Granted, but science is totally unlike music, writing or gambling, in that that the best-case payoff is still quite meager. Wanting to become a professor is a good bit different than wanting to become a rock star or professional athlete.
Too many smart kids start into grad school thinking that a professorship is a reasonable, attainable career goal, depending entirely upon your motivation and intelligence. When they (almost inevitably) fail, it can lead to a crisis of confidence that goes much deeper than simply failing to become the next Kanye West. After all, everyone knows that rock stardom depends heavily on luck...but a professorship depends only on intelligence. If you ask me, it's a cruel game.
Myeah, but personal relationships and contacts play a big role. Along with where you live. Einstein was kept out of academia before his big year, right? How close were we from losing him altogether?
I once flirted with trying to find a role as a non-tenured "member of the technical staff"... I even did an experimental postdoc with that goal in mind. I eventually concluded that my enjoyment of doing science (as opposed to "reading and writing about science", which is rather more fun) wasn't really high enough to overcome the relatively low pay and the fact that I'd be subordinate to an academic bureaucracy throughout my entire career. In other words: if you like being a glorified postdoc, it may well be possible to do it forever, but you have to like it a lot to stay happy doing it for forty years.
I have known more people whose lives have been ruined by getting a Ph.D. in physics than by drugs.
Um, no. Really, no. Spoken like a guy who hasn't really known many people whose lives have been ruined by drugs.
The situation is bad -- everything this guy says is true, basically -- but I don't think it's that bad. In particular, if you have Ph.D.-level skills in a technical field you can step off the academic treadmill at any point and get a job. It may not be the kind of job you get to brag about, but you probably won't starve.
There are people I know who have endured years of continuing depression because they were unable to become tenured professors. But there are also people I know who are depressed because they aren't bestselling novelists, professional musicians, lottery winners, or Bill Gates.
The secret is to be realistic. Study science as an undergrad, then switch to engineering (this is now my standard advice to young techies.) Get a Ph.D. only if you really love doing research so badly that you're willing to endure indentured servitude. Do not plan to become a professor. Make sure to spend your Ph.D. years drinking as much beer as possible with the smartest people you know, and enjoy yourself!