Thread: Pew Poll Re Political Affiliation of Scientists

Originally Posted by RazorPete

I've been doing biomedical basic research field for over 15 years and have worked with, trained, collaborated with etc. a ton of different scientists. Some do have excellent common "horse" sense, in fact the best ones always do. Others do not have good common sense. I think that the ones who took a stint outside of academia for a while and lived in the real world outside of school maybe have a bit more common sense than the others, but its really variable. So I think its hard to generalize about scientists, they are as varied as any other group of people.

Unfortunately a lot of people think of Jerry Lewis as a prototype of what a scientist is like. Laaaady, laaaaaady! Unfortunately, this nerd image (and perhaps having frog dissections as the traditional intro to science in grade school) has really turned off a great many American students who might have made great discoveries had they looked science as a career.

OK done with my rant, and my attempt to steer this thread further off topic.

When I would interview potential employees I found 3 basic types:
1) No college but all practical experience
2) no practical experience but has college degree
3)Practical experience and college degree
Generally speaking, of the 3 categories, I found no.#3 the best to hirer and no. #2 the worst to hirer.
This is of course a broad generalization.

I agree, for students, physicians as well as scientists that I evalute/hire, those who excel in school plus have valuable non-academic experience are generally the best candidates. I think the same is true for law and MBA programs who are also looking for that valuable outside of academic experience.