Science

I haven't posted in a while, but I came across this http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science the other day. It's not so much about women in science (it starts out with the Larry Summers thing, and discusses a little bit about opportunity costs being greater for women), but more science careers in general. Excerpt: "Adjusted for IQ, quantitative skills, and working hours, jobs in science are the lowest paid in the United States." This is true, especially for young scientists, i.e. graduate students and postdocs. I could be making $50,000/yr with benefits and the possibility of raises while working 40 hours/wk in industry instead of the $20,000/yr with benefits for working 50-70 hours/wk right now. However, would I be any better off? I don't live below my means and can still live a middle-class lifestyle, and I have access to wonderful resources like the university library and have stimulating colleagues with whom to converse on a regular basis. Graduate school offers much more freedom in terms of working hours/places (if I want to work from midnight to 10 AM every day nobody would care as long as stuff got done, "work" can be defined as reading or writing or editing papers at Starbucks). If monetary reward is is all that someone wants, and a person is indifferent about intellectual stimulation, then sure, careers in American science, at least in academia, can be considered unwanted. The problem is that science is necessary for society to advance, and we need some nontrivial segment of the population doing science.