Comment by jleyank
4 hours ago
STEM people in science (used to) populate places like NIH, NSF and other granting agencies. Theh were project managers responsible for funding decisions, or actual researchers. Remember that people used think that pharma just did marketing with all the new drug ideas coming from academia or government labs? Well, these people were either the ones paying the academic labs or actually generating what pharma marketed.
They also were the project managers and researchers in places like NRL and ARL, the premier research labs in the Navy and Army. Guiding weapon development along with the blue/green suits. They staffed DOE labs doing funding and research for things that went bump in the night, cleanup, energy development, etc.
PhD's are the psychologists on staff in the VA helping glue veterans back together. They're also the -ologists (immune, endocrine, ...) who work with the MD's to diagnose and treat people. They also review new drug proposals to make sure they're tested for safety and effectiveness.
There's probably some salted through the other departments doing things like agronomy, geology, ... Things that help food and energy production. There's more than you think in the various security agencies - people were surprised why the government was hiring for computational linguistics back in the 80's. They also handle funding for things that turned into that Net/Web thingie you're using to read this.
Is it useful to have these kind of people on the public purse? Depends on whether you think funding research, regulating drugs, weapon research and cleanup, treating patients, ... are important. They're cheaper than the corresponding private individuals would be if they were contractors or being paid externally.
NRL et al do a lot more than just weapons research too.
I think, for the VA specifically at least, this isn't accurate. I'm sure they have some phd psychologists around for other things but the bulk of the work you mentioned will be done by counselors with masters degrees and some psychiatrists overseeing them. Psychiatrists, as well as "the -ologists" you mentioned, are specialized medical doctors. They all get the same schooling and then specialize through the residency system.
An MD is a doctorate-level degree and MD + residency is generally considered enough education for even research within a speciality, certainly patient care within it. MD/PhDs are rare, usually doing policy/leadership or extremely specific technical R&D. Almost never see them doing patient care, when you do it's normally because they misunderstood their own career interests in their 20s and now have to live with it.
This thing is real bad but psych treatment at the VA isn't why.
the -ologists can be both, then. My academic experience in ancient times had them as medicine related PhD's, but I guess MD's can specialize in that area from a treatment rather than a research area. MD/PhD's are rare but quite valuable for research projects because they can see patient records wearing their MD hat, but interact with the research teams with their PhD hat. They tend to have mediocre bedside manners cuz they rarely see a bed, and they're sorta burned out coming of all that schooling.