Why Science Sucks

Not really. But apparently for many, it does. It does for me too, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why – about 15 years of thinking about why.

I have a B.S. in biology, specifically, marine biology. I got this degree from the University of New Hampshire’s College of Life Science and Agriculture, which at the time was one of UNH’s biggest programs. This covered general biology, specialized biology, aspects of pre-med and pre-vet, ecology, animal management and a whole suitcase worth of agricultural and plant science studies. The only other school that really outdid or rivaled COLSA, I believe, was the business school. Needless to say, there were a lot of students attending UNH for life science degrees.

I knew things were going to get rough when, during the first year, first semester survey class, the instructor pulled the old “look to your left, and then your right; two out of the three of you won’t earn a degree from this (COLSA) school” bit. That was actually rather frightening at the time, because we all thought we were there to be scientists. The idea of washing out of this dream, presented only days after we moved into our first dorm room, was terrifying because that meant we’d have to come up with another major, go undeclared liberal arts, or leave school. What really made me sweat, though, was when the COLSA freshman’s “dirty secret” was revealed: the majority of people had chosen marine biology as a career because they wanted to work with dolphins.

I kid you not. That is an actual statement, and not a representation of a trend. People applied to this school, packed up, left home, and decided to devote 4 years of their lives (minimum) to life science because they wanted to work with the most “charismatic” marine mammal in the world, and thought that a degree in marine biology was the first step towards achieving that goal. Although I wasn’t specifically there for that specific purpose, I , too, had an idea that I’d like to work with marine animals. Maybe studying migration patterns, or even behavior of goldfish. I really didn’t know; I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do, and I somehow decided that marine biology was going to provide the specifics as the studies progressed.

I was wrong. So friggin wrong that I might as well have said that I wanted to work with dolphins, too. What we got was a lot of staring into microscopes at Daphnia, which is about as far from a dolphin as the Earth is from the center of existence. There was a lot of book work. A lot of writing. I don’t think any lab I had involved anything larger then a hot dog, certainly not anything as large as a dolphin. At some point, I realized that I felt let down, and even cheated. This “science” wasn’t what I felt I had been lead to believe it would be, and I’m sure the pod of dolphin-lovers felt the same way.

Students in high school aren’t prepared for what science really is, at least not the “hard” sciences like biology and chemistry. Any advanced focus on “science” in high school is really a focus on “engineering”. The NYT article linked above talks a lot about making robots, or toothpick bridges, or safe-egg drops. This is good for students who decide they want to make the next iPod, but anything beyond that is far more esoteric, and I’m not fully convinced that America’s high school teachers are really qualified to prepare a student to understand exactly how life and chemical sciences work in the real world. I don’t blame teachers, don’t get me wrong. Engineering is a straight arrow; 2+2 will always equal 4, so once you know it, you know it. Life and chemical sciences are about discovering what’s not known, which requires the fostering of the ability to engage in critical thinking, and in problem solving. Moreover, scientific method requires that the scientist be willing, able and, in some cases, to actively seek out failure. In science, disproving a theory is just as important as proving one, but high school isn’t about teaching one how to accept failure; it’s about teaching students how to succeed.

Another thing they don’t tell you about the world of science is that it can be a barrel filled to the top with douchebags and assholes. I was told later on in college that learning how to do science is really only about 25% of what you need if you want to do science. The other 75% is who you know, and once you know the right people, what you accomplish. Science is very results driven, more so then what we expect from stereotypical business office culture. You need money to do the science, so you need to apply for grants or beg at the right feet to get it, and you need to prove that you’re competent enough not to squander it by having done previous science, or by getting an established scientist to put in a good word for you. There’s a lot of back-stabbing, ass kissing and pettiness involved in “doing science”, which is something that I absolutely, positively refuse to engage in. Because of the amount of students in COLSA, there weren’t enough lab opportunities to go around, so it was brutally difficult to get into a lab, even to just wash glassware (which I actually offered to do in one lab, just to get my foot in the door. I was denied).

At any rate, I left college with the degree I intended to obtain. I barely obtained by degree; it required some last minute credit shuffling and some summer classes to shore up my flagging scores in math (math which wasn’t really needed for the biology part, incidentally). I then went to work at a liquor store, and then in tech support, and now work as an application developer.

In the end, I’m both happy and sad I’m not in the science field. I make more money now then I would if I were in the scientific research field, and engage in 98% less of the behavior I’d be expected to engage in if I were in the scientific research field. I can work from anywhere, for anyone, with a minimal set of tools, and I can create great things. But I miss the every day learning and the process of working towards discovery of the unknown. That’s what science is presented as: an honorable dedication to the discovery of the unknown, but what’s really unknown is the reality of how science is done in the modern world. For those who only want to discover, it’s a horribly disappointing world of politicking and sometimes hanging one’s dignity up like a piñata in service of someday gaining the freedom to actually do science the way you thought you would when you graduated high school.