ABSTRACT
In this book’s quest to talk about science for real, everyday people, there is a deeper issue that concerns why alternatives to “school” science are difficult to promote. I have a vested interest in substantive change in how science educators think about science, because I had an engineering career in the petroleum industry and there were a lot of gaps in my education. From 1972 through 1987, I worked in four different kinds of industry positions: as an engineer doing laboratory and field testing, and on-site inspections, in a foundationsengineering consulting company; for a major oil company in a field production office, where I was responsible for the reservoir engineering side of production operations in a segment of the district; for a major oil company research center, working both in a “tertiary” oil recovery group as the field liaison for a largescale field test of the technology, and in the reservoir simulator development group writing and testing computer-program mathematical models; and for a regional bank in an energy lending unit performing collateral evaluations. These experiences taught me many things: for instance, that there are no “givens” like those I had seen in textbook exercises, that problems never have one answer, that corporate politics and industry customs trump engineering calculations, that those closest to “doing” industry work hold wisdom that is the only real knowledge available to solve tough problems, and that you had better keep on the good side of the pumper (field supervisor) and ask the right questions, because terse is their native language.
