How Our Brutal Science System Almost Cost Us a Pioneer of mRNA Vaccines (wbur.org) 116
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes:
As the first COVID-19 vaccines arrived at Penn Medicine last year, Penn Today reported with great pride, "It was mRNA research conducted at Penn—by Drew Weissman, a professor of Infectious Diseases, and Katalin Karikó, an adjunct associate professor—that helped pave the way for the development of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID vaccines." While Weissman and Karikó are coronavirus vaccine heroes these days, Dr. David Scales — who studied under Weissman and Karikó 20 years ago as they worked on mRNA vaccines aimed to fight HIV — recalls How Our Brutal Science System Almost Cost Us A Pioneer Of mRNA Vaccines.
"When I got my own [COVID vaccine] shot," Scales writes, "I felt an added emotion: awe. You see, I witnessed some of the early scientific heartbreaks that came before the historic vaccine victories. And I found myself simply awestruck by the scientists I knew who persevered in spite of our system of scientific research. [...] While Weissman was an expert at designing experiments, I remember him most for his generosity. He made sure all contributors in the lab shared the credit, from the lab tech and lowly undergrad all the way to fellow researcher Karikó. Still, Karikó was struggling. Her science was fantastic, but she was less adept at the competitive game of science. She tried again and again to win grants, and each time, her applications were rejected. Eventually, in the mid-1990s, she suffered the academic indignity of demotion, meaning she was taken off the academic ladder that leads to becoming a professor. [...] But [Karikó] stuck to her passions. She was too committed to the promise of mRNA to switch to other, perhaps more easily fundable projects. Eventually, the university stopped supporting her."
"Academic science failed Karikó. But when she contacted me in 2015, I saw she had moved to the private sector, a common path for researchers when a university stops offering support. I was glad to see she had landed on her feet. And now, I watch in awe, like the rest of the world, as the technology she helped developed leads to one of the most spectacular victories in the history of science — a vaccine for a deadly pandemic developed in less than one year. So, my vaccination day was an emotional one. As the lipid-encapsulated mRNA molecules went into my arm, I reminisced about Kati and Drew, and the lab circa 2000. And I thought: You were right, Kati. You were right."
"When I got my own [COVID vaccine] shot," Scales writes, "I felt an added emotion: awe. You see, I witnessed some of the early scientific heartbreaks that came before the historic vaccine victories. And I found myself simply awestruck by the scientists I knew who persevered in spite of our system of scientific research. [...] While Weissman was an expert at designing experiments, I remember him most for his generosity. He made sure all contributors in the lab shared the credit, from the lab tech and lowly undergrad all the way to fellow researcher Karikó. Still, Karikó was struggling. Her science was fantastic, but she was less adept at the competitive game of science. She tried again and again to win grants, and each time, her applications were rejected. Eventually, in the mid-1990s, she suffered the academic indignity of demotion, meaning she was taken off the academic ladder that leads to becoming a professor. [...] But [Karikó] stuck to her passions. She was too committed to the promise of mRNA to switch to other, perhaps more easily fundable projects. Eventually, the university stopped supporting her."
"Academic science failed Karikó. But when she contacted me in 2015, I saw she had moved to the private sector, a common path for researchers when a university stops offering support. I was glad to see she had landed on her feet. And now, I watch in awe, like the rest of the world, as the technology she helped developed leads to one of the most spectacular victories in the history of science — a vaccine for a deadly pandemic developed in less than one year. So, my vaccination day was an emotional one. As the lipid-encapsulated mRNA molecules went into my arm, I reminisced about Kati and Drew, and the lab circa 2000. And I thought: You were right, Kati. You were right."
It doesn't really (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Because "best" without naming an environment is meaningless nonsense, like saying "this car costs 50%!" ... 50% of what?!. Best in what?!.
So: Which environment do you you just imply highest fitness in, when you say "best"? No, "everything" is not an environment, as the union of "all environments" is an empty set.
Re: (Score:2)
Because "best" without naming an environment is meaningless nonsense
The whole matter of somehow the Academic science is bad or brutal or evil is a strange concept. It's been doing good science for years. Ms Karikó was simply a better fit in a private environment. This is the same thing that happens in any environment. In similar fashion, there will be people who fail in the private sector that thrive in the academic.
I'm not certain what the exact aim of the story is. a Positive look is that she found a place that she fit, and did great science. A happy ending. Not t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
They are only the same when you have no ability to define the environment.
Re:It doesn't really (Score:4, Interesting)
>> the only meaningful definition of "best" here Where, nature? We're aware of how it works on the other side of the quasi-analogy, that wasn't the dubious part. Even then evolution has ended up favoring weird, counterproductive gimmicks.
Evolution operates on a forward progressing timeline which gives us the weird stuff. Things like the vagus nerve (what a cockup - anyone thinking that some creator knew what he was doing is batty) is a many times repurposed nerve that was originally a part of a fishlike creature's gill. So it loops and twists, and we have ot deal with the problems it creates.
If we ever do get towards genetically modification of humans, the vagus needs a long hard look.
Re:It doesn't really (Score:5, Interesting)
it gets you the "most fit" for a given environment. Not "best". Those are not the same thing.
Sadly, this is nothing new. Nobel prize winner Peter Higgs [wikipedia.org] (of Higgs boson [wikipedia.org] fame) has said that he probably wouldn't get a job in modern academia [theguardian.com], because faculties care more about media profile and the volume of research papers published than the quality of the science being done.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:It doesn't really (Score:5, Funny)
Yes. Even Einstein would likely be hooped these days. The guy who acted psycho and wouldn't leave his place for weeks, only to go visit someone in a different country, by train, and forgetting to put socks on. Media profile of a homeless person.
It's a good story, but having worked in academia for 3 decades plus, there are still many eccentrics. One of the best examples is a co worker who was the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet, utterly brilliant but distracted and helpless. His wife came up with the way to Keep him mostly on track. He had 5 identical shirts, ties, and pants. He had separate identical casual clothes for the weekend. So he was always well dressed. He regularly showed his slides upside down without noticing. But his science was sound. He made Einstein look like a milktoast actuary.
Re: (Score:2)
His wife came up with the way to Keep him mostly on track. He had 5 identical shirts, ties, and pants. He had separate identical casual clothes for the weekend. So he was always well dressed
That reads as a non-sequitur to me. What does improving the way he dressed have to do with 'keeping him on track'/reducing distraction and helplessness?
Re: (Score:2)
His wife came up with the way to Keep him mostly on track. He had 5 identical shirts, ties, and pants. He had separate identical casual clothes for the weekend. So he was always well dressed
That reads as a non-sequitur to me. What does improving the way he dressed have to do with 'keeping him on track'/reducing distraction and helplessness?
Ever see the picture of Einstein at the beach wearing women's shoes? https://i.pinimg.com/736x/08/c... [pinimg.com]
The guy I was referring to was so far above us mere mortals in his thought process that regular everyday functions like choosing appropriate clothing was something he couldn't do. Otherwise he might show up for work in utterly bizzare clothing.
The whole point I was making was in reference to theshowmancanuck's statement that academia has no place for eccentric people. There are a lot of them in fact,
Re: (Score:2)
Can you link to any of his work (either directly or through others' impressions)? I always enjoy learning about the work of brilliant eccentrics, even if I can't understand it.
Reading you link it doesn't seem to be about media (Score:2)
Rather he said the reason he couldn't keep his job is that he's not productive enough. e.g. they not churning out a lot of papers.
I'm more inclined to say that fits in with my original post, e.g. Higgs couldn't spend 20 years on a big discovery like the Higgs boson. He'd be expected to do something "useful" in that time. i.e. profitable (and patentable).
Re:Reading you link it doesn't seem to be about me (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm more inclined to say that fits in with my original post, e.g. Higgs couldn't spend 20 years on a big discovery like the Higgs boson. He'd be expected to do something "useful" in that time. i.e. profitable (and patentable).
In the academic environment, a scientist can work on many projects at the same time.
Typically, the scientist will have a cadre of associate scientists, grad students and sometimes undergrads working for him or her. The scientist sets the tone, works with the associates to create proposals and who then work with the students. So there are both basic and applied science happening. If they aren't publishing, there's something wrong somewhere.
Now I'm very certain that there are people who do good science, but loathe the system in academia. Ms Karikó sounds like one of them. Anyhow, the good news is she found out where she could fit in. That is most pleasing, and shows how there are different people and what they can do when they are in the right place.
And before people think that academic science needs to become like private industry science - it won't work. Two different groups, two different motives. Vaccines and private industry have a fine and lucrative profit motive. Profit isn't the driver in academia, especially in the basic science sector.
Re:Mother Nature is brutal as well (Score:4, Insightful)
Evolution doesn't work to select the "best" of a species, only those that are better suited to the current environment.
e.g. if the climate becomes dryer, there's a selection for individuals who survive better in dry conditions, but they
will no longer be the "best" when the climate becomes wetter.
So, for the academic environment there's a selection for people who can write lots of papers and win grants, but that
doesn't necessarily provide the optimum environment for all types of work - particularly research that may take a long time
and has a large change of failure, even if the results can be very important if it succeeds.
Re:Mother Nature is brutal as well (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
"That's a distinction without a difference. For a given environment, there may be several species present. Some will be "better" suited to it than others. Natural selection (not evolution) will select the "best."
I think the parent was saying the "best" can be what is being selected for relative to a particular environment, but the relative environment chosen to operate within can be, by its constructed feature set, leading to selection of non "best" outcomes when judged relative to the greater environment
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, the system that determined the "best" thing for peacocks to do.
The females decided what the best thing for male peacocks to do. All of those weird things that male birds do are to please the ladyfolk, who make a decision whether to mate with them or not.
Male mountain goats fight with each other to get in the good graces of the female goats. Environment is one thing, but in so many species there is choice happening. Sometimes it might have an advantage, sometimes it's hard to say if it is. Some folks joke that it the ladies seeing how goofy they can get males to act
System worked as designed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:System worked as designed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Universities get so much money from it, they do a lot to make sure they are not 'competing' with the private sector
And exactly how do they do that?
Bear in mind that universities tend to go wherever the politics go as they're often more funded by governments and student loans than anything else. The private sector goes where the money is, and is on the whole far more willing to take risks on big bets. This sounds like exactly the kind of risk that somebody somewhere in the private sector is willing to take, whereas a university might dismiss it due to past problems they had with mRNA.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:System worked as designed (Score:5, Insightful)
The private sector isn't a substitute for academia either. The private sector doesn't do much of the basic research and long-shot work that is needed to develop stuff like mRNA.
We dodged a bullet here. Maybe now we have been through a pandemic governments will start to think about spending a bit more on research and academia, because as threats to our security go disease is a much bigger one than almost anything else.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's just silly. There is no university cabal or system implementing the will-o-the-wisp conspiracy you think you see. Get your head out of Ayn Rand and right-wingnut radio.
Re:System worked as designed (Score:4, Insightful)
Private sector is part o fthe problem. Universities get so much money from it, they do a lot to make sure they are not 'competing' with the private sector, producing a dysfunctional system because a functional one would upset sponsors and 'partners'.
Huh? Universities have whole sections of people working really hard to identify the things they can get money from.
Because... it gets them a lot of money.
In all the presentations I've had to sit through from our university's Office of Technology Commercialization, they've never once said "you should be careful about what you try to patent because you might offend some partner". Any paperwork related to research always leads off with a checkbox about "could we make money off this?". Being in particle astrophysics the answer is always "no" for me. But hey, don't let facts get in the way of a good rant.
Just yesterday, in fact, I learned that the fund which paid for one of our students last year in grad school came from a pot of money a pharma company had to hand over to the school for ripping off a university patent. Sometimes stuff works out.
Re: (Score:2)
Huh? Universities have whole sections of people working really hard to identify the things they can get money from.
Because... it gets them a lot of money.
Out of which comes salaries and equipment and one hellava lot of overhead. If money was the driver, they'd be doing something else like the entertainment sector.
As well, the pay isn't quite what people think it is. Private sector is a much better deal, especially if you work for pharma.
Re:System worked as designed (Score:4, Interesting)
Huh?
See the problem is you work in a university, so you know how it works. there are a lot of posters here whose whole exposure to university 20 years ago and they still have a beef with their computer science professor for not fawning over then in programming 101 because they arrived knowing how to code a bit.
They've been carrying their shoulder-chip ever since and then mixed it thoroughly with a somewhat misplaced faith in the free market.
Re:System worked as designed (Score:4, Interesting)
As a commercial scientist, I find this characterization very odd . Universities do not "get" money from us in private industry, they "extract" it via massive teams of lawyers. Maybe they'll occasionally they'll do it with a smile.
You know, that's not really important. I totally agree the system is dysfunctional, and I think we all in science have similar ideas of what needs to change.
It comes down to two things:
1) Labor practices. In industry (in most places in the US and Europe), if a project is shut down, or a budget dries up, or someone gets promoted and is now too expensive, and you need to lay off staff, you cannot simultaneously or soon after hire staff with similar job descriptions. (Yes, people get away with doing this, but you're not supposed to be able to do it.) Universities, though do get to do this. This provides a perverse incentive toward high lab turnover to keep labor costs low (and overhead high - the priority of the administration). This is worst with grad students and postdocs. A simple change would be to treat workers at a university the same as workers in industry, whether students or not.
2) Incentives. The grant-and-publish system of science has run its course. It's become political, entrenched, unforgivably sloppy, and encourages ivory tower building rather than real problem solving. It's been about 50 years since the citation system was created, and about 30 years since granting agencies started prioritizing publication impact factors as metrics of success, it's time to change again. The metrics of success for science "programs" should be around impacting people outside of science. (A "program" here is as used in granting agencies - it's the collection of all the projects, grants, and contracts put together to answer a question or develop a technology. It's easy to apply "program" over many years to a single lab or to a company as well.) There are many ways this could be done, from tracking public interest (clicks, reads, whatever) to tracking quantitative achievements (project derived reduction in CO2 for climate researchers, for example). It would be messy, and difficult, and not as simple or fast as "h-index" but when we started off judging ourselves via citations, that seemed very difficult at the start as well.
Re: (Score:3)
As a commercial scientist, I find this characterization very odd . Universities do not "get" money from us in private industry, they "extract" it via massive teams of lawyers. Maybe they'll occasionally they'll do it with a smile.
You have literally no idea what you're talking about. Private companies often give grants to universities.
The metrics of success for science "programs" should be around impacting people outside of science.
Congratulations you've just ruled out all long term, basic research. Seriousl
Re: (Score:2)
I was more thinking of problems with how grant money flows. For a lot of grants, esp big ones, the prime is usually a private company who then subcontracts the research to universities.
Re: (Score:2)
Some people are better suited to the private sector
Oh how I wish I could mod you up! Quoting this and hoping it helps is all I can do. Maybe others with mod points can mod you up. You have very succinctly stated exactly what we should be taking away from this story. The excerpt implies that the university system is horribly broken, which it may be. But in this case private industry wasn't and it saved the day. The thought occurs to me that smart companies may realize that universities suck at identifying real genius and they can step in and sco
The U is bad on the perspiration part (Score:2)
Thomas Edison allegedly claimed that "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration."
I think the problem with the U is not that they don't recognize genius but rather that they don't have the patience for it.
Because of how reliant research universities are on pools of research funding that may not in all cases be shrinking, but they certainly aren't growing at the rates they used to, it appears that these institutions have, in some instances, shorter time horizons than Big Bad Stock-Market Focused Busi
Re: (Score:2)
We must remember that had Edison won the day, we would have needed a power plant every 2 city blocks just to keep the street lights on. It's a good thing for all of us that Tesla, in spite of having no business sense, managed to win the day and give us the AC power distribution system we still use today.
There's no getting around that 99% perspiration, but if we throw out the 1% inspiration, it's all for naught.
Re: (Score:2)
Meritocracy works.
Re: (Score:2)
Note, Tesla died in debt.
Re: (Score:2)
Meritocracy is about the survival of good ideas.
Re: (Score:2)
And what of the completely undeveloped ideas he took to his grave?
How many more good ideas are heading for someone's grave because the inventor's skill sets don't include bureaucracy or business?
Re: (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:3)
You forgot the key part where industry didn't gave one flying fuck about saving anyone's day, and this just happened as a unusual side-effect of their goal of stealing from us everything and giving to us nothing, aka profit maximization, thanks to the researcher being able to use evil to do good anyway.
Any good the for-profit industry does is by definition a "missed opportunity to make more profit, and a disadvantage compared to our competitors", and hence *despite* the industry, not because of it.
Re: System worked as designed (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
The "system" in play doesn't matter
Well...maybe it does... Here we have a disease originated in a communist system, and is ultimately being cured in a capitalist system.
Re: (Score:2)
this just happened as a unusual side-effect of their goal of stealing from us everything and giving to us nothing, aka profit maximization, thanks to the researcher being able to use evil to do good anyway.
Is English not your first language? Either way, those words do not mean what you think they mean. If somebody comes up with an idea for something that they think somebody else will want, with the idea being that they can provide that something in exchange for money, that is not stealing, that's just business, and at an institutional level we call this capitalism. Stealing would be saying they aren't going to provide anything to begin with, they just want to take what you have and/or demand that you work for
Re: (Score:2)
I think the joke is that would be communism, not socialism. Socialism pays, it's just the payer is different.
RTFS (Score:5, Insightful)
Worse, we risk losing important discoveries because we're always chasing next quarter's profits. Basic Research isn't getting done. It can take 50-70 years for basic research to pay off. We're all enjoying the fruits of labors from before or not long before we were born. But that's a pipeline. When it runs out we're going to have a "bust".
You know how people keep saying you'll have an advanced job waiting for you when automation makes you obsolete? How's that going to happen if the groundwork for that job doesn't get laid because "Who's gonna pay for it?".
Re:RTFS (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're in your late 40s (Score:3)
Incubators and startups don't do Basic Research. They take Basic Research that's already done and figure out how to make profitable.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
You have a "rich" view of DARPA. Some of what they fund is basic research, most is applied because they've been taken over by the same knuckleheads who run company R&D.
Re: (Score:2)
Worse, we risk losing important discoveries because we're always chasing next quarter's profits.
Chasing quarterly numbers is what publicly traded companies do. Most private sector research is done by either small companies that wall street pretty much ignores anyways, or by companies that aren't even publicly traded. This is exactly why Elon Musk doesn't want to take SpaceX public for example; without analysts constantly pouring over their 10Qs, they don't have to worry about some random newspaper making it hard for them to secure capital just because a quarterly number didn't look good. Meanwhile, Sp
Re: (Score:3)
Sounds like we need to drain the wasted money out of the public companies and put it into something that can actually innovate.
Do we really need yet another hot chili and jelly bean flavored tortilla chip now with less linseed oil?
Re: (Score:3)
Sounds like we need to drain the wasted money out of the public companies and put it into something that can actually innovate.
Do we really need yet another hot chili and jelly bean flavored tortilla chip now with less linseed oil?
As long as the Federal Reserve backstops lenders to public companies, the stupidity will continue.
Re: (Score:2)
Being publicly traded has its advantages though, generally if you're publicly traded it can be easier to secure capital, so it just depends on what you're doing and whether your business model is compatible with what wall street wants.
A good reputation and results helps with that. Guess what Musk has in spades?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
TFA is far from providing the whole picture. My guess is that grants from the Feds are awarded to names (which are like brands as in the you-never-get-fired-for-buying-$brand) as much if not more than ideas. In academia if you're not one of (or attached closely to) the favored few in your field you're left out to dry. In the private sector, if the money's not coming from the Feds, then ideas that can make money clearly count more than papers.
Perverted incentives... (Score:2)
I wonder how much great research did not take place because Universities are incapable of identifying great researchers.
Re:Perverted incentives... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Or, more generally, how much innovation we're not seeing, because disinterested government officials, rather than profit-seeking investors are deciding, in what to invest.
Yeah, those investors can make foolish decisions too — but it is a self-correcting problem, because they (mis)spend their own money...
Re:Perverted incentives... (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder how much great research did not take place because Universities are incapable of identifying great researchers.
I don't know how much time you have spent around academia but the process by which research gets supported is intensely political. In the committees there are always a few highly ideological individuals present who want they money to be spent to help push the boundaries or (for lack a better well-understood term) "think out side the box."
They can't win all their battles. They are surrounded by far more numerous functionaries who's academic chops went stale long ago and revel in the they power to bestow happiness or misery at whim. And of course such types never let a decision go forward without calculating who it will "help" and who it will "hurt" and how it reflects on them personally going forward.
So: the borderline-autistic genius with thick glasses and mumbles through her presentations is really not equipped to navigate those waters. The grant awards systems set up do attempt to give such people a chance, but it isn't that big. If the chosen branch of science isn't popular that season, that chance would be only a fraction of what it was.
We will never know how many worthwhile ideas have been crushed under the system.
Re: (Score:2)
I have seen enough. After my PhD, I decided to apply for a few professorships and got to place 2 on two lists. At that time I decided I had done my duty to academia and decided they could kiss my behind.
Re:Perverted incentives... (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder how much great research did not take place because Universities are incapable of identifying great researchers.
I don't know how much time you have spent around academia but the process by which research gets supported is intensely political. In the committees there are always a few highly ideological individuals present who want they money to be spent to help push the boundaries or (for lack a better well-understood term) "think out side the box."
Translated from German: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." --Max Planck
Re: (Score:2)
Translated from German: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." --Max Planck
Very, very true. The worst impediment to scientific progress is a special class of "scientists" that value personal power much more than Science.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What drugs did you take? (Score:3)
Correction:
"Private sector" seeks profit, which makes them focus ONLY on bullshit to rip you off, and NEVER on any higher goals that actually benefit humanity.
Re: (Score:1)
I await your examples of Socialist/Communist countries "benefiting humanity".
That's where commies never really have an answer other than "well this time, it will be different!"
Re: (Score:2)
I await your examples of Socialist/Communist countries "benefiting humanity".
That's where commies never really have an answer other than "well this time, it will be different!"
Communism only works when it is voluntary, not when it is state imposed.
Irony (Score:2)
The criticism typically levelled at academic research is that it has no real world application, that the real world payoff it too far in the future.This is the counter-example that seems to disprove that claim.
IMHO, academic research should be focused on those more distant goals, those blue sky achievements that are difficult to find commercial applications.
Re: (Score:2)
Most research starts with baby steps, that's where the "over-simplifying assumptions" you seem to see are made. That's how theory advances, otherwise we'd have a grand-unified physics theory...maybe they are just making "over-simplifying assumptions" with quantum theory and gravity. They should just cut to the chase and built the entire edifice, should take someone with your insight no more than, what, an afternoon?
Got a better way? (Score:5, Interesting)
All the fixes people are suggesting will make things worse. I noticed nobody suggested that they sell all their own stuff and write a scientist a check. Anytime you have limited funds and resources, certain ideas will get chopped. Especially in science there is no way to predict. It's called "research" because it's checking the unknown, and unproven. For every great idea there are thousands of crackpot ones that appear equally plausible (or implausible). Do you fund each one? Will investors and taxpayers be cool with that? Roll the dice, you'd still miss some? I am not saying that the system can't be fixed or improved. Is it broken? Yes. Does it suck? Of course! Yet none of the ideas of how to improve it make any sense to me. It's like people want to overthrow an incompetent brutal dictator install a truly malicious tyrant instead. We know that's happened before in politics (czar of russia was overthrown to install communists, the Weimar republic of Germany was overthrown to install nationalist racists etc.) many examples to list where a supposedly broken system was "fixed" by making it far worse. While it almost cost us the mRNA vaccine, let's not forget that it didn't. It's not easy to choose what gets funded and what doesn't. Hindsight is always 20/20 and let's not forget that it may have also encouraged these scientists to find a way to improve their ideas.
If their worse ideas were fostered they may never have been on the path to make these discoveries. The idea of mRNA vaccines themselves were being worked on by many others, it was upon finding out that methylated mRNA lasted longer in cells that the realization that methylating the mRNA of vaccines would be a good idea. Now would she have found that out if she'd never met Dr. Weissman and was working on her other ideas? Maybe, maybe not?
Got a better way?-Kickstarting science. (Score:2)
All the fixes people are suggesting will make things worse. I noticed nobody suggested that they sell all their own stuff and write a scientist a check.
Kind of like...funding an open-source project, without all the dramatics.
Re: (Score:2)
Been tried it doesn't work great .. check out experiment.com for example. Also i believe scientists have asked on indiegogo and kickstarter for funds before and it didn't really work out either.
Reference: https://www.indiegogo.com/proj... [indiegogo.com]
Re: (Score:2)
You're making an inherently conservative argument (don't change things because they're working well enough).
I think for those of us inside science, it's pretty clear that things are not working well enough. Much of science today is not reproducible. It is very hard to see that there is a difference between "good" science and "crackpot" science if the result of both is a journal paper that is of no use to anyone. Maybe, though, you're not seeing the suggestions from people in science. Here are some of the
Disgusting privatization propaganda piece (Score:1, Offtopic)
Translation: "Vague accusations to make you hate free science and 'motivate' you to support whoring off all your science to us libertarian feudalists."
"Brutal".... seriously...? Why not "rapeviscerating"? If you go over the top, go all the way! :P
Re: (Score:2)
"Brutal".... seriously...
Fuck off. You haven't been through it, and you don't know anyone who has.
This is a really big problem (Score:2)
Some researchers I have worked with know some technology that would be very useful and save lives but they can't get the funding for it. What they can get the funding for is adding machine learning to their stuff, even when it makes no sense.
Science is about chasing fads and if you don't keep up with the fads you will soon find your research group shut down.
This is from personal experience.
Re: (Score:2)
Some researchers I have worked with know some technology that would be very useful and save lives but they can't get the funding for it. What they can get the funding for is adding machine learning to their stuff, even when it makes no sense.
You're giving me flashbacks to er, right now. The "deep learning" bio papers. Oh god. The horror. The horror.
Science is about chasing fads and if you don't keep up with the fads you will soon find your research group shut down. This is from personal experience.
Yep. 100%
Root problem: Judging science is difficult (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no meritocracy (Score:5, Interesting)
For anyone that believes in the so-called meritocracy, this is one of the many things that's meant when it's said that it basically doesn't exist. The system simply has no space for it. I've seen a lot of mediocre academics in charge of labs because they're great at writing grants and palling around. Sure, that's a particular kind of skill, but it's not science. Most of them are moderately skilled scientists with a knack for fitting into the establishment.
There is DEFINITELY a place for people that are good at writing grants, and that place is at the service of great scientists that can't.
No less a scientist than Higgs himself said that he wouldn't have made it in today's academic culture. He's published relatively few papers over his career, and that just isn't compatible with what universities demand.
I'm not saying that this is a malicious, conscious decision by university administrators or grant agencies, but we need to sit and acknowledge how bad the current system is, how many people come out of it completely burnt out or fail to finish from the stress—stress that is unnecessary to do good work and make great discoveries—and try to think about what makes it better. I'm not saying I have an answer to that, but if we don't at least decide to work on this as a problem, we'll never know how many opportunities for great work have passed us by.
(Though it's worth noting that at least in Canada, the amount of money spent gatekeeping grants is significant, and one of the reasons organizations like NSERC don't give out more money is so that the grant will appear prestigious. In 2009, a study determined that it costs more to assess grant applications than just give every qualified researcher a baseline grant. https://www.tandfonline.com/do... [tandfonline.com]
It's also the case that once you've received an NSERC or similar grant, the more likely you are to get more, because receiving a grant is a criteria for receiving a grant. So one good application early on can really set the tenor for your academic career. When ideas are assessed based in part on how much money you've collected, how can we say they're being looked at on their merits?)
There is no publishers. (Score:3)
There is DEFINITELY a place for people that are good at writing grants, and that place is at the service of great scientists that can't.
Sounds like the role publishers served in the game industry. Same really with media, and pretty much everything. We still like publishers, right?
No wonder (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
That is also why women tend to not pick science careers. They are more social and work better in groups. Men are more individualistic and determined to do things their own way, or at least claim to. I saw it my own lab aways back. Women had no problem advancing the group, the men thought doing that was going to stop them from being a "star". In that sense, the women were better dedicated researchers.
Re: (Score:2)
I work amongst many researchers and many labs these days. Believe me, the women there are as bad as the men at crippling things. The women tend to be far more manipulative than the men. Each have their own failings, and each can have their own advantages. I've seen as many women ruin entire teams by manipulation as I have men from the Diva syndrome.
Re: (Score:2)
University departments are often the enemy (Score:2)
So the Pfizer vaccine happened because Karikó left the University of Pennsylvania. That university never properly supported her, nor her work. A competent department will help with the paperwork for grants, and let the researcher focus on research. D'oh! She will probably win a Nobel Prize, despite the university blocking her research at every turn (and they would have left millions more dead from Covid if she hadn't left those unqualified hacks at U of Penn behind).
I've known way too many researc
Re: (Score:2)
All those assumptions are based in the theory that none of the other research that got funded was relevant or of interest to science. Or bore fruit equally as significant.
We have multiple vaccines, so even if this particular one hadn't borne fruit, there would be others to pick and choose from through over avenues.
Yes, there are incompetent departments. and far too much of academia these days is just politics and ideology (which gets in the way of everything), but a lot of it is stretching scant resources
Rewording of the headline. (Score:2)
"The entire system of Science works as expected".
This particular researcher didn't manage to find a niche in the academic thrust of science, so went to commerce, which also does science (including blue sky research), where she found funding that bore fruit.
Why do people insist that science is only performed in one place (which may specialise in one area) and that not finding funding in one place is a failure of that place? It's a lot wider than that, as the story actually tells you. "The research didn't g
System of academia, not of science (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: I wonder if they will still be called heroes (Score:2)
Citations for either assertion of skipping phase three or problems in animal studies?
Recent article on mRNA vaccines, acknowledging some isseues.
https://www.health.harvard.edu... [harvard.edu]
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
For decades, the holy grail of bioweapons research has been to identify something that 1) is targetable by a virus and 2) is not present in your own population. As far as I can tell, this combination has never been identified in nature.
(More accurately #1 refers to something that makes the virus much more harmful than when it is absent. Ideally, you want a virus that spreads near harmlessly through populations where #1 is absent.)
Natural antibodies don't work for #2 because viruses don't respect borders a
Re: (Score:2)
He's also a nutjob.
Re: (Score:1)
HCQ is clearly not broad spectrum in time; its primary claim is *immediate, early* treatment with several components (zinc, antibiotic and perhaps others added). Yet the supposed "trials" repeatedly munge stated conditions badly, an old habit in not so objective medical evaluations in our late stage marketing empire.
Zelenko primary sin appears he butted into prime pharma
Re: (Score:2)
As far as HCQ goes, my partner works at a medical research institute which actually conducted a HCQ trial (she was not involved in the trial itself). It was very controversial within the institute because the majority of the staff thought it had already been sufficiently debunked, but they went ahead.
Guess what? Just like every other HCQ trial in patients, it didn't work.
Re: (Score:1)
Many early trials were clearly designed to fail and I tire of chasing rabbits.
Since the 80s I've seen many cases of shocking institutional bias, lack of competence, and corruption and had to overcome some. So I like to look for my self if it doesn't waste too much of my time. Our cultural of scientific integrity is in pretty bad and I'm more worried about the big players batting record.