She killed ‘em with mathematics (redux)
January 22nd, 2006 at 12:59 am
According to the BBC, several thousand 11 to 15 year old Londoners were asked, among other things, whether or not they would like to be scientists.
Among those who said they would not like to be scientists, reasons included: "Because you would constantly be depressed and tired and not have time for family", and "because they all wear big glasses and white coats and I am female".
Yes, well, that’s a real morale-booster. Now if I could just find my goggles and lab coat…
Also, is the BBC following some quotation punctuation rules I don’t know about?
maxg
Both comments and trackbacks are closed.
That’s standard British punctuation, according to the fabulous book “Eats, Shoots, and Leaves;” the Brits are (as in most things) far more sensible about the placement of punctuation with respect to quotation marks than us from across the Pond.
As for the scientist thing, I sure wish I had a lab coat; then I’d be cool. ;)
Alex Hill | January 22nd, 2006 at 02:42 am
Before they try to convince the kids otherwise shouldn’t they do a study to see if mostscientists wear glasses, feel depressed and tired, and are less attractive than the general population? The article seems to go on the assumption that the kids are wrong.
David | January 24th, 2006 at 03:59 am
I agree, the data should be collected and there would surely be some truth to the stereotypes.
But the lab-coat-and-test-tubes image doesn’t capture a whole bunch of modern science. And while I don’t have the data for this assertion either, I would imagine there are many other professions where incidence of overwork or depression is just as high or higher than for ’scientists,’ but which are not perceived that way.
(Note the Amerrrican punctuation.)
maxg | January 24th, 2006 at 10:28 pm
And I apologize for the server errors, still trying to figure those out.
maxg | January 24th, 2006 at 10:29 pm
Yeah - my point was more don’t convince kids that scientists are not like that, convince kids they do not have to be like that to be a scientist. Kind of like you would not get very far convincing people that Jews are not good at math but you could explain that any given Jew may be bad at math.
David | January 26th, 2006 at 09:45 am
David, I completely agree with you!
Robert Moreno | July 4th, 2006 at 06:03 pm