[a1pulley]

"I have known more people whose lives have been ruined by getting a Ph.D. in physics than by drugs."

This seems a bit hyperbolic. In the mid to late 2000s, only 5 of the 15 close grad student friends I had at Caltech didn't get a tenure track position somewhere. Four of the five work in tech, and the fifth is a government electrical engineer. 4/5 were homegrown, the fifth is an immigrant, and all ten tenure track (now mostly tenured) profs are immigrants.

[cortesoft]

Maybe he just doesn’t know many people whose life was ruined by drugs.

[tomrod]

To be fair, Caltech is a top school for physics.