Science & Tech Quote by John Cameron

Cameron’s line lands like a quiet rebuke to the romantic myth of the all-purpose expert. It’s not just that physics has gotten “harder”; it’s that specialization has become an ethical requirement. By choosing a stark example - nuclear physics to medical physics - he makes the point visceral: in a world where knowledge is applied directly to bodies, “winging it” stops being admirable and starts being dangerous. The subtext is about consequences, not credentials.

The quote also pushes back against a certain cultural nostalgia for earlier scientific eras, when a smart generalist could plausibly roam across fields. Cameron frames that era as essentially over, not because scientists have gotten less capable, but because the machinery of modern work - instruments, regulations, protocols, data pipelines - has thickened. “The field is now much more technical” is doing double duty: it’s a factual observation and a warning that expertise now includes fluency in systems, not just ideas.

There’s an institutional critique tucked inside “More training is needed to do the job.” Training here isn’t a personal enrichment project; it’s the new admission ticket to competence, enforced by the complexity of the tools and the stakes of the outcomes. In a moment when tech culture loves to celebrate disruption and fast pivots, Cameron insists on something unfashionable: domains have boundaries for a reason, and crossing them responsibly costs time.