News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018). Parent comment

Re:The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018) by nervousvarun on Thursday December 12, 2019 @02:20PM (#21775274)
Right I definitely knew it was math (have 2 engineering degrees myself :) )...but still assumed it was commonly assumed to fall on the spectrum of STEM (definitely on the opposite end from say...physics...but still on the spectrum).

How can anyone get a qualifying score on the MCAT without significant exposure to science?

Disclaimer: I'm definitely coming at this from a U.S. point of view which someone mentioned in another comment effectively (not always but definitely in the overwhelming majority of cases) requires STEM undergrad degrees to get into medicine.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018) by eindiran on Thursday December 12, 2019 @05:14PM (#21777141)
Some branches of medical research are basic sciences (eg endocrinology), and some are applied sciences (those broadly construed as 'health science', eg dietetics). But the practice of medicine in a clinical setting (healthcare) is both a science and an art (ie a skill learned by practicing it), and I think most would say that the knowledge it requires is scientific but much of the day-to-day work is an art.

So people tend to disagree about where to put medicine. But overall, most major public institutions in the US don't include medicine in STEM:

* US Department of Labor (Bureau of Labor Statistics) -- No. (https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2007/spring/art04.pdf)

* US Department of Commerce (Economics and Statistics Administration) -- No. (https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED522129.pdf)

* NSF -- No. "The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering."

[ Parent | on HN ]