In praise of Scientists, Technologists, Engineers and Mathematicians....

[Fab Foodie]

From time to time you hear engineers complaining that the term 'engineer' does not have the cachet of other professions; that it is not as respected as it is in Europe, and that the term should be reserved for people with degrees who develop new technology. If that's the case, they should think of a new poncy term in my opinion, because the work 'engineer' as been used for a long time to describe people who got their hands dirty fixing and operating stuff. There is a chapter in Tess of the d'Urbervilles, where a Northerner who just described himself as an 'engineer' arrived on the farm with a threshing machine. I am sure he was more an operator/repair man. All those Scots who maintained steamship engines were engineers. All those people who fix cars are engineers.

The thing I liked most about the engineering profession was that during the Industrial Revolution any one with talent and drive could become an engineer. You did not need a university degree, know Latin, or come from a certain social background. Some of the greatest 19th Century engineers had next to no education and came from dirt poor backgrounds.

First I couldn’t even spell engineer...now I are one....

 

[Fab Foodie]

I can tell you from my own involvement this year that keeping on top of the technology capacity requirement this year has been the most demanding, exhausting and rewarding year of my 32 years in IT, upgrading aging systems with no downtime in many case to accommodate a 700% increase in demand has all but burnt out everyone in my company and all of our partners, Google Microsoft and AWS. I'm still on call and wont get a break until Feb. but at least this time its not for the profit of big retail its for all of us.

Living for a better 2021

Sorry, I forgot to say IT doesn’t count ;-)

 

[itboffin]

Sorry, I forgot to say IT doesn’t count ;-)

yeah it defo doesnt but the responsibility of not effing it up has been so high we're as before it wasnt that big a deal in the grand scheme of things

 

[matticus]

I think we need governments made of members from all backgrounds. What we need less of is Etonians and Oxbridge PPE grads...

Surely we need PPE expertise now more than ever??

 

[Ajax Bay]

I think we need governments made of members from all backgrounds. What we need less of is Etonians and Oxbridge PPE grads..

A point of order Madam Deputy Speaker: No PPE grads are spawned in the other place. Pure 'dreaming spires' degree.

Surely we need PPE expertise now more than ever??

As you're relatively a local, I'm surprised you didn't pick that up, Matt.

 

[bitsandbobs]

Acid casualty, surfer dude, inventor of PCR and Nobel laureate Kary Mullis was a climate change denier iirc.

I've got a lot of love for Pauling but he did go a bit bonkers.

Mullis is more notorious for his HIV/AIDS denialism sadly.

 

[winjim]

Mullis is more notorious for his HIV/AIDS denialism sadly.

Is that what I was thinking of? Or is it climate as well?

 

[Once a Wheeler]

We could do much for British engineering if we did as many other European countries have done and require that the title of engineer be limited to those with a degree in their discipline and membership of a recognized professional body; so putting them on a par with architects, solicitors, doctors and dentists.

People who fix your car or your central heating are technicians, skilled tradespersons and worthy of their hire but not engineers. Engineers are the ones who design the cars and the central heating systems but do not normally make a living out of maintaining them. To be an engineer is the worthy ambition for a technician or any able child. Aspiration is important and legislating in this way would probably be one of the most effective ways of raising the status of engineering to where it belongs alongside the other learned professions.

 

[Eric Olthwaite]

People who fix your car or your central heating are technicians, skilled tradespersons and worthy of their hire but not engineers. Engineers are the ones who design the cars and the central heating systems but do not normally make a living out of maintaining them.

I'm not sure the distinction between design and maintenance really holds that well. I would like to think that those tasked with those supervising the maintenance of commercial airliners are at least as skilled as the designers.

 

[Ajax Bay]

I would like to think that those tasked with those supervising the maintenance of commercial airliners are at least as skilled as the designers.

They probably are at least as skilled. But different skills. Likely supervisors of maintenance need to have experience of maintenance and will have risen to the responsibilities of a supervisor partly because they have demonstrated their maintenance expertise. Designers need to consider inter alia how components will be maintained but don't need maintenance experience (though mechanics coming up that talent pathway to qualify and practise as an engineer often do very well).

 

[cyclintom]

Thanks (sadly) to CV19, Science and experts have been thrust to the front of the stage. Talk of Immunology, Genetics, Biochemistry, Epidemiology, Mathematical modelling, Statistics, are becoming commonplace.
Footage of lab-rats beavering-away in lab coats, driving highly complicated analytical devices, poring over data are now regularly shown alongside NHS staff again, working with a range of highly complex equipment on which lives depend.

My point is that the techniques, expertise, equipment and technologies that have enabled-us to rapidly detect viruses and read their genetic code, determine the make-up of their spike-proteins, develop and deliver a range of vaccines did not happen overnight. They are the result of years of quiet and unsung fundamental research work (often poorly funded) by an awful lot of dedicated scientists and technologist. At last many of them are showing their worth and hopefully enjoying their day in the sun.
Sadly I fear for the future funding of science and research in the UK, so let's celebrate this moment for Scientists while we can.

The technology to detect and label SARS-Co-2 is hardly new. I designed and programmed the microtitration device to perform PCR in the early 80's I think. We did this to detect HIV in the blood banking system since we knew that people were getting AIDS from the blood banks but we didn't know what the cause was.

People who talk about science are almost always the people that don't understand anything about it. For instance, CO2 has no effect on atmospheric heating. So why do we hear of this as "settled 'science'"? The real fact is that IF there was any noticeable amount of CO2 in the atmosphere it would cause cooling and not heating.

 

[cyclintom]

My brother had a severe pain in his back, I took him to an emergency hospital and we sat around for 10 hours, they took some x-rays "analyzed" them and told him that there was nothing wrong with him and it was probably a strained muscle. The next day is was worse so I took him to another ER with exactly the same result. On the third day, the same thing. His wife had been a nurse's aid and she got copies of the x-rays on a disk. On the forth day he could hardly move but had an appointment with a podiatrist - a foot doctor. During this appointment his wife begged the doctor to look at the x-rays. It was quite a job to get him to look at these since it was entirely out of his specialty. It took less than one second after the image came up on the screen before he picked up the phone and called the most important hospital in Oakland and said he was sending a man in for emergency surgery. I drove him down to the Emergency entrance and they took him immediately into surgery where he was for 8 hours. He was 12 days in the ICU and then another week in the recovery ward. He had advanced pneumonia with half of his left lung collapsed and the rest filled with fluid. Pneumonia is the largest cause of death to senior citizens and should have been the VERY first thing that these Emergency Rooms should have looked for.

What I'm trying to say is that there is real science and there are a whole lot of pretend scientists. Don't trust ANYTHING that you hear. They can't even give you the weather prediction for one month with any degree of accuracy so the claims of most of the "science" connected in any way with the government is just so much hooey.

 

[cyclintom]

As someone above said, it is very easy to derail the conversation into negativity and I don't want to do that. But I do want people to understand that most so-called "studies" or papers such as appears in Science and such are mostly garbage that you should not believe for one second nor try to use as proof of anything other than some undergrad is attempting to complete his degree which requires publishing. In one project I had two PhD's an a master EE's and three bachelors degreed programmers. I had to do HALF of the design work, write half of the code plus write the entire real time operating kernel myself.

Education leads to knowledge but it is a very rocky pathway very often and trying to think that answers pop out of a hat worn by someone is silly. Always maintain a sense of disbelief. Most things that are "known" are pure guesses. How long did it take to even produce the kind of steel that Columbus was selling for bicycles?

 

[Alien8]

People who fix your car or your central heating are technicians, skilled tradespersons and worthy of their hire but not engineers.

It's enough to make Faraday turn in his cage.

 

[Fab Foodie]

It's enough to make Faraday turn in his cage.

Or Heisenberg certain...