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Asked by helenb to Mark, Matthew, Mike, Paul, Sabina on 10 Mar 2014.
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Sabina Hatch answered on 10 Mar 2014:
I don’t know about the other sciences but with physics the biggest benefit for me has been problem solving. I approach things in life in a completely different way now… as a physicist. Whether it is putting together an IKEA wardrobe at home or helping a friend with a personal dilemma. I try and find the source of the problem and look at ways of resolving it. Also I would say that it is quite easy to go into a number of different fields with a science degree, not necessarily the one you studied.
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Mike Lee answered on 10 Mar 2014:
Personally, I feel great when I learn something new.
More generally, science has economic and cultural benefits for everyone to enjoy
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Paul Coxon answered on 10 Mar 2014:
Science is all about discovery and thinking creatively. It helps broaden your understanding and appreciation of the world around you, equips you with excellent problem-solving abilities and a whole host of extremely transferable skills.
Science has the potential to bring enormous benefits to humanity. Think of all the achievements mankind has made over the centuries – all through science.
As Louis Pasteur said:
“Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.”
Also, people who study science are 94.3% better looking than those who don’t 😉
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Matthew Malek answered on 11 Mar 2014:
To the individual (that’s you), the benefits are practical and fun. The practical is training yourself for a new way of looking at the world around you and a new attitude towards problem solving. You can take that outlook with you and apply it to other parts of your life.
On the fun side, there’s the excitement that comes from discovering new things, and being on the cutting edge of knowledge. Just think how cool it is when you are responsible for discovering something new, that no one in the history of the world has ever known before. Nifty, huh? ;-D
If you decide to do an experimental science, you also get to play with high tech toys, which I always find lots of fun!
To society, the benefits of studying science are even greater. Science is the underpinning of all modern culture, from medicine to communication and beyond. If you do applied research, you are contributing directly to new technologies; if you do basic research, you are expanding our fundamental knowledge of the universe. Both are pretty awesome, in very different ways!
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Mark Jackson answered on 11 Mar 2014:
First, I want to say that the question was worded precisely right: even if you don’t end up *being* a scientist, there are many advantages in *studying* science. This is because science is a way of thinking, not just a collection of facts. Here are a few examples I have observed in which scientific thinking helps with everyday life.
1) Correlation does not equal causality. Did you know that ice cream consumption and snake bite occurrences are strongly correlated? If you mention this to most people, their intuition leads to the conclusion that ice cream must cause snakes to bite you. A few who consider themselves clever might interpret it the other way around, that getting bit by a snake must make you crave ice cream. Of course neither is true – they both just usually happen during the summer. Science makes you think carefully about the logical relationship between facts, and helps you to avoid jumping to the wrong conclusion.
2) Not being intimidated by people with fancy degrees (like doctors). When I tell people I’m a physicist, I’ve had some people reply that I must know “everything about everything.” I don’t – in fact I know very little about most things, I just know a bit more than they do about a very specific subject. And I’m wrong about even that subject 99% of the time (these are about very technical, subtle points; I’m usually right about the basic things in physics). Just because someone has a degree or seems “smart” doesn’t mean they know anything about other subjects. In particular, teaching classes attended by medical students has shown me that doctors are not nearly as smart as they think they are, they are just good memorizers. They often don’t understand underlying concepts very well.
3) The Sharpshooters Fallacy. Take a gun (I’m American, so I can imagine this) and shoot semi-randomly at the side of a barn. Now walk up to the barn and you will see that some areas happened to have several bullet holes clustered together. Paint bull’s eyes around these clusters, and go brag to your friend about what a great sharpshooter you are. Where does the logic fail? Because you constructed the “predictions” after you already knew the outcome, not the other way around (which is a lot harder). You see this all the time in the news: people saying they predicted such-and-such, but only *after* such-and-such occurred. That means nothing; even if they had a hunch that it would occur, if it hadn’t they certainly wouldn’t have publicly announce that they had been wrong, they would just conveniently forget about it. You also see this a lot when religious people claim that a religious text predicted some scientific knowledge. If this were true, why didn’t they tell us before the scientists had to figure it out?
4) Taking your ego out of the equation. Humans have a great weakness that we often only accept information which agrees with some prejudice we have about the answer, and reject all other information as wrong. This is especially true in politics: if we support the political party in office, any good development proves their superiority, and any bad development is insignificant or just bad luck. If we oppose the political party, any bad development proves their incompetence, and any good development is insignificant or just accidental. Sciences helps you curb this thinking (I’m certainly not perfect, but I try to be aware of my prejudices). Nature doesn’t care about what you want the answer to be. As much as you want the answer to be something, sometimes it’s just not that, and you have to learn to accept that. It’s good to learn to be as objective as you can.
Comments
Rowena commented on :
When I talk to scientists and non-scientists I notice two key things that scientists benefit from. The first is problem solving like Sabina said. The other one is being sceptical. It sounds like a bad thing, but scientists look at something and try to understand it and query it, whilst I notice a lot of non-scientists believe things they are told even when they come from very dodgy places and then they can be convinced of rather silly things because they were told it once. Like magarine is toxic or injections give you autism. This is of course a broad generalisation and most non-scientists are not like this, it’s just that hardly any scientists are.
(Colour Zone Scientist)