I’m a science student and I sometimes find it quite difficult to explain to others exactly why science is interesting.

My project supervisor used to sum it up with:

“Being a scientist is just like being a big kid, but you get to play with bigger toys”

And an ex-editor of New Scientist said:

“Science is interesting, if you don’t agree you can f*** off” (frequently mis-attributed to Richard Dawkins who simply quoted the phrase)

Science is fun because it allows you to answer the questions such as “why?” and “how” and to solve problems facing humanity. And to answer those questions, you need to come up with clever methods, tools and interpretations - that is why being a scientist is like being a grown up kid playing with bigger toys.

Yet I feel this “fun” element of science is somewhat lacking at the moment - in both education and research.

Education 

In education, science courses are often very dry. Science is often taught by dictating notes, maybe from long-winded and dreary Powerpoint presentations. There is no room for any kind of discussion in science education. Compare this to the humanity subjects where critical thinking, discussion and evaluation are actively encouraged. I can certainly see why there are shortages of good people studying science: it is taught as a mindless subject that is detached from every day life.

Research 

My experiences of research in science have been slightly more positive. Last year I conducted a really interesting research project in the field of atmospheric physics. It was fun in many ways: I had free realm over techniques and methods and encountered the work of scientists all across the world. But in some ways, it was also a very frustrating experience. When publishing the results of the experiments, the research paper went through a peer-review process. This is actually great from a scientific viewpoint - other scientists check your work and make sure it is at an acceptable standard before it can be published. But it was a very long and laborious process. Additionally, there are real shortages of funding in science, especially in physics. Our project was hit by the recent physics funding cuts in the UK. These days in order to get any funding, you need to write tons of proposals and compete against other projects.

I feel that similarly in research, this has removed spontaneity from science. Instead of coming up with new and innovative methods and pieces of research, scientists are encouraged to come up with research that is fairly mainstream. Otherwise it’ll neither get the funding nor approval in the peer-review process. Would scientists such as Darwin, Einstein and Mendelev who came up with theories which were seen as fairly maverick have been able to conduct their work in today’s environment?

We should not be surprised that smart young people are choosing to study the humanity subjects which engage the mind. Similarly, we should not be surprised that even those who do study science rarely go to work in science or research - about half of the graduates in physics from top universities go into business, finance and computers.

Science should be all about free ideas and finding out new things. In reality, I don’t feel like science at the moment holds up to those hopes or expectations.

Tags: UK