Can't have it both ways. The article says they're not doing as well financially compared to the non-academic path. Well, if you really loved science you'd do it anyway, and its not all about the money, and scientists are supposed to be poor because thats how its always been. OK whatever I'm not doing that to my kids. Oh OK well it turns out that despite the article, the ones I know are doing great. Um nope, its one or the other.

You might have selection bias. All the pro athletes I know of, appear to be financially healthy. That doesn't mean pro basketball is a great plan for kids, given the evidence that 99.99% of kids who want to be pro basketball players end up doing something else, something much less profitable than NBA star... I would theorize this is directly analogous to going into academics.

The winners win. Turns out that winning is, in fact, pretty fun. The losers, well..., that's most of the them, but we're not going to talk about them.