Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by renewiltord » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 7:12 PM UTC

bosswipe wrote: post #27

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…

Is there any evidence that public labs are producing less science than they have in the past?

I know fraudulent science is performed in many university labs. If you read the papers you will see only what you think is science. But the results are falsified. The slides are fake. So maybe output is high but determining what is true output is hard.

And nearly no one replicates. I'm sorry that I can't give you info. It's not useful to me or my family to prove this. But consider this a warning. If you move subtly enough you might be able to ask the right people without triggering the defensive walls.

I know I sound like a crank, so I understand if your weight on this warning is not high. But it feels wrong to not warn. So I've done my duty to the extent I find comfortable.

FWIW I believe in the scientific process, and I very much like the idea of long-term fundamental science. I'm not a Trumper, or an anti-science loon, or someone who rejects modern epistemology.

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

#32

Post by dekhn » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 7:18 PM UTC

thayne wrote: post #29

I am a casualty of this. I was originally intending to follow an academic career, until I discovered that my career would be dependent on my ability to secure grants. Something that if I was not bad at (which I think is unlikely), would at least be extremely stressful for me. It isn't the only reason I decided to to switch to being a software engineer, but it is a major reason.

Me too; I had my first NIH R01 turned down without a score and left for industry (which has allowed me to do more scientific work than academia ever did). I only realized later that most PIs don't get their first NIH R01 approved until ~10 years older than I was at the time.

What's ridiculous is the amounts of these basic grants that beginning scientists are trying to get are tiny- basically 1 person-year salary.

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

#33

Post by renewiltord » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 7:18 PM UTC

aaomidi wrote: post #26

renewiltord wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ou…

People thinking in the same line of you is why I think China is going to be the global leader in scientific discovery in a decade. We've stagnated while they've organized their efforts for long term discovery and long term technical brilliance. I guess time will tell if public or private sector research is the best possible solution.

I guess we'll see. It will be hard to tease out the effects of what is public funding vs what is due to other factors.

I think that Chinese science will advance far more rapidly because the Western ethical schools have converged on the Do Nothing school of trolley problem solvers and rampant safetyism is ruining our ability to study immediately important dangers, that Western society is organizing towards protecting its power structures (overwhelmingly elderly over the young), and that the infantilization of Western populations leads to the inability to study interventions since no volunteer can be said to understand any risk.

On the other hand, while Chinese R&D spending is hockey sticking (see Red Moon Rising issue of The Economist for lots of info on this), I am 50-50 on whether they'll manage to solve their fakery problem faster than ours. Theirs is far bigger but they know it is a problem and it is smaller than we think. Ours is smaller but we don't think it exists and it is bigger than our governments think.

But pouring more money into a device that exists simply to extract money is clearly insufficient.

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

#34

Post by twic » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 7:19 PM UTC

thayne wrote: post #29

I am a casualty of this. I was originally intending to follow an academic career, until I discovered that my career would be dependent on my ability to secure grants. Something that if I was not bad at (which I think is unlikely), would at least be extremely stressful for me. It isn't the only reason I decided to to switch to being a software engineer, but it is a major reason.

Same. With a side of seeing senior scientists whose work was mediocre but who were well-connected surviving, while seeing senior scientists whose work was good failing to renew their grants.

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

#35

Post by yholio » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 7:27 PM UTC

tchalla wrote: post #8

Here’s a prior article and HN thread on “Managing Academia” and it’s conclusion. > If a job is complex, multifaceted and involves subtle trade-offs, the best approach is to hire good people, pay them the going rate and tell them to do the job to the best of their ability. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14021885

Please, that's such a copout. To "hire good people" you need to 1. attract and 2. identify them. If you don't create attractive conditions, good people will go elsewhere; if you do offer, say, financial incentives and personal prestige, bad people will flock too, so you need to identify good people. Further, the whole show is dynamic, good people can turn bad if wrong incentives exist, or you can lose them if more attractive alternatives present themselves.

So it all becomes a process problem, how to select, retain and reward good people. Which is exactly the problem impact factors, grants, publication metrics etc. try to solve, in an objective and reproducible manner. You might have a better system and results, but it's relevant only if it's not based on you personal nose and intuition to "hire good people".

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

#36

Post by tensor » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 7:30 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #31

bosswipe wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence that public labs are producing less science than they have in the past?

I know fraudulent science is performed in many university labs. If you read the papers you will see only what you think is science. But the results are falsified. The slides are fake. So maybe output is high but determining what is true output is hard. And nearly no one replicates. I'm sorry that I can't give you info. It's not useful to me or my family to prove this. But consider this a warning. If you move subtly e…

I've spent many years in the academic spaces, both in public genetics labs as well as in computer science departments. I've never encountered anything like what you claim, and no one I know in academia has either. Extraordinary claims like yours need proof, no one will or should take you at your word, especially when there is the weight of many others experiences that cut against your claims.

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

#37

Post by birdsbirdsbirds » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

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…

Give money to brilliant scientists with no strings attached.

Let scientists among themselves figure out who is brilliant. If the system gets corrupted, a second group of scientists will emerge who claim to be the real deal. Let them battle it out and choose the smarter group for further funding.

In other words, do it the way it was done before the influx of the administrative overhead.

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

#38

Post by selimthegrim » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 7:35 PM UTC

tensor wrote: post #36

renewiltord wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know fraudulent science is performed in many university labs. If you read the papers you will see only what you think is science. But the results are falsified. The slides are fake. So maybe output is high but determining what is true output is hard. And nearly no one replicates. I'm sorry that I can't give you info. It's not useful to me or my family to prove this. But consider this a warning. If you move subtly e…

I've spent many years in the academic spaces, both in public genetics labs as well as in computer science departments. I've never encountered anything like what you claim, and no one I know in academia has either. Extraordinary claims like yours need proof, no one will or should take you at your word, especially when there is the weight of many others experiences that cut against your claims.

Lior Pachter is pretty good at calling balls and strikes on this sort of thing

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

#39

Post by shadowgovt » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

When I hear a story like this, the first thing I want to know about is how the incentives are structured.

The author makes a great point, which is that medical research is expected to pay its own way. So the next question I'm looking to answer is "Why is that?" What is it about the way we structure this research that made it make sense to U Penn to underfund mRNA research?

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

#40

Post by sgtnoodle » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

garden_hermit wrote: post #30

aaomidi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People thinking in the same line of you is why I think China is going to be the global leader in scientific discovery in a decade. We've stagnated while they've organized their efforts for long term discovery and long term technical brilliance. I guess time will tell if public or private sector research is the best possible solution.

I see no evidence that China has organized around long-term discovery or technical brilliance. They have many scientists, and relative advantages in certain fields, but their system of science still has major structure issues. For example, one aspect of Chinese science policy is paying scientists based on the impact factor of their published papers. This, however, has lead to a much larger issue of "salami-slicing"/"…

I know some folk that studied abroad in China as part of their US-based undergraduate program (US faculty teaching their courses in China), and they had a very stressful experience due to the seemingly widespread amount cheating by the Chinese students throwing off the grading curves. The university seemed to ignore it for political reasons.