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Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines

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Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines

#11

Post by cs702 »

> universities ... expect faculty in the medical schools to pay their own way with either clinical work or external research funding. This puts tremendous financial pressure on eager young medical researchers, sometimes leading them not to the projects that are most needed or that they are most passionate about, but to the projects that will get them funding.

Sometimes it feels as if the current system we have in the US is the worst ever devised for solving the "long-term research" problem --- that is, except for all the other systems that have been tried in the past.

How do we, as a society, do better by scientists pursuing research that could take many years or decades to pay off?

Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines

#12

Post by cloogshicer »

cs702 wrote: post #11

> universities ... expect faculty in the medical schools to pay their own way with either clinical work or external research funding. This puts tremendous financial pressure on eager young medical researchers, sometimes leading them not to the projects that are most needed or that they are most passionate about, but to the projects that will get them funding. Sometimes it feels as if the current system we have in the…

And might not even pay off at all. I think that is the real problem. There is tremendous risk involved in research.

Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines

#13

Post by dantheman »

cs702 wrote: post #11

> universities ... expect faculty in the medical schools to pay their own way with either clinical work or external research funding. This puts tremendous financial pressure on eager young medical researchers, sometimes leading them not to the projects that are most needed or that they are most passionate about, but to the projects that will get them funding. Sometimes it feels as if the current system we have in the…

Have higher standards and fund less science?

If you have a million dollars to spend, you'll be careful and pay attention; if you have a billion, you'll be looking at crude aggregate metrics.

Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines

#14

Post by PartiallyTyped »

sega_sai wrote: post #2

I think it is a fair question how to organize science for best results (maximum productivity ?). I am no fan of pressure to apply for grants, which is particularly strong in the US. Also the amount of pressure/effort needed to get permanent/tenured position is very large. While this is clearly a big drain on people, and some people cannot handle it, either because they don't play the game well, or just live/work bala…

I don't think it forces people to work harder, for me at least, it is a deterrent. As a master's student, I am not willing to get into the rat race that is academia with other people dictating what I should do research in because that is the current hot topic. I would rather work and do research in my own time on topics that I like at the pace that I dictate.

I should note that I am able to follow that approach because my areas of interest do not require lab equipment besides a workstation and notepads to scribble things on, my research is in ML and it won't yield anything remotely as ground breaking as Dr. Karikó's.

Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines

#15

Post by renewiltord »

tensor wrote: post #7
renewiltord wrote: post #3

Well, it's no surprise that people optimize to the metric that's available, right? Private labs aim to make production things. Public labs aim to collect grants. The only real hope for modern science is a business with a long-term view. That's because that business is only rewarded if their thing works. If there was ever a time when public academics worked for science, it is no longer that today. Now it is occupied b…

The follow on from this is rather more problematic. If you are prioritizing production things, then it means you'll severely limit the topics you explore. Anything that would take too long to get to market, or is too risky, or is too theoretical, will never be prioritized. This is the reason for the tenure system, to give true freedom to explore novel and future oriented work. Things that won't pay off for decades, i…

mRNA vaccines took ten years before they "made it" and they needed a black swan event to really take off. Moderna IPO'd eight years in.

I think this is a false premise that we have. That there is any long-term science going on at all in government labs that wouldn't happen in private labs. It's conventional wisdom but not likely to be true.

The market is very sophisticated now. There are players who make decisions outside of any human's life. There are instruments to insure against hundred year events, and it is possible to price both rare and far off successes.

If you've peeked behind the curtain you know there's a lot of fake science there, including photoshoppery of microscope images that's now considered science. It's out there, I've seen it, I know it's real.

Public labs have decoupled success from knowledge and, in doing so, many long-term fundamental science projects are now fake.

Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines

#16

Post by Fede_V »

tensor wrote: post #7
renewiltord wrote: post #3

Well, it's no surprise that people optimize to the metric that's available, right? Private labs aim to make production things. Public labs aim to collect grants. The only real hope for modern science is a business with a long-term view. That's because that business is only rewarded if their thing works. If there was ever a time when public academics worked for science, it is no longer that today. Now it is occupied b…

The follow on from this is rather more problematic. If you are prioritizing production things, then it means you'll severely limit the topics you explore. Anything that would take too long to get to market, or is too risky, or is too theoretical, will never be prioritized. This is the reason for the tenure system, to give true freedom to explore novel and future oriented work. Things that won't pay off for decades, i…

The other problem with the tenure system is that professors - even the ones that want to try cutting edge research and have tenure - cannot risk the career of the PhD students in their lab on some very speculative and high risk research that might backfire terribly.

Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines

#17

Post by lrem »

sega_sai wrote: post #2

I think it is a fair question how to organize science for best results (maximum productivity ?). I am no fan of pressure to apply for grants, which is particularly strong in the US. Also the amount of pressure/effort needed to get permanent/tenured position is very large. While this is clearly a big drain on people, and some people cannot handle it, either because they don't play the game well, or just live/work bala…

Now, how would you tell if overall productivity went down?

The problem at hand is that we measure "overall productivity" via the proxy of "the number of articles a panel of other scientists considered interesting enough". Everyone who has dipped a toe in academia can tell you how bad that is at even remotely correlating with producing actual value.

But, the actual value of a piece of research often comes to light decades after it has been first published. Rutherford has been at it since 1911, but we only got first value out of his theory in 1940s. Man-millenia have been invested in the meantime. Would this be any better, if all of them had to spend half of their time working on securing funding?

Re: Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines

#19

Post by ta988 »

dantheman wrote: post #13
cs702 wrote: post #11

> universities ... expect faculty in the medical schools to pay their own way with either clinical work or external research funding. This puts tremendous financial pressure on eager young medical researchers, sometimes leading them not to the projects that are most needed or that they are most passionate about, but to the projects that will get them funding. Sometimes it feels as if the current system we have in the…

Have higher standards and fund less science? If you have a million dollars to spend, you'll be careful and pay attention; if you have a billion, you'll be looking at crude aggregate metrics.

If you fund less science, you will favor older researchers (that cost more) because they are the ones thay can produce more and have inertia from previous research project, and they know how to game the system. Thats a big issue with the NIH (in US) that they are trying desperately to solve. Unfortunately, they also often favor and give too much weight to old researchers in their grant panels and they tend to favor (not always consciously) people that think like them.
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