I’m very madly in love with many branches of science. I’ll even give up my current human interest to pursue them, no matter how much it’d break my heart initially. I’ve already got a basic grounding in linguistics–self-taught–and a burning interest in astronomy, anthropology, sociology, economics, psychology–hell, if it ends in an ‘-ology’, I probably will spare it at least a cursory glance. It is said that the highest goal in life is to find something you love and to find a way to get paid for it–so how do I get paid to be a science-guy?
Go to college, get a bachelor’s, then get a grant for your postgrad project. In exchange for teaching undergraduate brats what you learned three years prior, you’ll get to live in poverty and conduct your research.
Go School
Get Degree.
Get another Degree
Get 'nother Degree
Learn Write Grant Application (easier with Ph.D. than with Bachelor’s )
Get Job as Professor or R&D Firm
Congratulations, you’re a scientist.
Most scientists don’t make huge amounts of money. Lex Luthor and Ernst Blofeld were really trying to take over the world just so they’d haveenough financial backing for their research projects.
IMHO, only those with a PhD in the sciences can consider themselves scientists. So, there ya go, get a PhD–but not the mailorder kind. 
It really depends on your definition of “scientist.”
If you want to be recognized as someone in the “scientific community,” follow the suggestions given above.
If you want to “do science” just do it. Develop an hypothesis, develop ways to test the hypothesis, do the test, repeat until you have demonstrated the validity of the hypothesis.
Move on to another hypothesis or extend the first one toward the “law” status by having others who “do science” to verify your results or to show them to be in error.
If it’s the money thing mostly, pursue science as a hobby until you make some big discovery.
This is not meant as a joking reply. It really does depend on how seriously you want to be “a scientist.”
Seriously Dude,
My sis spent 9 years getting her degrees in Neuro-Chemistry, and she’s not loaded - only do it if you love it…
I remember when I started my first degree (didn’t finish it though, dropped out of the first year) I choose something called an Mphys (Master of physics I think)which was sort of like (BSc+MSc), but specifically designed for careers in science. This was in the UK and I honestly don’t know if they still do them.
Anyway, the only place to start is a bachelor’s degree (or something very simlair like the Mphys), preferably at a good university. Then after graduating with good results you start your post-grad degree, either an MSc or a PhD or both. Upon completing this you might be offered a research postion which also may involve teaching (of course as friedo says you’ll already be doing this with your postgrad degree) then it’s a case of working your way up the slippery ziggurat.
Of course I dropped out at the first hurdle and we do have quite a few scientists on the boards so I’m sure someone will be along with more personal experince.
A PhD is like a union card for scientists. You can do science without one (Richard Leakey the paleoanthropologist comes to mind), but you’ll have a very hard time getting people to take you seriously. A PhD is your proof that you’ve put in the hours and sweat and schmooze to join the club.
Richard Leakey had some serious advantages…he had been assisting his scientist parents since he was a kid, and he had a great deal of field experience in Kenya (originally he was going to be a tour organizer), and was politically connected in Kenya which is helpful in getting the government there to assist you or not hinder you.
No, the simplest and easiest thing to do is get your Ph.D. first. Just be prepared for a lot of unpaid and unappreciated work, and a lot of political game playing. Imagine the politics of a troop of very smart and eccentric baboons and you won’t go far wrong.
BWHA HA HA HA HA HA… so true!
Yes, getting a PhD is pretty much essential to doing research as a profession, whether in academia, public agencies or private industry. After reading the OP, I don’t think I would question your commitment to getting a PhD, but there is a fundamental issue here that hasn’t been addressed yet.
WHICH science do you want to pursue for the rest of your life, likely to the exclusion of all others?
There are some hard-working, gifted folks out there who manage to engage in cross-disciplinary research, and a few may even have multiple PhD degrees. However, if you are like most people who go for a PhD, you will have the time, energy and financial resources to finish only one. Moreover, the more advanced the level of study, the more narrowly focused your research is likely to become - after all, you will need to finish your degree in a finite number of years, so the research questions you’re working on have to be sharply defined and reasonably tractable in the short term (say, 5-7 years).
When I was younger, like you I loved reading about anything science-related; in fact, I think I looked into everything you listed in the OP (except for economics - didn’t end in -logy ). However, I eventually had to make a decision about what undergraduate degree to get, because that would determine what courses I took and how I would be prepared for advanced research work (at the time, I was enamored of both materials science and geology - geology won). True, you could stick with Chemistry or Physics for a BS degree and then diversify from there… but that may not be the best move, for a variety of reasons. I can elaborate on that more if you like, but rather than get too far off-track right now, let me just say this:
While I do not at all regret going for my PhD, the fact of the matter is that while working on it, I had essentially no time for anything else - certainly, my mind was so fried by dealing with the details of my thesis that I couldn’t bear to read anything remotely science-related when I finally did take a break. The end result was that, from the perspective of my own personal scientific knowledge and awareness, I’d become completely unidimensional. I am finally taking steps to broaden my science horizons again, but I can tell you right now that it’s unlikely I will ever do anything in another field other than read casually about it. It is a full-time effort to stay abreast of developments in my own field and do my own work.
So, the best advice I can give is: Think long and hard about which discipline really fascinates you and draws you in like no other… THEN go for your PhD.
Note that I’m a cell/molecular biology grad student, so everything I say may not apply to other disciplines.
What exactly do you mean when you say you want to be a scientist?
If you want to do science every day, and don’t want to get a PhD, you can be a laboratory technician. This requires some experience in lab, so you’d probably have to go back to school, take some courses in the relevant science with lab, and get a flunky-type job in a lab, very possibly as a part-time volunteer. After you have the equivalent of, let’s say, two summers of research, you can become a tech. Tech jobs vary according to the labs in which they work. Large labs in particular tend to have techs who function (as one tech I know put it) the lab mom, making sure everything works, all of the supplies are always ordered, etc. In smaller labs, the techs do that stuff, but since there’s less of it to do, they spend much of their time working on a project of their own, and tend to be fairly similar in status to the lab’s graduate students and postdoctoral fellows (people with PhDs who are getting more experience before trying to get their own labs).
On the other hand, you may decide that getting a PhD is the way to go for you. That’s a massive investment of time and effort, but if you ever want your own lab, or want to advance your career if you decide to leave the lab for something science-related like journal editorship or teaching in a college, it’ll be necessary. How poor you’ll be while getting it depends on your field. I think bio grad students are the best paid of any graduate students, althought that varies wildly with location/prestige of institution; you may or may not have to teach at all during grad school. (I deliberately chose schools where I wouldn’t have to teach at all.) The hours are long. You have to be willing to put up with maybe a yearlong period when none of your experiments work. Other people have ultimate control of your career, deciding when and what you publish and whether or not you’re finished with grad school yet, since PhD programs have no defined length.
Psych research labs seem to work similarly to bio labs, as far as I can tell from a friend in that field. Obviously, economists don’t have labs, so they won’t work this way at all.
You may not have to go back for an entire undergraduate degree in your new chosen field. For one thing, semi-related majors may be acceptable (eg chemistry or computer science for biology), or it may be enough if you’ve done some coursework and have some practical experience in the field, which is where the volunteering part comes in. I can’t recommend strongly enough finding a short term job (paid or not) in your new chosen field, since you have no way of knowing whether you’ll like the day-to-day practice of a science (very different from learning it in a classroom) until you try it out.
Am I the only one who read the OP and thought of a Dilbert cartoon?
The secretary approached Alice and said, “Teach me to be an engineer. I don’t care if it takes all afternoon.”
First, you have to build a secret laboratory. And then you have to pick up a vaguely Eastern European accent. It helps if you have a rival, preferably with a lab of his own and an evil/annoying laugh. And if you have a sister to come in and break everything, it’s just a bonus.
One question - do you have a hump? Because if you do, you’re fated for the assistant slot. Sorry. That’s just the way it is.
Also, if you are a beautiful woman, either you are some sort of space clone or you need a scientist to rescue you.
Some great answers in this thread. I am a reasonably well-respected scientist and I do not have a PhD (just an MS). But it took a long, long, time to get here, and I still think that I would have an easier time funding my research if I did have that “Piled higher and Deeper” degree. I do have a fairly long bibliography of published journal articles that helps me command a degree of respect. You may see me on CBS news some time this week with my Asian carp research.
Anyway, I’m reasonably well-paid, but certainly not rich. I can afford an inexpensive pontoon boat but I never get a chance to use it because I work almost 60 hours per week. I don’t play the lottery (few scientists do, because mostly we are not statistically incompetent), but when asked what I would do with the money if I won, I immediately said, “why fund my research!” My wife set me straight on that, though. (She is long-suffering, but she mostly puts up with me.)
One thing I always tell beginning scientists is to be prepared for a lot of monotony. To do science you usually have to do the same tasks over and over and over again. It is part of the scientific method. But since I was in grad school, I’ve guess I’ve been able to get excited about my job on average about once a day. And that is more than many people can say.
Fishhead
Do you want to be a research scientist or, perhaps an applied scientist? I can remember as a kid thinking the glamour went to the research scientists, and I grew up to be an applied scientist.
Another thing to think about is whether you think you’d prefer academia or industry. I don’t have a Ph.D. and that would be a severe limitation in the academic world. It’s not in industry. Both of my parents were academic professionals, my father being a Dean at a private university while my mother was an ABD lecturer in archeology at a public university. The spillover from their lives left me with little desire to enter that world. It actually didn’t affect my mother as much because, as an ABD, she was automatically pre-snockered in any confrontation with a Ph.D.; thus she let a lot go. My dad, as a Dean, was almost sure to be in the middle of the most odious catfights.
In industry, well, my industry anyway, your degree(s) mean little a few years down the road. What is looked at is what you’ve managed to get done. And, I don’t mean to say there are not political issues - corporado life is known for political infighting. Perhaps it’s just that I prefer the devil I know.
In my particular niche, a lot of the nifty new stuff comes from industry for industry, so we get our hands on it before it filters down the donation chain to the universities. And the nature of the work (and I’ll bet this applies to many industries) is such that, while we call ourselves applied scientists, we are constantly unearthing discoveries. When I get a new data volume, I am often the first person ever to know what I find out about the Earth within.
And (this applies to both academic and industrial scientific careers), it’s a good gig to get paid to sit around and wonder about stuff. My colleagues and I spend many hours of the week talking, drawing pictures, arguing, erasing others’ pictures, getting mad, joking, and hustling off to find a reference or some analogous situation with which to defend a position. A thought that suddenly strikes me is that perhaps one difference between academia and industry is that we’re both not as easily damaged by eating a little humble pie, and are thus better at it.
As well, because we’re who we are, in the corporate society we’re allowed to be a little off-beat (Forget it, man, you don’t know what he was thinkin’ about.).
Anyway, some thoughts. Let me be about the 14th to encourage you.
You can be a medical scientist with just an MD also. A lot of my classmates from Johns Hopkins took that route. While many also got a Ph.D. in addition to the MD, many did not, and are busy being associate and full professors at research institutes. Also lots of them work for pharmaceutical concerns.
So its 4 years of med school after college, then at least 3 years in specialty training, then 1 or 2 years of fellowship in a sub-specialty.
Or combine MD with an MS, or DVM with MS. The latter I know already gives you research/professor positions in universities (veterinarians with PhDs are not so common, in fact, they are trying to increase that).
Do you want to do lab work, or do you want to work mainly with the theory and hypothesis? You can become a biological scientist (lab worker) in many places (including universities) with just a bachelor’s degree in science. And you can still get to have a say in the work going on around the lab, and have your name acknowledge when whatever is going in your lab gets published. You just won’t be the leader of the pack, and you will be doing the grunt work… On the other hand, if you’re good enough with your techniques and the protocols you’ve developed, other people including PhD.'s will go to you to get advise.
How soon to specialise?
I’m currently halfway through Yr 12, intending to start a BSc next year. I am fascinated particularly by cell and molecular biology, but I am also really into astronomy, astrophysics and the rest of it.
So basically, I’m looking for advice. When should I narrow down to one field.
I’m an outdoorsy sort of guy, into bushwalking, snorkelling, all that kind of thing, so if I could find a study that married my science interests with a bit of field research, that would be ideal.
Any suggestions?
Many universities in the US have general education programs were students are supposed to take a bit of every science there is, although in many cases if you’re not interested in that science there is a light version.
I don’t know how that works in Australia’s post-secondary education system, though.
Another thing to consider… Your master’s or PhD degree does not have to be on the exact same subject as your bachelor’s degree. You have to complete some pre-requisites, but having a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry won’t prohibit you to later get a graduate degree in biology or physics, although you may have to take a couple of extra courses…
I’d point out that one’s lifestyle preferences can really influence what you should study. I know lots of people who went into geology because they liked climbing around on glaciers or volcanoes, biology because they liked scuba diving or hiking, paleontology or archeology because they liked camping out, etc. While there are plenty of biologists who sit in labs all day every day, there are areas of biology or geology that really give you a chance to get outdoors. Too bad molecular biology isn’t really one of them, unless you can convince people you really need to go out and gather more samples…more samples…more samples…