how many of the Destiny's civilian crew were actual scientists?

[morrismike]

From the looks of the show, maybe 2 or 3 real life engineers, 10 or 12 actual "hard" science types, and probably 20 in stuff like Botany. The rest were military or just plain useless (Cloe and Wray).

[morrismike]

Socialising is over-rated

I'm a principle engineer and know exactly what you are talking about.
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2007-11-18/
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1...gineer-readers
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1...able-marriages

I remember Ann saying once that Engineers shouldn't be allowed to breed. My guess is an Engineer dumped her or showed her the door in the morning.

[carmencatalina]

"she tells my mum that the people there are difficult to talk to about anything other then their work, and difficult to get to them take care of anything other then their work"
also a your a biologist right? I'm talking mainly about physicists, I'd imagine it's a different mind set for such different fields

I'm actually an applied mathematician/statistician - I do theory. My advisors were both physics PhDs.

[slimjim]

I'm actually an applied mathematician/statistician - I do theory. My advisors were both physics PhDs.

sorry I thought I read you where biologist in another thread, must have been mistaken

seriously most of the physicists you've met where normal socially? because pretty every body I've asked in real life and on-line who has ever met a physicists has told me their not exactly good with people

[carmencatalina]

sorry I thought I read you where biologist in another thread, must have been mistaken

seriously most of the physicists you've met where normal socially? because pretty every body I've asked in real life and on-line who has ever met a physicists has told me their not exactly good with people

Well, the theory I do is biological (population genetics and population dynamics), so I am a biologist. I just don't do any lab work or field work or experimental work - all my work is mathematical modeling. (If you ask my biology colleagues, I'm an applied mathematician, but I "live" in a biology department.) It is really common for people with backgrounds in mathematics and physics to actually work in other applied fields (although my pure math friends mock this, of course).

As for "normal" socially, well, that's a sliding scale. My point is that the popular myth of scientists being asocial is just that, a myth. Some are, some aren't, probably more are socially awkward than in other fields where being a good people-person is an important job requirement.

But we have to work with other people to get our jobs done - to run a lab, to get grants, to teach (if you are at a teaching university and not a research lab), to train our students and post-docs. Some are jerks and weirdos, true, but then, you can find that in pretty much every profession.