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If the current trend continues we can change the words of the post war song “Where have all the flowers gone” to “Where have all the scientists gone?”, with the same reply “Gone to graveyards everyone”. Pursuing a career in Science is out of fashion in the Western world. However, unlike the demise of the jumpsuit or hotpants, the repercussions of a scienceless society will be big step backwards. Like the miniskirt, science may make a comeback in a future, yet unborn, generation, but the lack of continuity will require reinvention of the wheel, as was experienced in what we now call the middle or dark ages.

Am I being too dramatic? Yes, I’m trying to shake us up before too many more biology, physics, and other science departments close. The 23 percent drop in science enrolments at university in the past 15 years and lower enrolments in year 12 should concern us all. Prof Peter Andrews, a Chief Scientist at Queensland University, warns of the impending crisis. He states “for Australia to remain internationally competitive, by 2010 we will need about 750,000 scientists, mainly researchers.” However, students are flocking to law and business studies, in the hope of quicker financial returns or the attractiveness of double degrees.

An education that contains little or no science makes no sense. The goal of education is to prepare us for life and science helps us understand the world in which we do life. Clearly then, science should play a major role in our education system. Similarly, if scientific study is not driven by desires to improve our existence, the pursuit of knowledge can become misguided, and even destructive, as events such as the Holocaust and Hiroshima demonstrate. Science that is out of touch with the world, denies its roots in the study of nature. It originated as a Western concept attempting to comprehend the all-wise and universal Creator whose creation followed rational principles. It was believed that absurdities in nature could be resolved through intelligent and systematic investigation, which we now refer to as the scientific method.

Why are people no longer wanting to pursue Science? To answer this question, Macquarie University has commissioned the country’s largest and most comprehensive study to find out why high school students are not being turned on to pursue science. The results discussed at a meeting last week involving 80 participants and 27 Universities across Australia revealed that ignorance is the biggest problem. The study showed that making a difference, working with people and being challenged were the top priority for our teens in choosing their career path – matching with the top three career experiences of the scientists surveyed. This is a far cry from the image of the poor grey haired scientists stuck in a laboratory with only their test tubes and rats to talk to. As a woman with three kids, I certainly don’t fit that profile. Science is about discovery. It’s about having an idea and testing it and passing on the benefit to the community.

What has happened to promote ignorance? Don’t we care about our world and how it works anymore? Nature and discovery programs have made way for Reality TV. Obviously a bunch of semi-naked young adults on a desert island or in a spa are more interesting than animals that inhabit the forests and jungles. Why, their behaviour isn’t much different. Is science coming across as interesting and worth pursuing in our high schools? It appears not. A change is needed.

President of the State University of New York and author of the Boyer Report, Dr Shirley Kenny, described a move in the US from treating students as “vessels to pour knowledge into” to “young researchers that learn by doing”. Exposing students to the experiments, projects, laboratories and especially live scientists can be the driving force that motivates them first to dream and then to make it a lifelong reality. Next time you meet a scientist, ask them why they do what they do. They will probably tell you something like when they were a child they met Sir Hillary Edmond or loved to try out the wacky experiments of Prof Julius Sumner Miller. Why is it so? Because as individuals and as a society we need to be inspired.

If Accountancy or Law floats your boat, then go for it. But if you’re motivation is to simply follow the crowd hoping to make some quick and easy bucks, then you’re motivation won’t last you a life time.

A career in science offers many rewards and opportunities. Find a cure for cancer. Analyse and design drugs and pesticides. Develop a secret code that can’t be broken. Put on your snorkels and become a marinebiologist. Manage urban parks and landscapes or take care of the orangutang’s mating program at the zoo. Develop diets for sick children. Dig up hidden treasure from a lost civilisation, strike gold while looking for fossils, discover the missing link. Unravel the mystery in someone’s mind. As you do you’ll meet and help people from all walks of life. Alternatively, create a robot or develop or a new variety of wine. Be a derivatives trader and buy that dream Porche. Be a science journalist, communicator or academic like me. You can contribute to advances in sport or fitness, new fashion fabrics, global warming, smaller computer chips, knowledge management and innovation. In science, even the skies are not the limits.

Go on - make a difference –maybe win a Nobel prize.

Guests on this program:

Debbie Richards
Associate Professor
Department of Computing
Macquarie University

Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation
http://www.dest.gov.au/.../meetings/%20documents/awareness_pdf.htm