Are scientists born or made?

I'm in at work early again, since for the last 2 weeks M and I have switched who takes the little one in to daycare. He gets some blessed moments of silence at home, and I get to work with time to spare. It works best if, like last night, we all get a lot of sleep and I am not in need of my morning nap to think clearly. And somehow, even though the night started of warm (80 F) and by midnight there was a crazy hail and lightning storm ripping through the neighborhood, we all slept pretty well. Ok, not the dog. Thunder and lightning make her forget she needs an invitation up on our bed and she pretty much just thinks "Sorry, guys, but I've got to come smush against you to get through this." So even with a dog in the bed, we all slept until 8am. Giving us 30 minutes to dress, eat, and get out to daycare. Luckily, I took a shower last night.

So here I am, in a dark, quiet office. Rainy, cool day. Trying to put down a few more thoughts about academia before I forget.

This came up during the workshop I did, not on a slide, or maybe it was. Anyway, it is another offshoot of my study, something that struck me towards the end of analysis, in conversation with M and others and my data. The idea of intelligence as fixed and hereditary instead of learned and fluid closely follows the notion of whether a great astronomer is born or made. I think the view of a department (as a unit and as a collection of people) on this question will dictate its policies and how the program is structured. Even how student success/failure in coursework, research or communication is interpreted.

If great astronomers are born (=intelligence is fixed, hereditary), then the job of the department is to find those who are born astronomers. The focus is on weeding out the non-astronomers from the chosen few. The assumption may also be that a true astronomer can be recognized by her/his grades, recommendation letters, GRE scores, and undergraduate institute of origin during the admissions process. In classes, if the material is "too easy" then "we let everyone in" or "we dumb down the process" and non-meant-to-be's also survive. There is research on academic mathematics grad programs that has looked at these attitudes. The notion of a "weed out" course should be common, and accepted by instructors and students. Failure of a student can be attributed to "not meant to be an astronomer" status, and quality of mentoring is largely of the hook. If you have a good mentor, great, but if you don't, that shouldn't stop a real astronomer from graduating and getting a good position. Nothing should stand in the way of