If you're a young scientist and you want to start the dayoff with a pick-me-downer, you'll find it in the 7 March2012 online edition of The Atlantic [1]. You can't miss it:it has the eye-catching headline 'Do we really need morescientists?' It's an opinion piece by organic chemist DerekLowe, who works in the pharmaceutical industry andwho appears to think we do. He starts by pointing outthat smart people who want to get rich will probablychoose Wall Street over the sciences, and then states, 'Ittakes a certain personality type to really get into thisstuff '. The type, he explains, likes figuring things out andmaking complicated things work, and is driven bycuriosity, so clearly the scientific life is not for everyone.But then he gets down to the real problem with thescience labor market: a dearth of jobs. 'A lot of peoplewith physics and chemistry degrees are having troublefinding work', he asserts, 'and in my own degree field(synthetic organic chemistry), it's been a real feat nothaving your job evaporate out from under you. In manycases, these jobs are going off to lower-labor-cost areaslike China or India, but some of them are just dis-appearing outright', concluding with the advice, 'Be lighton your feet...learn how to learn, and don't assume thatyou've ever won some sort of lasting job security, becauselasting job security isn't something that the world'seconomy is built to deliver these days'.
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