[mpodlasin]

What would be your advice for older (25+) people who want to get into science? Is it even possible? Or should I just accept that the train has left and focus on something else? Can you develop your math/logic/critical thinking skills at that point?

How about if you never excelled at these topics in school? Is hard work enough, or do you think some people are born with these talents?

[ScottAaronson]

See this previous answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17429093

Sure, inborn talent matters. Hard work matters. And what about the less-appreciated converses of those two qualities: namely, acquired talent and inborn propensity for hard work? :-)

We could also mention drive to seize opportunities, judgment in picking the right problems to work on, social skill to get potential collaborators excited about those problems, and of course luck. And probably 200 other things I forgot. They all matter.

Maybe the key is, instead of struggling against the profile of abilities that fate handed you, to find a subject or problem that's an optimal fit for that profile. Had Darwin been forced to spend his life as a mathematician, Godel as a biologist, or Einstein as an experimentalist, you would never have heard of any of them.

[sincerely]

Practice makes perfect. Some people are born with the ability to learn some topics faster than others but over time hard work will always bear results. You can learn math/logic/etc the same way any college student learns.

[WhompingWindows]

The brain is able to change well into adulthood ("neuroplasticity"), and that includes mathematical/scientific/abstraction centers. There are plenty of folks who didn't get a great start in STEM, but through hard work and dedication, they pushed through the inherent frustration in learning STEM.

While some people might be born with a proclivity for these activities, I wouldn't say any individual could not get into science. For the truly uninitiated, check out Planet Earth, Blue Planet, or Cosmos. For the novices, check out your local astronomy club, ask scientists you know to explain their work to you, and don't be afraid to ask follow-up questions. Get into reading science articles in the popular press, and use those to find links to the real research articles, which will be VERY hard to read for beginners. Feel free to skim those, look at graphs/charts/evidence, and read the abstract/conclusions rather than the intro/methods and the whole thing. Finally, check out some MOOCs or local community classes/continuing education.

[code_coyote]

Good uplifting answer. But it is for what can lead to a hobby, rather than a career. Even certificates from MOOCs won't lead to a job in science, researcher or not.

[mindcrime]

Even certificates from MOOCs won't lead to a job in science, researcher or not.

That depends on how tightly you define "science". If you mean "science in traditional academia, working for/at a major research university or research consortium" then you are almost certainly correct. But if you expand the definition to include the corporate world, and roles that maybe aren't pure research, then I would argue that you can get a job doing science with less "paper credentials" than one might expect.

Whether or not that would/could apply to anything related to QC, I'm not sure, as I don't work in (or even really near) the QC domain. But to pick one example: in terms of machine learning / AI, I've definitely seen it. But maybe AI/ML is an exception to everything else just because it is (at the present) such an empirical / observation / experiment based domain.

Outside of all of that is the notion of "create your own job". If you want to be a researcher in Field X, start a company related to Field X and hire yourself. And, no, I don't intend that to be a glib answer, and I certainly acknowledge that it A. isn't easy, and B. is probably harder / easier in some domains than in others.

[noobermin]

I don't think you can't, but you have to be aware of the demands graduate school makes on students, including working long hours on course work first and then actual research. If you are older with more commitments, it's just harder to commit to. It can also be pretty isolating, especially given that most of your fellow graduate students will be a bit younger than you (as well as being quite immature, as many have never had an actual career and come straight from college). By the way, what I've explained isn't great, it's terrible, but it's the system that exists now.

Of course, this is just a warning, just be aware of what you're getting into.

[noobermin]

I should add, professors who advise you to go to graduate school have a financial incentive for you to go to grad school if either 1) you will be their students (you are a means for them to get grant money and it helps inflate their credentials, not to mention you will be their cheap labor) or 2) they are currently your professor in undergrad or taught you previously (you going to graduate school also helps up their credentials).

Even barring these possibilities, professors who have tenure or tenure track positions just by virtue of statistics are extremely lucky: many smart people write their theses and do substantial work, but there are a small number of actual positions relative to the number of PhD's awarded. For example, in Physics, I think there are may be dozens of openings in the US every year while there are thousands of newly minted PhD's per year, and the majority of good positions as you can imagine go to graduates from a handful (O(1) number) of schools, anything below the top 10 is significantly less well poised for tenure track professorships. Thus, you have to take a professor's advice with a grain of salt, for they're potentially influenced by survivorship bias.