Become a scientist - and be poor.

Why, I wonder, are scientists so poorly paid in the United States? I was somewhat stunned to learn of the way scientists are treated in the US, today.

Here is a typical career profile of a successful scientist in America:

age 18-22: shelling out high tuition fees as an undergraduate
age 22-30: at graduate school, living on just $1800 per month
age 30-35: working as a post-doc for $30,000 to $35,000 per year
age 36-43: professor at an OK university for $65,000 per year
age 44: a parent of young children, yet "denied tenure" by the university - that is, fired

Thereafter is anybody's guess, depending on how able the former scientist is to secure another job in a market that doesn't like to take on middle-aged newcomers.

Given the economic conditions above, is it any wonder that most Americans don't want to be scientists? So, who does the science in America, then? Immigrants. America dangles the tiniest of carrots to Indians and Chinese nationals, "30,000 to 35,000 a year" - and they arrive in droves, for such small sums have seemed like riches to them.

However, there is a problem, here, which puts in question the whole future of American science - and consequently, the success of America itself. China and India are beginning to do very well for themselves. They have more to offer their own people...so the US doesn't seem so attractive anymore - especially since they must become aware, in time, that the wages offered are little more than a con. I don't think those Indian and Chinese immigrants are going to be coming to America for very much longer.

America has treated science as something to be offered to slave labour immigrants, at pitiful wages. The thinking seems to have been that, since these immigrants are willing to do the work for so little, why should they offer more? Well, there are very good reasons to offer more. If salaries in science are so far below what a professional could secure with similar training (ie. $500,000 a year), then the best people will not be drawn to science, but will be lured away. Science is far too important to the future of Man, to allow it to be unable to secure the best and brightest.

Science should be competing for the best minds there are. It should not be satisfied with "we can get somebody to do that for 30K...so that is how much we will pay." It should pay as much as law or medicine, or any other professional job, so that the best people will strive to be scientists - and not put those people in the position of choosing between science and making even a basic living.

For contrast to the figures above, I have read that a law graduate from a good University in the US, can expect to start on 125K - that is double the earnings of a typical science professor, a couple of decades older.

We can conclude from this that America does not value its scientists, or science - but that it likes to argue a lot.

Perhaps, when the immigrants stop coming to the US, because their home countries offer a better deal, America will start paying its scientists what they are worth - if, that is, they haven't all left for Europe and Asia.

Given the present state of science in America and the way American scientists are (not) remunerated, I don't think Ainan, for one, will work there (unless conditions improve a lot). It would be foolish of him, to do so, given the conditions that prevail there. No doubt, there are many young scientists, who think similarly about prospects in the US.

The present American financial crisis - combined with their lack of respect for scientists - makes me wonder at whether America is going to go into a permanent decline. A country where post-doc researchers make 30K and the head of Lehman brothers was paid several hundred million dollars in the past few years, has got something seriously wrong. Lehman is not more important than a scientific researcher. Science is more fundamental to the long-term future of the nation, than the financial games of the Lehman's of this world. Yet, the market says otherwise. The market values the man able to destroy 150 years of banking history by himself, more than the young scientist able to bring something new into the world. Therein lies the problem with America, today: the wrong things are valued. That which is of true value is sidelined.

I don't think it is going to work out well, in the long-term.

Good luck, USA.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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