Ramblings: September 2022
23 December 2022
Here are my collected Twitter ramblings from September 2022, along with the usual additional commentary.
This month’s photo of the month is from Putnam Memorial Park in Redding, CT. While camping with my son’s Cub Scout pack, the open field at night offered us a spectacular view of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch! (The guy in the foreground with the Stetson hat is… me.)
An ongoing concern in academia these days is a shortage of post-doctoral fellows. Lots of PIs are throwing their hands up and expressing dismay and frustration that they’re not able to execute on their research. But I think the root cause of this is pretty simple labor market economics. Academia, unless you’re one of a very fortunate few PIs or administrators, doesn’t pay well. Industry pay scales for scientists are way higher, and at a time when industry hiring is robust (in pharma it’s still red hot as I write this), people are going to do what’s in their best interests. Indeed, in an employment sector like chemistry, where the majority of PhDs are going to find their employment outside of academia, post-docs become a refuge or reservoir of talent in times of lean hiring. These days, people are getting snapped up right out of their PhD programs, no post-doc required. When you’re being offered double or triple the salary, way better benefits, and a less toxic work environment, there’s lots of good reasons to say yes. Desperate times call for desperate measures though, and it seems like some quarters of academia are trotting out a long list of intangibles like “nobility”, “calling”, “set your own research direction”, etc. to lure people back to academia. We could have a whole other debate about whether or not those things are actually true, or exclusive intangible perks of academia. Here let me only offer a different suggestion: pay these people fairly for their work, and they will come. Now, I realize there are a lot of issues to unpack there regarding academic pay, and there’s no magic wand to fix this tomorrow. But nonetheless: if you want the people, you’re going to have to pay them commensurate with their abilities.
Times may change, but the Manhattan remains.
See comments above. It’s all related.
I remain astonished at how low bivalent vaccination rates are in the United States, particularly among the over-65 crowd. Our national public health response seems to have long ago capitulated to COVID-19. To the extent we still have a response, it’s been one-dimensionally focused on vaccines as a cure-all, and we can’t even seem to do that right. The cost is a lot of excess morbidity and mortality, which we seem all too happy to live with as long as it isn’t us. We could do better if we just chose to do so, but we’re our own worst enemy.
If I had a dollar for all the sloppy pharmacological compound characterizations in the literature, I’d have quite a few dollars. The minimal data package is not elusive. Indeed, I and others have worked hard to define and educate others about what that package is. Yet too many scientists remain unwilling to learn or, if they do bother to learn, are unwilling to foot the bill. No, rather than do things the right way, it’s a lot easier to keep popping out Minimum Publishable Units. Never mind that a significant majority of biological claims made on shoddy in vivo data are probably straight-up wrong and would be easily weeded out with proper characterization. As long as the editor’s office is letting you get away with it (probably so they can do the same in their own papers), why not?
A common refrain, especially in academic quarters, is that they can’t afford to do all of the proper PK and ADME studies to support the in vivo pharmacology work they’ve done on their compounds. First of all, the logical fallacy in that argument is so big you could drive a truck through it. When did y’all decide to stop being scientists, wave your hands, and declare that getting the correct data doesn’t matter? Second, I think many people are surprised to learn, through the miracle of contract research organization (CRO) labs around the globe, PK and ADME characterization can be surprisingly inexpensive — a few thousand dollars for one compound. When one considers all the time and effort (and lab supply costs!) that went into getting the compound into an in vivo model, why would you cheap out on this part at the last minute? It makes no sense.
Biology is the ultimate leveler. If you cut corners, fail to gather supporting data, do improper statistical analysis, or a whole other host of lazy and avoidable errors — you’ll pay for it in the end. Clinical trials are notoriously unforgiving in this regard.
I’ve seen many instances of early career scientists who have moved out of academia and into industry, and they don’t have the first idea about career management. (I certainly didn’t!) They just sort of drift along, buffeted by the corporate currents, and then become angry (or sad; or both) when something bad happens that leaves them dashed on the rocks. In extreme cases, if this goes on long enough, I’ve seen “lifers” who spent their entire 20-30+ year career at one company devastated by suddenly being let go due to a site closure or large-scale reorganization — and from a job they didn’t even really like that much for most of that time. The first step of active career management is to realize: nobody is going to manage your career except for you. If you take your hand off the steering wheel, you’ll be at the mercy of external forces. External forces will always be present, but you can have agency. Career management means developing awareness of the corporate currents, and of yourself, so that you can steer the boat away from the rocks.
I feel like I inevitably have some flavor of this conversation with intransigent family members around the holidays. The vast majority of the general public doesn’t understand the process of drug discovery at all — even at a rudimentary level. This can lead directly to some less-than-friendly disagreements about who actually discovers drugs, how much it costs, and who foots the bill. Politicians will happily take this ignorance and run with it to further their own causes too. While conceptually I love ideas like Biden’s Cancer Moonshot, I’ve been working in oncology drug discovery for too long to believe that the reason we haven’t stamped out cancer is due to lack of money. We haven’t stamped out cancer because: a) we still don’t understand enough about the biology of the disease, despite having made massive progress in the last few decades; and b) cancer is a genetically unstable disease that’s really good at rewiring itself around your therapeutic interventions.
Flavors of the academia vs. industry debate will rage forever. But I’d rather it not be a “vs.” or “debate” at all. They’re just different facets of science, and both are useful. The moral superiority argument of one over the other ultimately goes nowhere helpful.
Many synthetic organic chemists (myself included back in the day) think they’re going to go to industry and rewrite the medicinal chemistry paradigm. Inevitably they learn the time pressure of industrial medicinal chemistry leaves little room for all but the most robust synthetic chemistry, and those rarefied academic dreams largely fall by the wayside. It’s really hard to come up with new synthetic chemistry that will move the needle on how medicinal chemists practice their craft.
I’ve been a practicing medicinal chemist for 20 years. I stopped feeling like a noob after about 5 years. I started really understanding how all of the data integrated together into a meaningful whole after about 10. I started feeling confident enough to teach it to others with authority after about 15. And yet there’s still so much I don’t know after 20. Learning never stops.
Working from home part of the time does have its perks.
One of these days I’ll make it down to Cape Canaveral for a rocket launch. Definitely a bucket list item.
There are a lot of weeks where 5% success feels generous too. Medicinal chemistry anyway seems to come in fits and starts. There can be months of stagnation followed by a few weeks of rapid progress, breaking new ground every day. Then it plateaus and stagnation returns again.
This is minimal due diligence on your prospective employer. Not all employers are created equal. Forewarned is forearmed, and a lot of interviewers will be put off if you haven’t put even a minimal effort into understanding the company and its mission.
Covered this above. These are talented scientists we’re talking about, and they have a value that transcends employment sector. The pay disparity between academia and industry will probably never be closed, but I’m not sure it needs to be as yawning a gap as it is today. People will vote with their wallets.
Still one of my favorite reactions. Chemists get excited about pretty colors, and blue is a relatively rare one in the off-white to yellow solid world of organic chemistry.
I’ve forgiven Adam for this. I think.