[yomly]

The problem with academic science is threefold:

1: you are expected to feel privileged for doing something you vaguely enjoy. (how many people actually enjoy running columns and NMRs at 12am?)

2: you are expected to be altruistic in your ambitions. Curse those vaguely better paid lizard people who are working in industry to forward some profiteering enterprise rather than "science"

3: there are huge barriers to entry (tech excluded) so you will not do something entrepreneurial and make a name for yourself without the university. To make sure of this, we will name claim on anything you do for the next 10+ years anyway.

It's no wonder to me that many of the talented people. Leave to go do banking or consulting - they work less for more!!

[cshimmin]

1. That's like saying you couldn't possibly be passionate about cooking a big fancy meal because nobody really enjoys doing the dishes afterwards. If you're not passionate enough about chemistry/cooking to run NMR/do dishes, you're in the wrong place anyways. So you shouldn't worry about "feeling privileged", you should just do yourself a favor and get out.

2. Many forms of basic science cannot be done in industry. Take my field, high energy physics for example... there's only one supergiant particle smasher in the world and it's not owned by IBM. Anyways doing public science may or may not be altruistic, but I don't see that as a problem of science. In my case I just _actually_ enjoy what I'm doing (see 1) any benefits for the public good are just a bonus.

3. Entrepreneurial options vary pretty widely depending on the field. Regardless, I don't think most people get into science with the master plan that they will make a magical new discovery and then sell it and become a billionaire. If that's your plan, again you're doing it wrong.

Also a lot of people you find in the sciences simply aren't that motivated by money. Many of the ones who go into banking either found out along the way that they weren't into it. Or regrettably often, they just got forced out of their field by competition so had to take a fat paycheck and boring job as a consolation prize.

[rayiner]

You've accurately described the status quo, but I'm not sure you've presented a good justification for it. There is no reason to believe the folks motivated by money are any less talented than the folks that aren't motivated by money. If science excludes people who don't want to work long hours for low pay, that's probably detrimental to society.

[cshimmin]

Hey, as a scientist, if you want to throw more money at science (to attract the population of talented people who are also money-motivated), I'm all for it! It would be interesting to see if it would "trickle down" and make the research better.

It would also be interesting to see if you get an influx of grifters chasing after a piece of the pie, resulting in lower-quality science ("Trump laboratories! We have the best tubes, and we have the best numbers! You're gonna really love our science, buh-lieve me.").

Not saying I really think that's what would happen. But at least with the way things are right now, the only cheaters in science are usually after some kind of bizarre notion of obscure fame/glory (see e.g. [1]). And they are rather rare.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6n_scandal

[noobermin]

You act as if the profit motive is less virtuous than the prestige motive. I think they are the same in that they both can corrupt.

[yomly]

10/10 times I would rather scientists conducting nebulous research than crunching spreadsheets for a bank.

The point is you have a pool of people who are talented and can do things that other people can't, they're contributing more to society than most and they're expected to do this for free.

[sseagull]

I've always thought of it as the economy will always take advantage of people who enjoy doing something like this. Ie, If you love science, you may be willing to take a lower wage. Eventually, it becomes very exploitative, with long hours and lower wages "just because" it's something you enjoy (even though it is quite beneficial to society).

I wonder if there is a term/concept for this in economics or sociology. I've been looking to nail down the idea a bit.

[projektir]

That doesn't make sense. Science can have huge contributions, and any decent capitalistic system must reward that. If you have people working for poor wages while doing important things, it means the wrong group of people got too much power.

[bobsil1]

Also true in gaming salaries. Psychic/compensatory rewards?

[projektir]

1. We have lots of discussions in other places about how passion may not be all that valuable. There are people who are very well suited towards a field but not terribly passionate. What exactly justifies this obsession with passion? Is it about passion being necessary, or are passionate people just that much easier to exploit?

2. I'm sure they said that about rocket science, too. Of course, SpaceX is repeating all the same mistakes that academia is so perhaps it will go the same way.

Science shouldn't be done privately but if academia keeps messing up like this it will eventually move there if anyone cares about it.

> Also a lot of people you find in the sciences simply aren't that motivated by money.

It doesn't matter what people think they're motivated by. This is a capitalist economy. If you don't care about money, then you don't care about the reality you live in, and, sadly, that's true for a lot of day-dreamy scientists. How money flows is important, and people being exploited is a form of malfunction of such an economy that should always be mitigated.

[throw_away_777]

> It doesn't matter what people think they're motivated by. This is a capitalist economy. If you don't care about money, then you don't care about the reality you live in, and, sadly, that's true for a lot of day-dreamy scientists. How money flows is important, and people being exploited is a form of malfunction of such an economy that should always be mitigated.

This isn't really true - there are things other than money that are important, like happiness. A graduate student in the sciences gets paid enough to live on, and enjoys a good amount of job security. The work is for a good cause, and despite all the complaining most graduate students. You are pretty unlikely to get fired as a graduate student. A postdoc is a much worse job, I don't think anyone should take a postdoc unless they really don't have any other options (or are from a third-world country). With that said, when I started my PhD I didn't care about low pay, but later on this was no longer true, and having just finished a PhD if I could go back in time I would not do it again.

[tigershark]

I really can't see how working 14 hours a day and over the weekend can make anyone happy. Apart from the doctors that will be paid very good money to help these poor guys to recover from the extreme burnout obviously..

[cshimmin]

Just take the amount of time you spend per week on hobbies (whether that's reading hn, watching TV, whatever) and add that the the amount of hours you work at your "normal" job. Then you'll understand how (many) scientists can be pretty happy working 12-14 hours a day.