5 Reasons it Sucks to be a Scientist: Part 5, SCIENCE IS HARD!

As I conclude my 5 part series on the woes of scientists, I feel that I should briefly mention the early points, and give an explanation as to why this segment is most important. Also, take note, this is a LONG post, and broken into segments. Peruse at your leisure, and if you like it, feel free to share it with others!

In part 1 of this series, I described how skepticism really sucks(LINK TO PART 1) when applied to absolutely every aspect of life.   It's nice to be cautious and careful in what you believe.  But as a general rule, being constantly and aggressively skeptical is NOT FUN and can be a major pain. It makes it hard to trust information and doubt everything you hear. It's hard to separate being a scientist from skepticism.

In part 2, I explained how constantly thinking like a scientist(LINK TO PART 2) can ruin the magic and fun of the world, and appears todestroy the beauty or seeming deeper meaning of your daily life.  Again, there's positives too, but scientific thinking can also really suck.  Science can ruin everything by forcing you to every day spend time focused on the honest and often somewhat depressing details of the world around you.

In part 3, I told you about how hard it is for scientists to hear politics and discussions(LINK TO PART 3) without either completing shutting other people down, or sounding like jerks when they correct common misgivings.  Hearing bad science, dumb explanations and science denial in politics, and in much of the local population, drives scientists INSANE.  Worst of all, there's not a lot they can do without seeming villains themselves.

In part 4, I shared the uncomfortable truth about how hard it is to be a scientist when money, funding, and grant-writing enters the equation(LINK TO PART 4).  You might never actually MAKE progress, you have to try to write and research and pay for your own costs all at once, while trying to prove to someone else that your work ACTUALLY MATTERS.  Being a scientist isn't just about science, it's about money, arguing, and of course, GETTING MORE MONEY. In science, having a job doesn't mean you can DO that job, until someone else pays for it.

Now in part 5, this conclusion to my bitching about science and the difficulties scientists face, I've got a lot MORE to say.  It's not about how uncool science makes you think, or how tragic and depressing it is to bring science into the public sphere, and it's not even about just BECOMING a scientist, though elements of that are part of my argument...it's about the simple, unavoidable and yet rarely discussed after grade-school problem of science:

SCIENCE, my dear readers and friends, IS HARD.  I know, you may never have been TOLD that before, but it's true!

Bill Nye The Science Guy is SHOCKED! And he knows EVERYTHING.
(Thanks to Aceonlineschools for the photo.)

See, science isn't simple...it's actually REALLY HARD.  You might have to ask yourself, "EVERY SCIENCE?" and I'd have to admit, no, not every science ever, but as a rule, science is REALLY HARD!

Now, you might be wondering, "WHATEVER DO YOU MEAN, MY BEARDED GUIDE TO SCIENCE?"

No worries, friends, I plan to explain.   Really, you can think of it as 3 main points, that sort of work together:

1) Science requires exceptional education,
2) Science requires many different areas of expertise,
3) Science is highly complex and advanced.

EDUCATION MAKES SCIENCE HARD. 

If I wanted to be an upstanding businessman, I'd have to go to college, and let's say I went on to graduate school.  Let's go crazy, and assume that to be a business tycoon, you really HAVE to have at least a master's degree (which you don't, and in fact, is much less common in business than you might realize, whereas it seems 90%* of science jobs require at LEAST a master's, and many more require a doctorate).

*Completely random number without data, to illustrate a point

If I were to go to graduate school, I would take classes, and perhaps write a paper on research I'd done on the market, or in my particular business field.  I wouldn't have to go do a multi-year experiment with grants, external support, external publication in a scholarly peer-reviewed journal, would I?  NO!  Of course not, that's ridiculous.  If every business student had to do enormous and complex research projects where they actually tested and manipulated a real data set that they had to create over the course of months from their own unique work, NO ONE WOULD GET A MASTER'S IN BUSINESS.....

But that's EXACTLY what happens in science.

I'm a biology student, for example, in a Master's program. I'm doing a research project with 8-10 months of field work (May-March, probably) and after that several months of laboratory work doing phytochemistry, computerized statistical data analysis, then writing for a peer reviewed published journal of science...all for my master's degree.

I'm not a PhD student, I'm not even at the highest quality school in the country, I'm just a simple graduate student studying here in cold and exciting Alaska. So, why does my degree require me to take classes in computer science, statistics, chemistry, ecology, plant biology, insect-plant interactions and plant-animal interactions, while doing my own self directed research and writing and editing and publishing?

Because science is hard.

Science requires an education that is more thorough and complicated than almost any other field.  People don't realize it, but when you hear about how difficult medical school is, you're actually hearing about how demanding a science program can be.  You need to memorize complex and diverse facts and figures about anatomy, chemistry, psychology, and of course be able to apply your knowledge to real-world situations. That's science!  You need to do long hours in labs and after your classes to develop the research and technical skills to apply your information to real-life events:  Which is what happens when you study science.  Why is veterinary school, dental school, or any PhD program hard?  SCIENCE!

I'm not saying education in other areas isn't hard and complicated, but it's NOT the same as getting trained as a scientist, because so often you learn either skills or master information, but rarely does any other program demand you gain both perfect and detailed information while simultaneously asking for intricate and complicated skill mastery.

As I said before, science education is hard and takes a long time.  After high school, which many people don't even graduate from in itself, you must go to college, get a hard degree, get research and work experience, get a graduate degree, and usually have a few publications under your belt JUST TO GET INTO THE INTRODUCTORY LEVEL WORK of your field!  We're talking 10+ years AFTER high school to be a beginner in the field. 

The complicated and difficult education required to be even an introductory level researcher, or a relatively low-pay-scale scientist is hard!  It requires more work and time and effort than most people ever realize, and that's just to get INTO the field, much less to be a primary researcher, professor, or head of a program, which require a doctorate unlike ALMOST ANY OTHER AREA OF EXPERTISE REQUIRES.

Before I get on a longer rant about education, let me go back and get to my second piece of evidence.

SCIENCE REQUIRES UNDERSTANDING MANY DIFFERENT FIELDS AND SPECIALTIES.

Thanks XKCD for explaining!  It all makes sense!  

Ask any scientist, and they can tell you about how 'pure' their science is. They'll tell you that they need to know math to be able to do their work.  Heck, even if they're mathematicians, they'll have to know statistics, which is sort of its own subgroup, and probably computer science.  And they'll of course need to be able to write, and do experimental design....and grant writing, which is different than publishable writing....and of course, you can't forget how specific each field might be, because 'biology' means the study of life, and NO ONE can study the collective study of ALL life.  So, to study a single science really means to study a tiny subset of the single area of science.

I mean, heck, if you can make it past the cellular level, you're already studying chemistry, math, genetics, cellular behavior, epigenetic action and perhaps inherited behaviors or characteristics WITHIN genetics that might subsequently alter genetic expression and...well, as I'm probably making clear, you need to know a LOT to be a scientist in any field, and every field is divided into seemingly infinite complicated subgroups.

I don't like to admit it, but that's probably where I'm weakest myself:  I know SOME chemistry, I'm pretty solid on the physics, I know math relatively well, and I'm learning much better to work with statistics, experimental design, and computation through computer science and specific software programs.  But...I don't know ENOUGH.  In fact, you can never really know enough.

Except Bill Nye, because he knows everything. 

The diversity of knowledge, and the depth of that knowledge is what makes it so hard to understand scientists when they speak.

In the news, recently, there was a lot of discussion of climate change (SHOCKER!)
Who's to blame for climate change?  How can we bring it up intelligently in discussion?

I mentioned this in part 3 of the series, which is linked at the top, but there's a lot to be said about this subject.  ABC has a nice short article (LINK) that explains some of the recent work.  Sure, they breeze past ANY science, and of course, their explanations are riddled with incomplete explanations and completely ignore larger research points, but hey, if you read it, you might at least begin to understand the current discussion. Of course...it doesn't help that half way through a single written page they change topics to a previous denier of climate science and his turnaround, without giving any real information as to WHY he turned around, but let's not insult ABC and their pitiable science journalism.

Let's focus on what's said.

The research that contributes to this single page, extremely surface level article is based on meteorology.  Oh, and geology.  Oh, and a bit of chemistry.  And the original chemistry work came from a biological study on changing species compositions. And of course, that was based off of work into soil chemistry and geological alterations.  Which began as a research project about physics and chemistry working together in soil nutrient lodes, which was another biology project.

The 1/2 page dedicated to actual climate change from ABC News discusses 1 single aspect of a single paper without giving any of the actual science, despite the original research for said paper being drawn from over a half dozen separate areas of science, each of which was actually working across multiple disciplines on multi-year projects that focused on research done in response to other papers, and other research, being done and checked multiple times by varied institutes around the world by experts with multiple doctorates in many more complex fields of work.

Seriously, science requires you to understand SO MUCH MORE than just your area of expertise.  You have to graduate with a bachelor's degree of some sort, which will give you usually information about 3-4 different fields.  Most graduate schools, regardless of what you're applying for, want some classes in computer science, chemistry, math, and physics.  For biology, psychology, or those 'less pure' (and thus, more varied) fields, you might need geology, biology, behavioral science, ethics, and of course, classes in whatever field you're actually going to study. And once you get to graduate school, you're supposed to become a specialist, where you learn really detailed information about different subjects.

Basically, to get into graduate school, which is itself practically a requirement in even basic professional science work, you need to be broadly and diversely educated, but after you're well educated and well read, you actually are just BEGINNING to become well read and educated.

After that, you have to specialize more, because science has gone so far in the last decades that having 'basic knowledge' (which is what many scientists call a perfect GPA in 4-year college at a prestigious university) isn't enough.

To be a scientist, you have to have both a wide diversity of knowledge, as well as exceptionally detailed knowledge in specific areas.  And all of that comes before you begin writing grants, writing papers for publication, and doing the background research into OTHER papers that comes before you can consider even looking into SOMEDAY doing your own research projects.

Science requires an excellent, diverse, thorough and detailed education as well as specialization, technical skills, multiple years of research experience, and usually a lot of ass-kissing and hard work....to get into the graduate program that will be 3-7 more years of the same, to get a degree, so you can START your own research path, all while studying multiple subjects and specialties

No wonder science feels like it's in an 'ivory tower', because after the scientists climb metaphorical stairs to the top, going back down to explain their work to the public is confusing and hard.  The journey (the act of trying to reach out to the public and publish easily understood results and research) risks not being able to DO the work they want to explain!  How can you be a full time writer, communicator, researcher, and still keep up with a constantly changing field and specialty?

SCIENCE IS HARD!

LASTLY:  SCIENCE IS DIVERSE AND COMPLEX.  

Thanks to the USGS for this perfect example!

This is probably just a continuation from above, but it deserves its own section:

Science is advanced, and complicated.  You can't study science like the famous scientists of history did, because science is an additive process.  Falling apples don't lead to major discoveries anymore, because it seems like all the basics are understood now, and we're forced to study the finite and specific details.

As each person proves their theories and postulates all the other scientists have to catch up.  When Darwin and Wallace postulated the theory of evolution, it became the basis for the rest of biology from then on.  You had to learn it, and incorporate it into every single biological concept after that.

In physics, once we figured out gravity, we had to use it to understand the movement of the heavens....and once we figured out the idea of a vacuum, and then resistance from our atmosphere, and the movement of the moon, etc etc ad nauseum, each new step had to be included when you looked into the night sky.

It's one thing to understand the basics of a field, but science gets more complicated with every passing day, and every new fact.  We never stop finding new information out, and we never stop testing and improving on previous facts, so it gets MORE AND MORE COMPLICATED!

In the picture from the USGS above, you begin to see what I mean:  You look at geologic history, and if you simply break it down by period, you think you've got a complete picture.  The problem is, you don't.  There are pieces within that.  And of course, in each smaller piece, there are millions or more little tiny discoveries and events. Each of THESE, though, might be related to specific occurrences in evolution, or geologic change.  If you study the dinosaurs, what era are you talking about?  How about changes in species over time?  What about changing climate?  And geologic shifts of tectonic plates?  And large extinctions, or volcanic eruptions?  And how does THAT feed back into species change?  Science makes you THINK about each little tiny step, and each little tiny step is actually another, smaller step.  It's like trying to talk to someone, but having to decode every sentence, then every word, then every letter, then the ink used to WRITE that letter, in a document.  It goes from manageable to 'weeping in a corner feeling overwhelmed' pretty damned fast.

The example of seemingly infinitely complex science that most people know is:  Cell theory.
We're made up of cells.  Great....but what makes up cells? Well, you explain the organelles, sure, but what's in those?  What specific molecules, and how do they act (like how ATP, the 'energy station' of the cell is sort of a mobile battery, but that's made possible by specific organelles, proteins, and electron receptors) and before you know it you've gone down to molecules.  Which can be broken down to atoms.  Which are made up of subatomic particles down to the tiniest pieces we know about, which are PROBABLY ALSO MADE UP OF SMALLER PIECES.  After a certain point, you realize that you always come to a new level of complexity that seems to make your brain swoon like a drunken redneck.

With each generation, we understand a little bit more, but that means that the new scientists and researchers can't just learn what the last scientists knew, they have to learn MORE AND MORE, and those new levels might require even more background into chemistry, physics, and so forth.  Basically, by the time you get down the chain of history to modern day, we're talking about learning so much science in grade school that our great grandparents think we're geniuses by age 10!  But, those genius ten year olds might know more about biology and chemistry than the smartest person from the 16th century, yet still are wildly under-educated by the time they get to high school, then college, then graduate school, the post-graduate work, THEN REAL WORK AND RESEARCH.  Our ancestors were impressed because caveman 1 was able to train a wolf not to eat him.  Now, we're not impressed when you can splice new genes into a wolf to make it glow in the dark and produce cancer-fighting bacteria in its drool.  We've REALLY altered our expectations!

Science isn't just hard, it's more intricate and advanced than any single person on earth can possibly hope to understand.  It's why you see ABC news printing a 1 page article, instead of a 10,000,000 page book!  Because most people can understand the 1 page, but only a tiny fraction of the world can understand the background necessary to get to that 1 page, and of that tiny fraction, only a smaller subset of those scientists can DUPLICATE and truly understand the REASONS behind the work!  No WONDER people argue about climate change, because if they hear someone talking about science, they're probably going to tune it out, so they don't feel confused and stupid!

SO WHY DOES IT SUCK TO BE A SCIENTIST?

Science is infinitely complex, requiring incredibly thorough and yet very diverse education, on a myriad of diverse and often seemingly disconnected subjects, only to prepare you to understand the BASICS.

Science is not easily understood, and getting to work AS a scientist requires time, energy, intelligence and patience unlike most people have.  If you make it as a scientist, you've climbed the tallest mental peaks on the planet, and have likely only made enough progress to be at the mental 'base camp' of where science can go.  Science is hard, unfathomably so.  Science is complicated.  Science requires time and energy and work unlike any other field in existence. I've been a writer, and I've been a teacher, and I've been a musician, and though none of that was EASY work, it's child's play compared to trying to accurately understand the mysteries of a possibly infinite and changing universe.

What I've been trying to say in my many posts and rants can be boiled down to a few simple thoughts.

If you BECOME a scientist, you're doomed to be an outsider from politics, with a skeptic's mind that makes you overly analytic and detail obsessed.  You're likely to see the world without the tinted shades everyone else seems to be wearing, and that's a damned scary thing, especially when you realize how hard most other people work in order to even see the world as THEY do.  You're required to be the emissary of knowledge to the rest of the planet, and you're unable, most of the time, to accomplish this task without extensive work and a very VERY active and interested audience.  You can't think like the rest of the world, because you have to think like a scientist, which sometimes means asking questions when everyone else just wants a final answer. 

Again, XKCD understands!

Science isn't just hard, it's superhuman.  Our brains required billions of years of evolution, millions of chance changes and successful mutations, and all we have to show for it is enough intelligence to TRY to understand, even though we mostly just screw up and get confused.

I think I have made my point well enough to end on a positive:

It SUCKS to be a scientist.  You work harder and learn more than almost anyone else, and every answer you find is really the beginning of 10 new and more difficult questions.  However, you DO get something wonderful in exchange:
Comprehension.  It's unpleasant to lose the beauty of a rose to the reality of a sex trait designed to attract insects.  It sucks to lose romance to the reality of sexual selection, and the endless struggle to reproduce, and sate our minds' need for chemical reinforcement of behavior.  "I love you" and "I release dopamine in your presence" are very different types of pillow talk.

The up side, however, is pretty damned cool.  You can say that the rose is infinitely complicated, that it has a billion year evolutionary history of picking up endosymbionts, and mutualists, and fortunate mutations that were selected for and reproduced millions upon millions of times over.  Romance might not be the same, but our highly developed minds can create whatever meaning we please, and give us the meaning and romance back with a single thought, and we can still find beauty in the world, in ways other people can't even imagine.

As Darwin once wrote, "There is grandeur, in this view of life," and he was right.

It can REALLY suck to be a scientist.  It can be a thankless, difficult, miserable job.  

But I'd rather ask the scary and complicated questions that make it hard than miss out on the infinitely fascinating answers that science has to offer.

Feynman may have said it best:

Feynman is sort of the science equivalent of the pope, except better.  Also less of an asshole.does that make Einstein our Jesus?

" I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious."
-Albert Einstein

Stay curious, and remember that science might be hard, but it can, in the end, be ABSOLUTELY worth it.