In last weekend’s edition of NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, host Peter Sagal asked a panelist about a serious problem facing the Pentagon: There’s a shortage of nerds, a.k.a. geeks.
Space Shuttle Atlantis (NASA image, Wikimedia Commons)
Happily, Houston Chronicle deputy editor and blogger Kyrie O’Connor came to the right answer.
On the quiz show, Sagal reported that Regina Dugan, head of DARPA (the Pentagon’s research arm and developer of the early Internet), recently testified before the House Armed Services Committee about her concern for our country’s most famous five-sided structure’s looming intellectual deficit.
“The decline in science education in this country means fewer nerds are being produced, a fact which has serious national security implications,” Sagal said in summary.
“Nerds molt into tech geeks. Tech geeks grow into scientists and scientists maintain the United States technical superiority,” he explained. No worries, though –
Sagal suggests the current nerd shortage will self-correct based on the predictable laws of high-school ecosystems. (To listen to his short description of this evolutionary process, check the track for Panel Round 2, after minute 4:48.)
Wired covered, earlier, the same story on DARPA’s looming technogeek shortage and Dugan’s forward-thinking statement on the matter:
…outlined her vision for the future of the Pentagon’s blue-sky research arm, with everything from plant-based vaccines to biomimetics making the short list. But none of it’s possible, she told the panel, without more investment in American universities and industry to cultivate the techies of the future…
So we lack sufficient math and science education to support the Pentagon’s needs for cutting-edge technology. And we all know that American businesses are losing out for the same reasons.
My concern is health, that some turned-on science and math-oriented kids should grow up and become physician-scientists or even plain-old, well-trained doctors who are good at interpreting graphs and applying detailed, technical information to patients with complex medical conditions. Last week I wrote that better education would improve health and medical care delivery in the U.S. This seems like an obvious point, but the more common discussion strikes on the need for math and science education to support hard technology in industry.
We’re facing a shortage of primary care physicians, oncologists and other doctor-types. Lots of clever and curious young people are turning away from medicine. The hours are too long, the pay’s too low, and the pressure is too great. If we want doctors who know what they’re doing, we should invest in their education and training, starting early on and pushing well past their graduation from med school.
Sure, we like physicians who are kind and honest people and can talk to them in ways they understand. This is crucial, but only to a point — we still depend on doctors to know their stuff.
I like doctors who are nice nerds. We need more of those, too.
connections…