in "alternative student housing" which goes for about $800/month, plus a roommate... more than what I paid in W-S to live alone in a 2BR. It definitely ain't a glamorous 4-6 years for most.
Hawking Radiation laughs at this notion. As does Stephen Hawking.
Oh, I'm aware of that. I'm also aware that Stephen Hawking has been wrong before.
You serious, Clark?
Yes, I'm serious that Hawking has been wrong before. He's admitted as much. I acknowledge that it is well accepted that mini black holes aren't going to swallow the earth, but, at one point in time, the theory of the ether was well accepted too.