A friend of mine recently passed this along to me; there's a new article in Science Careers about "impostor phenomenon," a general feeling that success is due to luck more than ability among scientists (and Sb's very own ScienceWoman is interviewed in it, too). I'm sure some of you will identify with it, and although I haven't yet embarked on a serious science career as yet the subject of the article is awfully familiar. It's something that goes beyond modesty to a fear that your success is essentially just a fluke and you might be found out at any moment, the Sword of Damocles hanging over your head (even if everyone else says it's not really there).
My situation is somewhat different, though, primarily because I generally don't have the grades/achievement to back myself up. It becomes difficult to break out of the pattern of "I can't even get my head around precalculus; how am I ever going to be a scientist?" This goes back to the opinions of elementary school teachers and others who frankly told me I'd never amount to anything if I couldn't do multiplication tables and that I could never be a scientist if I couldn't grasp calculus. Such anxiety extends beyond arithmetic as I sometimes get a bit nervous when writing, worrying about what egregious errors I might make that will soon be brought out in the comments. I do learn from my mistakes and I'm grateful when people correct me on points where my understanding is wanting, but I would be lying if I said I didn't often think twice before hitting the "publish" button.
Perhaps I do not fit the "impostor" model because I really do have to prove myself, but from what I understand the impostor phenomenon is more widespread than is often acknowledged. For that reason you should definitely read the Science Careers article if you have not already. You might just find that the phenomenon is very familiar, indeed.
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I think everyone gets like that from time to time Brian. I dropped maths at 16 (having badly failed my last exam - admittedly a level above my peers) and am now a professional palaeontologist. It does hinder me at times, especially with statistics, but I have forged on and it has not held me up.
OK, so the UK university system allowed me to get by without, but I have never done calculus and by now my algebra and trigonometry are long gone. It need not stop you, and the one thing I have learned about science is that you are awlays learning. Just becuase you can't currently do even 95% of what you think you need to be able to, don't worry. Most of it will come and the rest can be traded with peers. Plus you will find something you excel in that few others do. Everyone can do some things and not others, that's why we collaborate.
Your elementary school teachers said you could never be a scientist if you didn't know calculus? Wow — that must have been one heck of an accelerated elementary school. ;-)
Dave; Thanks. I know I can be a successful paleontologist even with math as a weakness, but my university is insistent that I meet certain math requirements so I still have to play the game a bit. I'll probably gripe less (or about different things) when I move on.
Blake; I did take calculus during my senior year in high school (which I've always lumped in with elementary schooling; perhaps I should revise that...) and failed miserably. Even before that, though, I would continually baffle teachers because I did well in science but horribly in math, so they didn't quite know what to do with me. "You can't be a scientist if you can't do math," was something continually espoused by teachers/guidance counselors/etc., and I was the kid that never quite fit.
Brian, I'm in the same boat. I am horrible at calculus (or at least I don't care enough to do well in it, if that makes any sense) but I can own in biological science courses, because I DO care (a lot) about what I'm learning.
Impostor syndrome is rampant throughout every field of endeavor. I'm in IT and I can assure you it is not exclusive to scientists :) One of the best ways I know of to assure oneself is to ask yourself the following questions (1) Do you respect your boss' capabilities and intelligence? (2) if the answer to 1 was yes then why hasn't he/she fired you if you are an impostor but instead has praised your work :)
People who say you can't be a scientist without doing well in math are morons.
People who assume you can't do well in math because you are prone to computational errors are also possibly morons, and at a minimum need to be educated.
Laelaps:
I'd hazard a guess that it's easier to do school science without math than real science without math. In K-12 education, we're swallowing a stream of facts and regurgitating them when the situation demands; after that, we still need to learn facts, but we're also formulating conjectures, predicting the outcomes of experiments, analyzing data and so forth. Mathematical skills become more important as one begins to do science, rather than just learning about science that somebody else has done.
Yes, I'm being pessimistic about the science we do in school, but I'm judging from the sample I know best — my own educational career — combined with what I've read of state science standards and so forth.
Becca:
I'm a moron.
At least, I am if you ask me whether math is required to do astronomy, chemistry, physics and many areas of biology, such as bioinformatics, population genetics, molecular biology and neuroscience. (Just browse the quantitative biology section of the arXiv.) Of course, the variety and sophistication of the mathematical fields one must master to do original work in these different areas of science varies, and mathematics extends far beyond arithmetic computation, so one shouldn't think oneself "bad at math" for finding long division tiresome.
I haven't heard many people talk about it, but I suspect that unfamiliarity and/or discomfort with mathematics can be a barrier to collaborative or interdisciplinary work, even if you can scrape by in your own corner with just some basic statistics. It's certainly been a problem for the theoretical biologists and the physicists who have tried to get into mathematical modeling of biological systems.
1. I would not regard what K-12 teachers say about the necessity of superior math abilities for scientists with any kind of authority unless they have gone to graduate school for science. This is not meant to be snarky; I just think that if a person has not actually done scientific research, they are not very qualified to say what skills are necessary for scientific research.
2. How necessary it is to be able to do advanced math varies strongly with the field you are in. As a cell biologists, the most math I ever do is very basic algebra. This is, of course, also project dependent--my project is very qualitative. This is partly on purpose because I hate math.
Thanks for the comments, everyone. I definitely recognize the importance of math to science and I really do wish I was better at it. I don't mean this post to say "I don't need math." I know I can ultimately succeed if I have a weaker mathematic background, but I also know it makes things more difficult.
Likewise, I'm not saying that I still believe what my elementary teachers told me. I brought up those stories because they determined my relationship with math early on, something that continued to snowball rather than eventually being fixed. I recognize the difference between what I want to do and elementary school classes, but I thought that the anecdotes might help explain how I struggled from very early on and never hit my stride later on. I would love the story to be otherwise, but for now I just have to do the best I can going forward.
I've had many problems with math in my time, too. I had to take calculus three times before I did well enough to satisfy my university requirements, and I still don't understand a damn thing about it beyond derivatives. Funnily enough, contrary to what my teachers always told me, I have NEVER needed calculus in my scientific research. Hmm.
Math is more useful in some areas more than others. However, I'm of the general opinion that no intelligent person is really actually bad at math. They may have not had a good teacher or the methods used were not good for that person. But everyone can learn basic calculus at least if they are patient and have the right teacher (disclaimer: I've done a bit of work tutoring high school and college students in calculus so I have a personal interest in believing that the statement is true).
That said, ability to do well in math does seem to be a helpful indicator for whether someone can do science. Math requires rigorous thinking as does science (it isn't an accident that calculus is where many students first encounter actual rigor and where many first start to have problems). Like any indicator this isn't going to be perfect and will likely be far from it. For example, I suspect that average 7th grade GPA is likely a decent indicator for well someone will do at science later but if someone was a C student in 7th grade we shouldn't dismiss the chance that they will be a good scientist.
Finally, a related rant. Looking at attempts of mathematical models made by biologists with insufficient math background can be painful. For example, I've seen papers where biologists try to get very detailed accounts of certain variables even though back of the envelope calculations show that their effect will be swamped by other variables that have wide error margins. (Although I suspect that this sort of situation occurs more frequently with biologists who know math but don't know modeling)
Sometimes the most important skill one can have is enthusiasm. I was a fuck up too, we've had that conversation already so I won't belabor it here. But what everyone tells me is that my enthusiasm and excitement for what I do makes more of a difference than the other details.
Having met you now and followed your blog for almost a year, I feel I can safely say you are one of the most enthusiastic people I know of for palaeontology and I do not doubt for moment that your professors see this as well. No one will commend you for that though. You won't receive a medal, an award or a pat on the back for being excited about your field. But it comes up in the back channels all the time. I was chosen for grad school over others because of my enthusiasm for deep sea biology, despite having barely passable GRE scores and average undergrad GPA.
I always feel like an imposter and am constantly putting myself in a reality check. It has really made my dissertation writing progress stagnant for several months (like when I was blogging a lot lol). It comes and goes. I can with confidence say that you will do great things. People want to hire and be around other people that will infuse them with energy and excitement. Math is nothing, forget about it, move on with the real interesting subject matter. You have nothing to prove, just be yourself, people aren't dumb they will see if you are genuine.
I'm sorry, but there is no substitute for genuine competence! Imposters will never amount to anything!