If you were doing that, you'd likely either be a professor (of some kind), or on that track post-doc, etc... or the national laboratory equivalent. I don't know how many PhD-level "staff" positions there are on the big physics experiments.
It's probably more accurate to say "unless you want to be an academic" as opposed to "unless you want to be a professor", but since becoming a professor is usually the goal of an academic career, it's a fair statement to make.
Thank you for the reply. So the only, or at least best, way of doing science research is to be an academic, or work at a national laboratory (does that count as academia?)? Thus, the statement "only reason to do a PhD is to be an academic" is isomorphic to the statement "only reason to do a PhD is to do basic science research"?
You can definitely get a job as a staff researcher at a national lab or small applied-science company (there are a ton of companies doing DARPA research). Note that due to the way the world is, you may not be able to be the prime scientist on a contract, but that does not stop you from doing basic research via collaboration.
If your contributions become noteworthy in the field, then along with the relationships that you've generated with your DARPA/NSF/? partner, you will eventually be able to be a prime.
To reiterate some of the other comments here, you may not be able to pick the 'basic research' that you want to work on in the above scenarios... usually the grant sponsors decide that.
Thank you for the reply. Do you mind if I ask some more questions? Suppose that I am financially independent and do not care about being paid, then would that open up more paths for me?
>In recent times, science has become very professionalised. Many of the steps in the list above serve specifically to maintain high professional standards. For example, step 5 – complete a Ph.D. – is a way of measuring an individual's likelihood of making significant contributions to scientific knowledge.
You wouldn't be able to. But keep in mind ...
(1) It's extremely difficult to get a job doing basic research in physics, even with a PhD.
(2) The OP hasn't said he wants to do basic research.
