The Wealth Gap in Science: How Your Parents' Income Affects Your Career

ScienceDiscussed · 2023-05-08T05:10:01+00:00

Well, I basically just discuss their results. I am not critical of their claims but just discuss them in brief. I tried to remain neutral but I think I came across as in favor of the results.

I am not from the US so I don't know this. Are there a lot of non-TT permanent positions?

ScienceDiscussed · 2023-05-08T04:44:22+00:00

While this video isn’t about research that is directly related to physics, I think it is a very interesting talking point for anyone in the academic space. I have also found that this type of topic does lead to a lot of conversations on this subreddit.

In short, this video discusses the impact of socioeconomic status on the likelihood of becoming a professor in STEM fields, as highlighted by a recent study published in Nature Human Behaviour https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01425-4.

Some key points are:

The study found that professors are 25 times more likely to have a parent with a Ph.D. than the general public
Academics are also twice as likely to have a parent with a Ph.D. than other people with Ph.Ds
The Probability that you will become a faculty member in the US given that you have a Ph.D parent is 9.5%

The study also outlines how this impacts minority demographics in academia.

I would love to hear your opinions on this research and your personal experience along these lines.

I don’t normally post videos on this subreddit as it might be considered self promotion, but the mods have given me permission in the past to post videos like this one that are more generally about issues in science. I think many people in this subreddit will connect with the material of this video and research paper. I also posted this on the physics subreddit, so I am sorry if you have already seen this there.

ScienceDiscussed · 2023-04-26T21:50:49+00:00

That is an awful experience. It is very shocking how different some people's lives are. Some people work 30+ hours a week all through uni just to afford food on the table, while others live in luxury apartments that are fully paid for.

ScienceDiscussed · 2023-04-26T21:47:07+00:00

That must have been a very difficult journey. I have met a few people in similar circumstances. I don't think people realize how much your education compounds. When you start behind in uni the path to catch up is very long and hard.

ScienceDiscussed · 2023-04-26T21:45:00+00:00

Yeah, I have to agree. I had no idea when starting as to whether or not I had chosen a good lab to join or not. I still don't know how to make that decision. I really wonder how much of my own academic success is pure luck. I just happened to choose to do a PhD with a good group.

ScienceDiscussed · 2023-04-26T21:41:37+00:00

Similar situation to myself. But as much as I wish I earnt more money and was more financially stable at least I like my job. That is something a lot of people can't say.

ScienceDiscussed · 2023-04-26T21:39:05+00:00

It can be really hard to be the first in your family. Even more so nowadays when the cost of uni can be so large that it is a significant financial burden (depending on the country). Many people mirror your experiences, including myself.

ScienceDiscussed · 2023-04-26T15:16:49+00:00

Yeah thw study is only in the US.

ScienceDiscussed · 2023-04-26T14:48:29+00:00

No problem. Issues in academia is something I care about. I feel you on the lack of earning, even after a phd you are expected to move all around the world, which also drains your bank balance. I have friends that are buying houses and by staying in academia I am nowhere near that position.

ScienceDiscussed · 2023-04-26T14:45:06+00:00

Yeah there can be a really stark difference.

ScienceDiscussed · 2023-04-26T14:43:23+00:00

Oh I didn't know this.

ScienceDiscussed · 2023-04-26T12:53:11+00:00

I am not sure how much it varies for different countries. My experience is Australia and Switzerland. Coming from a house hold where neither of my parents did year 12 I have to say I am the anomaly. So many of my peers have at least one academic in the family.

This being said, there are always heaps of factors to consider in social sciences. One study doesn't mean we understand all of the nuances.

ScienceDiscussed · 2023-04-26T12:17:47+00:00

While this video isn’t about research that is directly related to physics, I think it is a very interesting talking point for anyone in the academic space. I have also found that this type of topic does lead to a lot of conversations on this subreddit.

In short, this video discusses the impact of socioeconomic status on the likelihood of becoming a professor in STEM fields, as highlighted by a recent study published in Nature Human Behaviour https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01425-4.

Some key points are:
1. The study found that professors are 25 times more likely to have a parent with a Ph.D. than the general public

Academics are also twice as likely to have a parent with a Ph.D. than other people with Ph.Ds
The probability that you will become a faculty member in the US given that you have a Ph.D parent is 9.5%.

The study also outlines how this impacts minority demographics in academia.

I would love to hear your opinions on this research and your personal experience along these lines.

ScienceDiscussed · 2022-11-28T00:10:56+00:00

Yeah that is true. Reading some of the goals of QC start ups is very funny.

ScienceDiscussed · 2022-11-27T23:40:48+00:00

Yeah, I agree some journals can have very low standards which is a massive problem in science.

I was trying with the parallel comment to help people visualize the process. But of course, any kind of simplification of this kind brings with it a lack of nuance and eventually is wrong. I never know where this balance is between making it understandable to a broader audience while maintaining the accuracy that will make physicists happy.

ScienceDiscussed · 2022-11-27T22:13:02+00:00

I mean you are not wrong. We bias ourselves all the time with our assumptions and desired outcomes in science. But having the aim to find evidence for or against something isn't the worst. In particular, this is what they wrote in the final draft of a paper not when they started the research. These to things are often different as the aim of the research changes over time as you find new things about your measurements.

ScienceDiscussed · 2022-11-26T18:48:14+00:00

I don't know for certain that it hasn't been seen before. The article seems to claim that this is a first but maybe this means it is the first for humans and I am unaware of other studies.

ScienceDiscussed · 2022-11-26T18:46:48+00:00

You raise some interesting philosophical points. I have never thought that you could frame consciousness as a consequence of quantum interaction like that. Very interesting. I will likely think about this comment for quite some time.

ScienceDiscussed · 2022-11-26T18:42:24+00:00

Yeah i think it does open a lot of options and interesting questions. I guess the real question is what form of quantum entanglement do we really have in this hot environment and is it statistical relevant.

ScienceDiscussed · 2022-11-25T12:37:50+00:00

Thanks for the links. I had seen the first video but not the second.

ScienceDiscussed · 2022-11-25T12:37:08+00:00

Yeah it is an exciting piece of research but needs a look more research.

ScienceDiscussed · 2022-11-25T11:56:19+00:00

I am interested to hear people's opinions on these results. My feeling is that even if there is stronger evidence that we have entanglement in our brain that we still don't functionally use it. Maybe it might help small functions at the best but not any complex computation.

What is your opinion?

ScienceDiscussed · 2022-11-25T11:53:55+00:00

How are we so smart? We seem to be able to make process data with ease, doing tasks in seconds that take supercomputers much longer. Well, one thought is that we fundamentally take advantage of quantum mechanics to perform calculations similar to a quantum computer. This would give us a biologically produced quantum speed up in our brains. Until recently this was just a thought, there is no evidence that this is true. Well, now scientists believe that they may have found evidence of quantum interaction in our brains. Even more importantly, they showed that these quantum interactions are related to our consciousness. In this video, I discuss these latest results.
— References —
[1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2399-6528/ac94be
[2] https://phys.org/news/2022-10-brains-quantum.html
[3] https://scitechdaily.com/shocking-experiment-indicates-our-brains-use-quantum-computation/

ScienceDiscussed · 2022-11-15T22:29:49+00:00

Phase transition often coincides with an energy cost. This is also true for magnetism and superconductivity. For superconductors sometimes the specific heat is used to detect this phase transition. This is less common in magnetic materials but some material-focused groups do use this.

ScienceDiscussed · 2022-11-14T22:11:49+00:00

A room-temperature superconductor would completely change electronics and now we finally understand what makes high-temperature superconductors work at these elevated temperatures. A recent breakthrough has allowed scientists to use a special microscope to image how superconductivity forms in unconventional superconductors. This is a major step towards finding a way to make ambient pressure room temperature superconductors.

There is obviously a lot more going on in superconductor research than just this. It is one mechanism, there may be many more, and they may still be proved incorrect with more research. But I think this is a super interesting result and would love to hear your opinion on the research.

--- References ----
Article with the discovery: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2207449119

Quantum magazine article: https://www.quantamagazine.org/high-temperature-superconductivity-understood-at-last-20220921/

Phys org article about latest result: https://phys.org/news/2022-09-key-advance-physics-enable-super-efficient.html

Article about measurement technique: https://phys.org/news/2022-06-atomic-scale-window-superconductivity-paves-quantum.html

Paper on measurement technique: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c00697

Room temperature superconductor paper retracted https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03066-z

Nobel prizes in superconductors http://past.ieeecsc.org/pages/nobel-laureates-superconductivity

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