Doing research, I used to work with mathematicians, engineers AND physicists on a daily basis for years. Physicists were the least fun. Most of them seemed to think of themselves as a sort of Jesuits of Science. As in: “I just figured this out, and already it’s set in stone, why do you even argue with me?” Mathematicians and engineers were a lot humbler, more down-to-earth. Also, some of them were astonishingly edgy in a very positive way, and I like that.
Comment on STEM
NielsBohron@lemmy.world 6 months agoAs someone with an engineering degree and a science degree, scientists are absolutely nothing like engineers.
PrimeMinisterKeyes@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Gork@lemm.ee 6 months ago
They’ve got some things in common.
Technical aptitude. Complete unawareness, or purposeful neglect, of social norms. Science related dad jokes.
NielsBohron@lemmy.world 6 months ago
True, but I mainly mean in terms of their attitude towards research and their level of skepticism and critical thinking when presented with new information.
Engineers are always thinking in terms of “how can I make this work?” and scientists are trained to think in terms of “where does this theory/method break?”
This means that in general, engineers are far more likely to assume one positive result is significant, whereas scientists are far more likely to be looking at and looking homes in experiment methodology. This is a generalization, but in my experience, engineers are far more likely to fall for pseudoscience BS. Granted, my experience is mostly in chemistry and chemical engineering, but this idea in general has been a topic of discussion and research in peer-reviewed literature for years.
Literati@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Similarly, from an engineer’s perspective, scientists are a great addition to the working group when you need to find the flaws in the system, but awful when you actually just need something to go into the real world and work 80% of the time ;)
Especially when you’re time constrained.
NielsBohron@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Definitely. Lots of scientists fall into the trap of letting “perfect” be the enemy of “good”