There are mainly two types of people in science. Those that do science and those that are Scientists. You will find both in graduate school and both in DIYBio. As I am months away from finishing up my Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Biophysics I would tell everyone who wishes to pursue science to obtain a Ph.D. or in the least an MS.
Why?
People think they know science. Alot of people think they do and maybe some of them do. Sure, everyone wants to be Good Will Hunting but in reality that is almost impossible. The knowledge you gain and the depth and breadth of science you are exposed to in graduate school you will not experience anywhere else. I had an MS going into my Ph.D. program and the amount of things I learned was insane. You cannot communicate with people you do not understand. I have a feeling a good portion of DIYBio people could not pick up a random paper in the field of Biological Sciences and explain what is going on. Are you familiar enough with NMR, Flow cytometry, Mass spec, STORM or any of the other thousands of techniques that you could judge a figure or paper on its scientific merit? It takes years for someone to obtain a Ph.D. because it takes years to learn all these things with some of the best and smartest teachers. How much longer do you think it would take to learn it on your own?
If you truly have a passion for science you will learn how to be a scientist. How to think of projects that are both feasible and new and creative. You will learn to have direction. I think the main problem with people in DIYBio is that because they lack formal training they lack direction. They want to do X Y and Z without even truly knowing the basics of how X works.
Anyone can do PCR and anyone can pipette and clone. A Scientist can come up with creative experiments that add to the overall knowledge of wo-mankind.
Look at DIYBio there is not much complexity in the experiments people do. This is not to say that there are not people out there at the moment doing complex experiments that we don't know about but even a first year graduate student is doing more complex experiments most of which are not cost/equipment prohibitive for DIYBio.
Maybe you are the DIYBio Bill Gates but what do you lose obtaining a Ph.D.? Most schools will pay you to obtain a Ph.D. in the sciences. 4-6 Years of a reliable job in which you are paid to learn. Yeah, it is hard work and yeah it is stressful but being a Scientist is not easy.
This is not to say there is anything wrong with doing DIYBio without formal training there are plenty of people who do stuff but I would recommend formal training if possible.
On Monday, May 6, 2013 3:06:38 PM UTC-5, Lindenberg wrote:
--Hey guys, I would like to know a few opinions on this. How important do you guys think a Ms or PhD degree will be in the next 10+ years in life sciences? Because many of the people I know working on their Ms or PhD in molecular biology, is that they learn a few techniques in 1 year or so and then they just look like machines, just repeating a few protocols over and over again. And they also get too concentrated on a specific subject...I also read on Wired about a guy that left his PhD to run his DIY bio lab. Do you guys think it's crazy?Except for the practical part, today with the internet and easy access to books we can study whatever we want, when we want, we don't need to be trapped on a specific course anymore.
-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups DIYbio group. To post to this group, send email to diybio@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to diybio+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/diybio?hl=en
Learn more at www.diybio.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "DIYbio" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to diybio+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to diybio@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/diybio?hl=en.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/diybio/-/R3RkiSZLpLUJ.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
0 comments:
Post a Comment