The Arnold Foundation

This article about the Arnold Foundation is a must read. A young former Enron energy trader moved on to run his own hedge fund. In ten years he earned over 4 billion dollars, then shut down the shop. He, John and his wife, Laura, started a foundation to give away the bulk of their wealth. Their philosophy is genius!

The Laura and John Arnold Foundation strives to produce substantial, widespread and lasting changes to society that will maximize opportunity and minimize injustice.

There are three areas of focus: 

1. Criminal Justice
2. K-12 Education Initiative
3. Research Integrity

What first caught my eye was the Yahoo article that began the Arnold Foundations interest in Gary Taubes. I have long been a fan of his and spoke of him as recently as two posts ago. Gary Taubes wrote Good Calories, Bad Calories and Why We Get Fat. Nutritional science is a soft science but Gary now has an ally to help him get his message across via a scientific study. John Arnold took note of Taubes suggestion that a comprehensive experiment was needed to answer some of the key questions about how our bodies process food. To me, this is would be a bold move. Having worked in biotech/pharma, I have witnessed the careful excision of experimental designs that might cast doubt on ones theory. Taubes believes in what he is saying so he is betting the farm on his expected outcomes. At the same time, he is not putting up any road blocks to steer the research towards the expected outcomes. 

Just to give an alternative view, here is a Scientific American blogger who disagrees Gary Taubes and John Arnold. I hope that this individual is asked to participate in the experimental design of the obesity study. A vital aspect of this research would be to not only take into account what your detractors are saying, but to invite them to participate in poking holes in your theories. The theories, by the way, will be tested by the Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI), a nonprofit headed by Taubes and physician Peter Attia. The research will be carried out by a collaborative group of clinicians and scientists from the fields of endocrinology, metabolism, diabetes, obesity and nutrition. NuSI has received its first two years of funding from the Arnold Foundation.

Besides testing theories on obesity and learning about how our bodies process food, I hope one more area of research will be advanced. How do we take two opposing sides and design experiments to settle the argument? In this case, we have an easy target; obesity. At least, it appears to be an easier target than a group of terminally ill cancer patients. The obese individuals in the study will have to be screened carefully. Once this begins, the arguments over how to group the participants will begin. Smokers, age, gender, genetic make-up and so on, will confound the data and generate suspicion on the conclusions. This is where science begins. Each researcher will have to set aside their bias and think only about the way in which the study begins. Most of the work will come from the planning. Once patients begin their journey, no further planning should go into the research. 

Just as Euclid, Descartes and Newton all sat down one day to write their text books to be sold to the Universities, so should NuSI sit down and describe the experimental design of this study. The human body is something of which we know very little. This study can be used to fight against the single target/single treatment paradigm of biotech/pharma that has painted us all as simple organisms in need of simple but very expensive pills.  What ails us is not TNF alpha, amyloid beta, IL-2 or any of the other popular drug targets. What ails us is a complex system of molecules moving about and somehow bestowing upon us the gift of life. How do we begin to understand how those molecules move about. The science NuSI has to advance is not only nutritional science, but the more complex issue of how to study the human body. Let us branch out from the gene hunters and pill pushers. Let food be our medicine!

Thank you very much Arnold Foundation for your efforts to take the Cargo Cult Science out of research. Your focus on research integrity, and your entire philosophy is anti-cargo cult. 

Cargo Cult Cancer

In the Cargo Cults, authority is the truth. In real science the truth the authority. The documentary Money and Medicine highlighted many examples of our medical authorities working in cargo cult mode and real science. The authority becomes the truth when we just do not know something. We don't know of any way of dealing with Alzheimer's but we have doctors who still have to treat patients. They even have pills approved by the FDA. That seems to make people feel better, just as a religion. Science, on the other hand, offers up what some would consider confusion. By admitting that we do not know something we run the risk of losing our credibility with the masses. The minority, those who think scientifically, run towards the unknown with a much different attitude. The truth is our authority. If we can reign it in we can harness some of that authority/power.

In the Money and Medicine documentary the authority take a real science view of what a hospital can and cannot do for end of life situations. We can keep people alive, for example, but in ways that do not bring them back to any semblance of a healthy human being. Death is an option that most would prefer. Yet a hospital must offer the option of keeping a patient alive if they can, even when it is merely a technical version of life. To the healthy person looking in from the outside, life is life. They imagine the dying individual being happy and content to lie in their bed looking out from the inside. The healthy person does not imagine what it is like on the inside, laying in bed as your body tries to expire. We simply don't want to accept the fate that awaits us all.

Cancer may very well await us all, if we live long enough.  If we were to study cancer, and not just single genes or other single causes, we could study dormant cancers we all live with. What cancer precursors dwell within our bodies that never progress to the point of taking our lives. In Money and Medicine was pointed out that autopsies on a group of men, post 70 years of age who died of something other than prostate cancer, showed that around 80% had what doctors would call prostate cancer. The advent of the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test has led to an increase in diagnosis yet dubious evidence of having an impact on mortality. The same can be said for mammography and breast cancer. Men and women have separate but equal cancer precursors that may exist as one of many possible expiration devices placed in our bodies to ensure we don't live too long. When it comes to medical science however, the authority can fancy itself to be the truth. They will find these ticking time bombs and zap them with medicine. As we can see with breast and prostate cancer testing, early detection has not provided the doctors with the authority to hand over new leases on life. They do however offer up treatments that enrich big pharma and the hospitals.

We are humans and humans seek patterns. If we can find patterns in those who die from cancers we believe we can prevent cancer from happening. The news of Angelina Jolies double mastectomy is an extreme example of using the patterns we think we see and following up with another pattern we think we see, that of surgery leading to extended life. Angelina Jolies mother died in her fifties thus Angelina is taking a preventative measure to avoid the same fate. The medical authority has given her a new lease on life, but no guarantees that it makes a difference. We can see how the Hippocratic Oath, "I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone", is subjective. 

This all leads me to an article published by the New York Times last month.  Peggy Orenstein wrote this piece, "Our Feel-Good War on Breast Cancer". She points out that early detection may not provide the benefits that have been touted. Younger women have more density in the breasts thus there are more false positives and false negatives in mammograms.  The question of just how many lives are being saved is itself taboo among breast cancer advocates. Their answer is that early detection works. They have what they want, never mind the statistics. It feels good to believe that what we are doing is working. So why the inconvenient negative data?

From the documentary Money and Medicine:

A number of recent studies estimate that a third of all health care expenditures are unnecessary and that eliminating wasteful spending would save over 800 billion dollars a year. 

Why is that? I continue to think about these things. What have I come up with here today? What is my point? Conclusions? After 7 years on this blog I see only one solution. Keep the negative and inconvenient information flowing. To a true scientific mind, the state of not-knowing is like the state of hunger to a person walking into a restaurant filled with the aroma of delicious food. To the cargo cult scientist, the state of not-knowing is shameful. The cult must turn to the authority who will make the claim that they do know something, it's just that a little more research is needed. Research becomes mere tweaking the old ways that aren't working. My conclusion today is to simply stay thirsty my friends. Remain a skeptic. The state of not-knowing is good. Authority does not represent the truth... the truth is the authority.

Creativity

The headlines from the featured stories on Biospace struck me as an interesting study for future generations. Today we can look back and scoff of things like leeching or the uproar over whether to wash ones hands before surgery or not. But look at what our scientists are proposing just today:

• Drinking Champagne Improves Memory
• Could Eating Peppers Prevent Parkinsons?
• Soy and Tomato may be effective in preventing Prostate Cancer
• Fish Oil doesn't help prevent heart attacks

In the future, people might look at this sort of research as we now look at leeching. Each solution to a human condition has a single simple answer. Leeching was suppose to help balance the four humors; blood, phlegm, yellow and black vile. When all humors were in balance perfect health was assured. What if you are experiencing memory loss and the leeches aren't working? Never fear! Science has found an alcoholic beverage to cure that problem. Throw in some red wine, the magical elixir of life, and you might just wake up with a hangover and a newfound skepticism towards this kind of science. 

Each single simple solution began life... as a single simple solution. We are taught this manner of thinking in our education system. Life sciences are easy on the math, heavy on the narrative. As a result it seems that we begin to address problems, such as how memory works, Parkinsons, Prostate Cancer and cardiovascular disease, as if they were test questions. Parkinsons can be treated with ________. Eating peppers can be used to treat __________. We find the answers from simple everyday products. 

Scientifically speaking, the most interesting aspect of this kind of research would be that scientists have found a way to measure disease states. The assumption is that we naturally know how to study health effects one food at a time. At the same time we still have no standardized way of measuring the health benefits of any intervention. If we did clinical trials would be much easier. We could simply fill in the blanks with data from our statistical analysis with an appendix reference to the raw data. The above studies could be compared to other claims on their disease area. Red wine benefits could be compared to the secret of long life (bacon) discovered by this 105 year old Texas woman.

In each case above we have a lack of creativity when it comes to attaching solutions to problems. We have an abundance of creativity in creating the story that the simple solutions actually effect the complex problem. Science should work in the opposite direction. We get creative in tackling problems and rigorously scientific in analyzing our outcomes. 

Much of our problems come from education. This TED talk describes how we have a one-size-fits-all education system that mines each brain for the same things. 

The creativity we employ is not what it once was. Don't tell us about your findings of X treating or curing Y. Tell us how you found a way of measuring the effects of X on Y. That is where creativity is needed. 

Forks Over Knives Revisited

I have, in the past, touted the miracle "cure-all" medicine of a mostly plant based diet. The documentary Forks Over Knives struck me as a wonderful example of people giving up traditional pill based sick care for "let food be thy medicine" health care. They were careful not to use the word vegan in the documentary, but "Forks Over Knives" is about being a vegan. I have looked into many dietary ideologies and there are many many paths one can take that are better than the typical American diet. The Forks Over Knives path isn't bad but tough for those who enjoy a little more fat. Another path could be the Atkins Diet approach. Gary Taubes produced a very detailed documentation of the history of cholesterol research in his book "Good Calories Bad Calories". What struck me about the two paths was how they stood in stark contrast to one another yet achieved similar results. There was one common trait however. The lack of sugar and processed foods.

I came upon this critique of Forks Over Knives the other day. It's a blog written by a 26 year old former vegan who now survives on a raw food diet with some meat in the picture. She is also an English major taking on the MDs who started the Forks Over Knives movement. Her name is Denise Minger. She is Davy fighting Goliath.

We all share a common belief in the powers of what we eat. We share an interest in seeing people get healthy by taking aim at their behavior. We also have skepticism built into our DNA. We all like positive results, but here is where we must avoid being Cargo Cult Scientists. What matters is finding the most probable reasons for the outcomes we like so much.

The first thing we at the CCS must address is part of the documentary regarding the Nazi occupation of Norway. The message was that meat rationing led to a rapid reduction in death from cardiovascular disease. What was missing was the fact that the rationing of meat began one year after the reduction of death from cardiovascular disease.

It's a kind of scientific integrity,
a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of
utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if
you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you
think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about
it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and
things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other
experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can
tell they have been eliminated. - R. Feynman

During the first year [starting in spring of 1940] the rationing included all imported foods, bread, fats, sugar, coffee, cocoa, syrup, and coffee substitute. In the second year [starting in late 1941] all kinds of meat and pork, eggs, milk and dairy products were rationed…

The question now is how this information was dealt with by the Forks Over Knives people. Did they, as Feyman  instructs, "report everything that you think might make it invalid".  I think this information might make vegans cringe. What other causes could explain these results? Sugar? bread? syrup? Fats? Luckily for us, Denise Minger got the attention of T Colin Cambell. This response was a testament to her work. Unfortunately in his response he failed to specifically address the actual scientific studies that were of dubious quality, yet made it into the film for dramatic affects. 

I'd like to highlight the condescending response and some of the Cargo Cultisms therein. The response begins with a classic ad Hominem logical fallacy, a veiled attack on Ms. Mingers qualifications to question the Great Oz's of medical science. 

Kudos to Ms. Minger for having the interest, and taking the time, to do considerable 

analysis, and for describing her findings in readily accessible language. And kudos to 

her for being clear and admitting, right up front, that she is neither a statistician nor an 

epidemiologist, but an English major with a love for writing and an interest in nutrition. 

We need more people with this kind of interest.

Silly rabbit, Tricks are for kids... and science is for doctors. The Cargo Cult message here is that they are doctors and she is only an English major. Not even an English PhD! 

Next up in the Cargo Cult Science department is the appeal that no specific part of their Cargo Cult ceremony brings the cargo. It is only the complicated intermingling of this-that-and-the-other-thing that makes the narrative work. It's the George Bush Jr. cop-out. Sure we lied to get the war started but now that Sadam is dead, it all worked out for the best. Dr. Campbell organized his thusly:

My response can be divided into three parts, mostly addressing her lack of 
proportionality—what’s important and what’s not. 
 
•Misunderstanding our book’s objectives and my research findings 
 
•Excessive reliance on the use of unadjusted correlations in the China database 
 
•Failure to note the broader implications of choosing the right dietary lifestyle 
Let's slow down the straw man argument for a moment and see if Dr. Campbell addresses the above Nazi/Norway dilemma or the following specific question by Ms. Minger:

What we’re interested in is the sentence near the bottom, which the film’s producers apparently didn’t notice: ”In all, 30 rats on the high-protein diet and 12 on the low-protein diet survived for more than a year.”

To which we get the response:

First and foremost, our extensive work on the biochemical fundamentals of the casein 

effect on experimental cancer in laboratory animals (only partly described in our book) 

was prominent because these findings led to my suggestion of fundamental principles 

and concepts that apply to the broader effects of nutrition on cancer development. 

So... what about the damned rats dying?  What about those sugar-free Norwegian vegans? Dr. Campbell says:

The China research project was a cornerstone study, yes, but it was NOT the sole
determinant of my views (as I have repeated, almost ad nauseum in my lectures). In
doing so, and except for a few denigrating remarks on our experimental animal
research, she also ignores the remaining findings that I presented in our book. She
seems not to understand what our laboratory research was showing. Using univariate
correlations mostly without adjustment for confounding factors, qualification of variable
authenticity, and/or biological plausibility can lead to haphazard evidence, subject to the
whims of personal bias. Also, univariate correlations of this type can lead to too memphasis on individual nutrients and foods as potential causes of events.  

Why wasn't their a reference for the denigrating remarks? More importantly, why didn't Dr. Campbnell start advocating a high protein diet for rats hoping to increase their time in the vivarium. Dr. Campbell again wants the reader to keep focused on his narrative and ignore the facts found in his research laboratory. 

The "univariate correlations" conversation is yet another attempt to hide the somewhat dodgy research findings that were used in presenting the Forks Over Knives narrative. The only thing I have to add to this discussion is this. If they aren't significant, why did we hear so much about them? This area right here, where we are suppose to ignore the little studies, yet still believe the narrative they support. really starts to get old. If it doesn't matter, tell us why. Don't bring it up and berate us non-PhD/MDs and English majors for asking you questions. You are suppose to be defending your research, not the insignificance of what you publish. 

I must commend Denise Minger for what she has done. She is Davy fighting the mighty Goliath. I think we can all agree that we care about food as medicine and being healthy. So much passion has Denise for this issue, that she took on a highly popular movement that is in fact a million times better than the diet on which I was raised. I would like to say something nice about Dr. Campbell but I'll end with something he said to Ms. Minger ... which was very Cargo Cult. 

I should conclude by noting the suggestion of the professional epidemiologist, cited 
above, who suggested that ultimately Denise may wish to publish her findings in a peer- reviewed journal but who presently felt strongly that the current version would not be 
accepted. I concur. 
I have never tired of my own narrative, that most of what gets published is pure bullshit. We all know that science journal editors do not practice the scientific method and thus Ms. Minger does not have the proper credentials to get published. We also know that Dr. Campbell does. What he is suggesting here is that, once again, he is a doctor and she is an English major. You win that one Dr. Campbell. You have surprisingly rejected her paper.



She sure did get Dr. Campbells goat though.



In honor of Ms. Minger, I'm going to sprinkle a little goat cheese on my salad tonight.

Biospace Report 2013 Report On Jobs

Without proper bean counting techniques, it is hard to say how many people have come, gone or stayed in the work force that makes up biotechnology/pharmaceutical science. You could first set up a list of career paths. Let's say one person has an associate degree in biotechnology. The next person has a BS in Chemical Engineering. The next person has an MD. The next a PhD in Pharmacology. Make a second list of possible job opportunities and match up the degrees with the jobs. Then make yet another list of jobs and match up the education backgrounds and job experience with the next leg of the journey of a career.

What is the life span of a particular career and how many should be expected to support the companies that currently exist? Should we expect more or less companies in the future?

According to Biospace, the future is looking brighter. "Biopharma recovery continues with unemployment rates falling over three percent," said Chanille Hewett, Biospace Product Manager. Our salary data shows further recovery indicators; since bottoming out in 2010 biotechnology salaries hit a three year high in 2012. Not only are our professionals getting back to work, but their pay is trending upward as well."

How did they ignore the large number of layoffs during the time period of 2010 to 2012? Does their methodology really tell the true story. It would seem that there is a built in bias. A Biospace Product Manager may be under pressure to tell the "best story". Journalism is not what it used to be. According to Xconomy, Biotech was back in 2010, but has been on the decline every since. Over 150,000 jobs were shed from 2009 to 2012. How is the Biospace "recovery" treating the lost 150,000 jobs?

Using Seattle as an example, less jobs are posted on the WBBA website than ever before. Knowing people in the area, I can identify some of the jobs as being mere place holders on the WBBA website to give off the appearance of a viable company. In reality the jobs have sat on the website for months with no effort being made in-house to fill those positions. Out of 17 companies listing jobs on WBBA, nine companies only have 1 job vacancy, four companies have 2 jobs, leaving the remaining four companies offering 3, 7, 10, and 28 jobs. Take out Seattle Genetics and you've got 37 jobs from 16 companies.

Why bring up a non-factor like Seattle? The area was never a viable hub for generating large numbers of jobs. Old job creator like Institute for Systems Biology no longer have life science opportunities. I have seen people searching for "Institute for Systems Biology layoffs" on my blog. None have been reported. Hmm. If you look at jobs on the Amgen site you will see many that have been listed for years. Lazy human resource practices and embarrassment over the lack of forward progress have added to the confusing calculations done by Biospace. If there is a problem reporting the proper numbers, then larger hubs such as San Diego, San Francisco, North Carolina and Boston, might be adding larger amounts of bad data to the calculations being made by Biospace.

Using the scientific method, we can look into the realities of bio/pharma.

My observation is that there have been far too many layoffs to conclude that in 2013 everything is on the  mend. The measurement of recovery hasn't been defined. Imagine the recovery from the past few years being the inverse of the layoffs. Pfizer hires 19,500 people!

So I have to ask a question. I start with several questions. "What are the jobs that were lost?" "What are the new jobs?" In general, "Has the biopharma workforce changed what is does?"

Using the Cargo Cult analogy, "Have the Cargo Cult Airports figured out how to conduct themselves in a manner that puts more wealth into their system?"

By looking at the new jobs, we have a better way of judging the future of the business. Have we redefined how a person is to stand in the watch towers or have we figured out what the Westerners were actually doing in their watch towers?

My hypothesis is that things have not gotten better, in general, that the workforce has lost valuable experience. The Dilbert-esque bosses have kept their positions while the people, whose minds made up the knowledge base of what really needs to get done, have lost their jobs. As the money fades away, careerism overshadows what is truly needed at the company. Those with the power to choose will always choose to keep themselves around and get rid of those below. Proving ones value does not get done via the scientific method.

Check what people are saying online. Biofind Rumor Mill:

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 10/01/2013 - 03:12.

We had two openings for entry level (bs +1/2 years experience) molecular bio techs. We received over 100 resumes, over 30 of which were from PhD holders. We hired people with bs + 2-5 years experience. The overdegreed candidates didn't even get to the interview stage.

Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 29/07/2012 - 03:30.

In the last 5 years, jobs in science/pharma/biotech have declined resulting in a surplus of unemployed PhD and MS scientists. We need to have some organization that will help MS/PhD scientists get jobs in the fields outside of their expertise with some training while working. A person who has done MS/PhD can certainly learn other skills in 1-2 years and succeed in other fields.

If you continue reading the thread from Biofind you will see a trend. Over-education is detrimental to your hiring prospects. Training is not provided quite often. The industry where you hope to have a career is not booming. Some will win, most will not, and the winners aren't training the losers how to succeed.

What is the experiment? Well... I started this blog in 2006. That has been the experiment. Was I able to find a problem other than my own career falling by the wayside? The industry has proven, in spite of reports of its constant rising from the ashes (without any reports of a fire) that it is a poor investment. The money has dried up. Bad science leads to bad investments. The intolerance to the loss of capital is a good thing. New initiatives, such as the Reproducibility Initiative and the latest initiative from the journal Nature to improve the reproducibility of their published papers, are starting to pop up. The Amgen study boldly went where few professional scientists would dare go, and they were published. Retraction Watch now shines a light on things we know... that aren't so. People are starting to do what they have been reluctant to do in the past, admit our faults. Ben Goldacre has published Bad Pharma that has opened the eyes of regulators to the plight of anyone who wants to get the to the truth of a big pharma clinical trial. Aubrey Blumsons war against Procter and Gamble opened the door for questioning big pharma trials and their lack of transparency. Cargo Cult companies like SIRNA and Sirtris have closed up shop, costing their big pharma purchasers huge write-offs. Beyond biotech/pharma, medical practices have also been scrutinized in books like Checklist Manifesto and Unaccountable. 

In general, we are not on the mend as often reported by Biospace and other people who benefit from maintaining the status quo. We are in the process of changing, getting rid of bad science, and a whole lot of bad scientists. The old ways were unsustainable. We are learning to be more honest and hold others to the same standards. The experiment continues.

Euclids Elements

In 'Euclids Window' by Leonard Mlodinow we are taken through the history of geometry. It's not at all boring as some might assume. There is a history lesson on Alexandria, the leaders, and the library for example. It takes the imagination to a time where information was kept precariously on rolled up sheets of papyrus. Alexander the Great borrowed such texts from other leaders and didn't give them back! Imagine how much easier our own lives are now yet how much lazier that has made us. In the days before the 1000 year dark age, geek knowledge was in fashion. The math employed by the Egyptians was a commodity that the Greeks would travel by wooden ships to obtain. This made the information physically valuable to collectors of all things foreign. Think of those individuals as venture capitalists. They know something is valuable by they know not why. It was intellectually valuable to Euclid and the scientists he influenced. They knew why.

Euclids, 'Elements', his seminal work on Geometry, relied on the accumulated information on the subject. It is believed that most of the theorems were proven by other mathematicians. Perhaps the first sign of a powerful new scientific understanding would be a tall building or a way of having water available for farming. Egypt for example, had the pyramids. Someone capable of understanding the science and engineering had to grab some papyrus and go find out how they built them. It took Euclid many years to collect information from these kinds of writings and finally sit down to begin his work. He laid out his lifetime of interest in geometry, the things he felt were powerful in 13 rolls of papyrus.

This collection, 'Euclids Elements' has influenced people in ways beyond geometry. Bertrand Russell, for example, adopted the axiomatized deductive structures that Euclid's work introduced. (I stole "axiomatized deductive structures" from Wikipedia.) It is important to understand that sentence though. Axiom: A starting point of reasoning. Deductive reasoning links premises with conclusions. The structure of Elements is genius. 

Let's apply some "axiomatized deductive structure" to the Cargo Cults of biotechnology. There is much that we have learned since 1980 regarding the life sciences. As far as biotechnology and medical science are concerned however, we have created a huge steaming pile of information. It is not easy to find the starting point of much of the research then follow it logically to the conclusions that have been set in stone. I say "set in stone" because that is how biotechnology science begins. Let's look again at On-Q-ity. 

A group of investors will put money up to advance a science/technology towards a profitable healthcare product or service. On-Q-ity diagnosed cancer using biomarkers. After the money is in place PhDs are hired to instruct bachelor degreed people on how to "prove" the science and technology are useful. The conclusions are set in stone. Now imagine the new hires finding out that the science/technology isn't panning out as published? It doesn't work the way Bruce Booth and co-workers believed. Why did the investors believe that it worked? 

It is in this area, where the people with power run into trouble with the real boss of us all. Science doesn't care about a Venture Capitalists hopes and dreams. This area, science, is where the poor bastards with new PhDs and bachelor degrees have to work. It is where I worked and one day had to start this blog to deal with the insanity. Where a man who lived around 300 BC was once able to accumulate knowledge and put it down for people to learn from for over two millennia, we have arrived at a place where science is taken as a secondary function of a science based endeavor. The analysis of Bruce Booth on why On-Q-ity failed was an "Elements" of its own. It offered up the view from Cargo Cult leadership on what matters. The reasons for jumping in were not scientific. The reasons for failing were. 

Will this simple message ever make its way to the world? Science matters.

One axiom from my own axiomatized deductive structure before I end. Biotechnology in the pharmaceutical industry is plagued by unsubstantiated (non-reproduced) published research. At the core of both the bad science and the bad investment is the desire for money and power. A career, a new car, a busy schedule for speaking engagements... The signs of a true success. They are all very nice but only a true scientist would shun them all if it meant being a bullshitter. Perhaps among the ranks of our janitors and farmers are the scientific sages of our modern world. Our brightest minds are lying dormant until the day comes when pure thought returns to fashion. 

Negative Results On-Q-ity

Bruce Booth has been an interesting blogger on the topic of biotechnology. He is the recovering scientist turned early stage VC. I've made the analogy that he is like the recovering gambler turned gambling advisor. You take the risks, I'll mitigate mine by using your money. Bruce wrote this post about a company he and his co-workers backed with other people's money. It failed and the post mortem was indeed the product of a most clever wordsmith.

Bruce's original thoughts on the investment opportunity:

• “Hot space at nexus of two exciting themes in cancer and personalized diagnostics”
• "Strong team with a track record in building diagnostic businesses"
• “Robust financials with attractive recapitalization” 
• “Very strong intellectual property”
• Perception of “multiple possible exit paths via either diagnostic or oncology-focused pharma M&A or possible IPO”

Sexy, sexy, sexy!!! This company had a hot space, strong team, robust financials, strong IP and an exit door. What would the Reproducibility Initiative have added to this assessment? What Bruce was buying with other peoples money was a service. The money maker was suppose to be a cancer diagnostic service. Where in the above analysis do we hear anything about the science?

We here at the CCS believe that the number one reason most companies fail, and most projects in any company (successful or not) also fail is due to Cargo Cult Science. Whatever the reasons behind practicing CC science, it will not pan out in the end. The cargo planes will not land. In spite of this fact, money can still be made. This is what motivates Bruce to get the hell out of science to become an investor. I don't blame him, I got out too. The only difference is that I wouldn't waste any money on any biotechnology unless the technology is based on sound science. From that point the technology must then work as advertised. From that point you can start to look into the hot spaces where a strong team and IP can... MAKE MONEY!

After all... it is a business. Here is an easier decision, one would hope. The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) ruled that Andrew Aprikyan committed scientific misconduct. He no longer works at UW. Where does he work? He works at Stemgenics Inc. Stemgenics Inc. has recieved $180,000 USD in the form of a small business loan titled, SBIR Phase I: Membrane-Permeable Nano-Materials for Cell Reprogramming Solutions. The likes of Bruce Booth would probably have to pass in Stemgenics Inc. but the NSF likes what they see. In time Andrew Aprikyan could pull the wool over the diligent eyes guarding VC capital, except for the strong management team. Having a founder who has been ruled against in a misconduct case at the ORI should be a red flag for a venture capitalist. You may be able to hide this fact, but is the scientific foundation equally as shaky as the founder?

Ultimately, you can analyze the founders and the company all you want and you can easily fail. A better analysis would be focused on the science. Rather than doing what Atlas Venture did, hire a team at The Reproducibility Initiative to look into the science behind the technology. Hire anyone who has a laboratory and the ability to test the theory. If you think venture capitalists have a scientific method for picking winners, you would be mistaken. Science often takes off on paths that lead nowhere. That is part of the fun. The question for investors is "When?" is a business plan ready, from the scientific perspective? Without reproducibility, you are going to do what Atlas Ventures and On-Q-ity did. You will spend millions and millions more having the new lab staff try and validate the science. Chances are they will fail and your money is gone. 

Positive Results

I'm obsessed with the Amgen Study. It is true that the results are what I expect thus my own bias is satisfied. I don't like the results, but they support my belief in this whole cargo cult idea. So I went to set up the link on a recent post and I spent the time to read some of the comments. The first comment I read mirrors my thoughts.

Publication bias is a problem in all fields of research. The results of a paper should actually receive zero weight in the evaluation of its quality, otherwise there is the motivation to cherry-pick the data that give the most impressive result. The measure of quality should be the way the results were obtained – size of sample, experimental procedure, endpoints used. Ideally the reviewers of a paper should not see its results at all, only the description of the experiment.

But then there are a number of comments highly critical of the paper. What did these people not like?

The claims presented here are pretty outlandish. Particularly relevant to "Hematology and Oncology" we now know that mice housed under different conditions with different microflora can have vastly different outcomes in any model, not just cancer. To suggest academic incompetence or outright unethical behavior is offensive, and is a particularly narrow view of why experiments are difficult to reproduce.

This commenter seems to be defending non-reproducible results. Scrolling down we get a comment on this comment.

Reproducibility is the crucial part of scientific method. If indeed "mice housed under different conditions with different microflora can have vastly different outcomes in any model" (quot. from one of the comments above) then I wonder if mice presents a useful model-study that can be used outside a particular lab and on which further investigations can be built upon outside that one lab. 

Perhaps the commenter critical of the Amgen Study does not have a firm grasp on what makes for good science. The natural urge to simply defend could come from the human condition of favoring positive outcomes. As the first commenter points out, results shouldn't matter. That is a very interesting concept that not everyone will understand.

But all of this leads me to the latest TED Talk from Ben Goldacre. He too brings up the Amgen Study. He talks about this idea of positive results and our tendency, as humans, to favor them even when negative results are the accurate results. Hiding them leads to trouble, scientifically speaking.




Again, Feynman CCS

One example of the principle is this: If you've made up your mind
to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should
always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only
publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look
good. We must publish both kinds of results.
 
I say that's also important in giving certain types of government
advice. Supposing a senator asked you for advice about whether
drilling a hole should be done in his state; and you decide it
would be better in some other state. If you don't publish such a
result, it seems to me you're not giving scientific advice. You're
being used. If your answer happens to come out in the direction the
government or the politicians like, they can use it as an argument
in their favor; if it comes out the other way, they don't publish
it at all. That's not giving scientific advice.

Amylins Fire Burns Out

Amylin Pharmaceuticals was a superstar biotech in San Diego. By the time Bristol Meyer Squibb acquired them they had over 1200 employees. The decision to set most of them free is a typical end to such an acquisition of a biotechnology company. The few that actually produce a product usually get acquired.  Those at the top get rich and the workers who contributed to the success get their walking papers. 

In the case of Amylin we have an interesting product. According to Consumer News:

If you take Byetta or Januvia to control your blood sugar levels, you might have a small, but increased risk for a condition marked by stomach pain and nausea. Not only are the drugs more expensive and no more effective than our Best Buy Drug picks for diabetes, they're associated with an increased risk for pancreatitis, or an inflamed pancreas, according to a new study in JAMA Internal Medicine. We recommend asking your doctor if you shouldn't be taking another drug in the first place.

There is, of course, a difference of opinion among the executives of BMS and Amylin. BMS paid billions for Amylin because Exendin was a sexy new alternative to the usual type II diabetes drugs. The disease itself can be easily reversed by a change in diet and proper exercise. The pharmaceutical industry has long been making bets that sick Americans would prefer a pill, and its side effects, to changing what they eat and how much exercise the get. Even if the pill doesn't offer improved results from cheaper drugs, they still have a sales force and lazy greedy doctors to offset the shortcomings.

Amylin certainly had its experts in the area of type II diabetes drug development. Imagine a court of law where there is a case known as Type II diabetes drugs vs Diet and Exercise. The case would demonstrate that pharmaceutical experts do not actually study the disease. They study the disease endpoints that they set out to alter for a more tolerable existence for those who choose to remain ill. The diet and exercise experts would offer their evidence that the disease state is caused by bad decisions. After an individual makes poor diet decisions  and get themself into the disease state, the pharmaceutical industry keeps them there. They also provide new problems. The pharmaceutical experts have also been caught hiding data from the FDA about hearts risks from Byetta and stalling the agency's efforts to learn more about the risk.

The hundreds of people who will be laid off as a result of BMS's decision to shut down the San Diego operation are mostly tribesmen. They did their job, looked to the sky and lo and behold something appeared. It needed help coming across as cargo but the leaders convinced the government that it was cargo. Once the cargo was given the official seal of approval, the cargo cult was made legitimate. It was sold, the cargo was secured, and the tribesmen are free to go find new cults.

“It’s not companies that matter, it’s people that matter,” said Walshok, associate vice chancellor for public programs and dean of UCSD Extension. “San Diego’s strength is in the talent that is resident here.”

If only BMS felt the same. The people who matter will spend a lot of time on unemployment. Some will switch careers. The expertise in type II diabetes research? Did it ever exist?

Award Winning Excellence

When we want more than we can actually obtain, we find substitute solutions just like the Cargo Cults. We have religion to help us deal with our existence and mortality. We have exalted leaders to give us a sense of order. We have corporations to keep us employed. And yet, the limits of these human constructs continue to let us down. The cargo doesn't always come. Only the laws of science seem to be constant.

At the Oscars, when a celebrity has to step out for a smoke or a bathroom break, their are people who take their seats so as to mask the stars absence. When we have an area of life that lacks a scientific explanation, we have seat fillers. In the world of professional scientists (I didn't say science), the truth is not coming to us as fast as our publications are being churned out. The area between science and what we want to believe is where we can put ourselves on the right or wrong path. It's the area where we went from assuming a god created us to beginning to understand genes and the structure of DNA. It's also the area where Alchemy exists. There is a fork in that road where scientific leadership is suppose to lead us. When the leaders decide that RNA interference, for example, is the right road we end up with years research and billions of research dollars wasted. We wanted our scientists to provide us with a tool to make future research easier. We got it.

Here is an example of what I am talking about, taken from the world of education. We as human beings want our leaders to make us smarter. We have ignored our limitations and we've given the leaders an impossible job. What do they do with their task? They succeed!

Three Dozen Indicted in Atlanta Cheating Scandal!

...the teacher came around offering information and asking the students to rewrite their answers. Juwanna rejected the help. According to Howard, Juwanna said that when she declined her teacher's offer, the teacher responded that she was just trying to help her students. Her class ended up getting some of the highest scores in the school and won a trophy for their work. Juwanna felt guilty but didn't tell anyone about her class' cheating because she was afraid of retaliation and feared her teacher would lose her job.

We wanted so badly to see the students get better grades that we created leaders to get the job done. Failure was not an option. We handed out medals for success and pink slips for failure. Then we had to face reality. We had exceeded the limits of human capabilities. The humans had to cheat or try their best and hope that things turn out in their favor. When your livelihood is riding on the outcome it is not out the question for otherwise honest people to cheat. We must also assume that the most dishonest among us will do the best. Juwannas teacher certainly did well. She won a trophy. Dr. Beverly Hall, the schools superintendent appears to have won a Nobel Prize! Just look at that medal.

In education we have a flawed system to begin with. We begin with the assumption of perfection, 100% or 4.0. Each time a student fails to tell us what we told them to think, we dock points from their perfect grade. The educators indicted in Atlanta took were suppose to bring their students average closer to perfection. They found a way.

We have to be careful what we ask our leaders to do for us. There is no shortage of highly skilled people willing to tell us what we want to hear.

Replacing the Journal

When we look back, as Feynman did in the CCS speech, we too question the minds of our predecessors. How could the Salem Witch Trials have occurred? It's now considered a cautionary tale on the dangers of isolationism, religious extremism, false accusations and lapses in due process. The Cargo Cults of pharma can be analyzed on each account. They isolate themselves via confidentiality agreements and they don't share raw data with anyone not sympathetic to their cause. They view science as a religion. They rely on, for example, the 51 papers cited in the Amgen study. Even after it is known that 90% of those seminal papers are not reproducible, they keep the faith. Once they have placed their labs atop the bad basic science foundations, they falsely accuse their in-house science staff of being the reason their pipelines are drying up. The due process they practice is to cut and slash jobs. They burn the witches.

In the future we will have better, faster, more intelligent machines and computer software to eliminate the faulty thinking described above. We currently have leaders who do not have to face the cold hard world of the scientific method. I predict a future where the hard copy journals will become more and more obsolete, like the pager or the land line telephone. In their place will be online depictions of the natural world using video (youtube) and words (blogs). Feedback will be immediate and hopefully ongoing. Eliminated will be the isolationism of the chosen leaders and their 'anti-scientific method' peer reviews. By pulling the curtain back on our Wizards of Oz, we will begin to view science in a less religious way. The new process will involve a true community, not a monarchy. I think of a future where truth trumps pretense. Where nonsense from Harvard will take a back seat to the truth from South Dakota State University.

For example, they could examine the latest paper from David Sinclair. Here is where the curtain of Oz is pulled back. The experiments themselves are filmed. Raw data is provided. We are talking about maximizing transparency. What is left to the viewer is only to compare their interpretations with Sinclairs. Imagine each experiment being set up with animations and explanations that your mother would understand. Discuss the system, the cell culture, the method of analysis, the background, the assumptions and so on. Hide nothing. After all, on this webpage you are studying the study, measuring the measurements.

AstraZenecas latest mistake, their partnership with Moderna Therapeutics would be a fun subject to study as well. The foundation of their science is to use mRNA to "trigger production of protein drugs in the body".

They have already provided some video to work with. You provide background, you design experiments, you show the results and allow for an online discussion. Provide a final analysis and leave room for future adjustments. In fact, revisit whenever important information lends credence or detracts from the story. It is, after all, a narrative at this stage. AstraZeneca shelled out money as if they were buying science. They bought a story. 

The time will come when the stories being told will face more and more scrutiny. Retraction Watch was the first to hold up a mirror to the journals and simply let them know that we, the commoners, are watching. We want more than sexy stories. We want tools to build new technologies. Therefore more methods of providing transparency need to become available. I can do without another David Sinclair paper from the journal Science. I can start the countdown to the day AZ pulls the plug on Moderna. What will impact science more than anything is a serious effort to replace the hard copy journals with real time online communications. 

Pfizer Demolishes Cargo Cult Airport

AstraZeneca did it in 2011. Now it's Pfizers turn. When the cargo does not come, tear down the airport!

Just take a look at what future generations of archeologists will not find in their search for the ancient research centers. Here

It is a nice little campus. Imagine the butterflies potential employees must have felt walking up the steps to this big pharma research center. This was the big leagues. Good pay, good name on the resume, and a nice location for a cozy east coast waspy lifestyle. Those who were hired did not provide enough value. Some were part of the problem, some were put in an impossible situation. Cargo Cult tribesmen can't bring the cargo by dutifully standing in the watch tower with their coconut headphones.

The fires continue to burn out. This one is a doozy. I'm not convinced of the sincerity of the "bone fide developer" who was going to save the day.

Sources identified the developer as Stu Lichter, president and senior managing partner of California-based Industrial Realty Group, which specializes in bringing empty buildings back to life.

Lichter, in a phone interview Wednesday, said he appreciated the governor and other state officials going to bat for him after he initially approached Pfizer about a deal. He added that Pfizer's decision to back out cost the region at least one major new employer that he had lined up as his first tenant, a bioscience company that would have added between 100 to 200 jobs with an average salary of about $100,000.

A pharmaceutical research site, even after its death, continues to attract bullshitters.

Kumare

I highly recommend the documentary Kumare (Koo-Mar-Aay). In this documentary an Indian man who grew up in New Jersey decides to make himself out to be a spiritual guru. He travels to India to study the mannerisms of gurus and guru followers. He returns to Arizona where he feels no on will recognize him and there will be plenty of would-be followers. He is a fake guru looking for people to believe he is real.



Long ago James Randi ran a similar experiment.



It is this kind of thinking that is at the root of all Cargo Cults. To make people believe in complete nonsense, you need to have a specific skill set. Kumare and Randi demonstrated how it's done. It's interesting how many similarities there are between these two scams and modern/science. Charismatic leaders from exalted institutions convince us that they have life extending elixirs and cancer curing pills.  

Our gurus wear suits and ties, white lab coats when the cameras are on. They have no intention of revealing the scam.  As someone who has friends and family currently dealing with cancer, I think we have to take our guru problem seriously. Let the foolish pharma people continue their quest for wealth. What we have to do is keep thinking, keep asking questions, and keep believing that science is indeed the belief in the ignorance of experts. It's okay not to believe the leaders.

AstraZenecas Solution

AstraZeneca is laying off 5050 human beings. Five thousand and fifty people who came in to work each day to do what they were hired to do, can all stay home now. The board says these people weren't providing value. What can we say about the board?

The board has decided to write a check for $240 million dollars for mRNA drugs. There will now be an unknown amount of human beings showing up to work each day doing what they were hired to do. Their job will be to make the case that Moderna Therapeutics has value.

The AZ board gathered with their investors to discuss their plans for the future. They will be:

Dramatically simplifying the business, improving productivity and building a culture that supports long-term success.

The biggest killer of real science within the industry is the need for scientists to be productive. There needs to be a laboratory of professionals who only provide science. People with job security and long term value. The production of scientific evaluation is different than R&D drug development production. Let the long term scientific lab employees offer up their opinions with no external pressures.

Why will Moderna not bring value to the investors in AZ? Because no one will be testing the validity of this small biotechs claims. No one will question the boards decision to pay $240 million dollars without any scientific verification of the claims made by the biotech company and the due diligence committee at AZ. They will fail. RNA anything will fail. We have zero appreciation of the subtle existence of this nucleic acid and how it is regulated. We think we can improve on DNA and RNA function? Without knowing how it works? We are arrogant and we have to pay the price for our misunderstanding of our limits.

Form a science organization that functions outside of your R&D groups. Let them advise the leadership by using the scientific method to augment the corporate C level executive method. You will find that science is your friend.

Resveratrol, Greek Coffee and Alchemy

Resveratrol was back in the news recently. On a Friday the journal Science published another sexy science paper by David Sinclair. On the following Monday GSK shut down daily operations at Sirtris, a company for which they paid $720 million... to David Sinclair.

The magical elixir, the fountain of youth we call Resveratrol, has found a new rival, boiled Greek coffee. Two can play at that game. It's known as Alchemy. According to Wikipedia:

The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base metals into the noble metals gold or silver, as well as an elixir of life conferring youth and longevity. 

David Sinclair and Dipak Das  have both ran afoul of the research community while pushing the sensational story of Resveratrol. In this paper the technical details the marred Sinclairs narrative are covered. The lab work is really where the science is taking place. The sexy narrative is the specialty of Sinclair and Das. The real science however, is not in the experiments they design to prove their preconceived notions. The real science would be in the analysis of their processes and the verification of their results.

We all want a magic pill. Some of us don't put any thought into such a reality ever coming to fruition, but it would be nice. Some of us still want the promise of Alchemists without the stigma of believing in charlatans and magicians. When people want to take a pot shot at Newton, for example, they bring up his belief in Alchemy. In the cold hard world of business, GSK has put an end to Sirtris. The cargo did not come. The elixir wasn't panning out and they (GSK) had all of the data to confirm their fears. They had been had! The journal Science however keeps the sexy science of Resveratrol alive.

Boiled Greek coffee is the latest offering for a candidate for the magic elixir of life. Here at the Cargo Cult Scientist however, we believe we are witnessing Alchemy in action.

The common thread to longevity is actually known. Smoking, drinking, stress, bad food, bad genetics... These things are going to shorten your life. The pharmaceutical companies will never offer you a "get out of the coffin free card". In the game of life, you have to believe in diet an exercise. It's not so much what certain people put into their body that makes them live longer. It is what they don't put into their bodies. Sadly, we have yet to solve the mystery of making money off of getting people to consume less.

Angry Allozyne

When they shut down the Seattle PI on March 17, 2009 they put an end to a daily telling of the Seattle story. Good people, who were good at their jobs, were let go. It was indeed a sad day for the people and for the art and science of journalism.

The Xconomy came along to take over the news in the tech industry. It reports on how to get money, who is getting money, and why everyone should be giving money to the cargo cults. I don't hide my biases very well. Occasionally however, they do something I like. They let out a secret today about a Cargo Cult known as Allozyne. I ran afoul of one of their supporters last year when I had this to say about their company. I do not understand what these people could be doing in that little space just down the street from the famed floating houses of Seattle.

Thought I'd throw in a picture. It is a beautiful place.

Allozyne started off as a promising story. According to Xconomy, they still are promising.

Seattle-based Allozyne, one of the promising biotech drug developers to graduate from the venture-backed Accelerator, recently conducted a small round of employee furloughs.

They branched off from Accelerator with a fat bank account, fancy digs, pretty people to run the show, and some sexy technology from a couple CalTech brainiacs. They were promising, if you were into appearances. Somehow the rest of the world was not impressed. Since leaving Accelerator, the leadership of Allozyne has boasted of no major collaborations nor any meaningful successes. Enough time has passed to make those of us on the outside wonder what is going on. A news story finally breaks but it is not clear what is going on.

Allozyne made the latest round of reductions to its payroll a little more than a year after another round of job cuts that I reported here in January 2012. CEO Meenu Chhabra Karson said by e-mail, “We did not lay off anyone recently,” but declined to answer further questions. Three other sources close to the situation said staff reductions were made recently at Allozyne and described internally not as “layoffs” but as “furloughs,” which suggests the people affected may be called back. 

Did Meenu deny laying anyone off this time or is that a quote from last year? If her quote is a year old, the only information we have comes from Lukes three other sources close to the situation.  If it's new, why not speak to the rumors of furloughs? We all assume that they will run out of money someday. Are they so Cargo Cult that they don't want anyone to see them without their look of success?

The anger from the Xconomy commenters offers some information. It appears to come from within the walls of that little space down the street from the floating houses. Like this one from "industry exec":

Having worked directly with the company very recently, I've seen absolutely no evidence or impact of the alleged personnel management "reported" here - Allozyne has a solid team and is extremely well led, so hopefully this rather loose and speculative story won't needlessly create noise or disrupt the company's ability to operate and deliver on its technology (which is truly exciting!). I have to say, I seriously doubt the accuracy of this story and would think even Xconomy has a higher journalistic bar for what even qualifies as newsworthy...shame.

Oh, this guy has worked directly with the company very recently... from his office overlooking the houseboats! Then there is this one from JMM:

The Allozyne approach and the products they are generating are top-notch, as is the staff's commitment to their science. If allozyne is refocusing their efforts expect great things from these guys.

Top notch? Expect great things? We've been expecting great things since 2005! To be fair, Amgen took 20 years to really take off but this is not Amgen. Allozyne is a small company that appears to be on its last legs. They took 50M down to 1.1M then managed to put another 4M in the bank last year. 4M is not a lot of money for a company that has to pay Seattle rent, Seattle employee taxes (why not set up shop in Bothell?) and exorbitant salaries to arrogant angry managers. Which one of these commenters was Leroy Hood? Which one was Carl Weissman? Who said this:

we're conducting a paid study with Allozyne and haven't seen or heard any issues either - management team is extremely professional and scientists are hitting our goals. I'd be surprised if this were true.

He calls himself "insider". He doesn't always use capital letters to start his sentences. He must be a high ranking insider exec. He claims to be paying Allozyne. We can no sooner verify his claim than we can verify Lukes. At least we know where Luke works.

I don't have anything to add to the story here. I started the blog a year after Allozyne began. My premise was that most of these little companies were ran on smoke and mirrors. The "entrepreneurs" are mostly PhD or MD level people who have a sense of entitlement. They put millions of dollars in a pot and swish it around to collect what spills over. During the day they hold meetings on how to swish the pot around. When the companies run out of money their work is done. Very few succeed so why worry about the failure. You move on with a C-level pedigree. Good job! Meanwhile the layoffs are real. You just aren't going to hear that from the Cargo Cult leaders.

New Jerseys Plan To Help Biotech/Pharma Workers

Give a man the reputation of an early riser and he can sleep til noon.   - Mark Twain

New Jersey has come up with a plan to offer $14,000 to employers who hire unemployed biotech/pharma workers. The concept here is that New Jersey does not want to lose its highly educated and formerly highly paid people. They enjoyed a period of financial success and they want to keep the gravy train rolling.

The Mark Twain quote above sums up the rather absurd situation. Biotech/pharma had earned a reputation as a successful lucrative industry. Along came the burdens of capitalism. The industry is shedding jobs and the local economy is taking a hit. What remains is the reputation. The local government officials have conspired with the local biotech/pharma executives to force the people of New Jersey to shell out $14,000 every time this failing industry hires a new person.

The $14,000 per person is part of a $3.6 million federal emergency grant, which includes $1 million in on-the-job-training dollars that have to be spent by the September deadline.  

If every dime of the $1 million is spent, about 71 people will land jobs. The workers must have lost their jobs in 2010 or later from various locations of Bristol-Myers Squibb, Hoffmann-La Roche, Johnson & Johnson, Merck/Schering-Plough, and Pfizer.

3400 drug company jobs were lost in New Jersey between 2008 and 2010. The government is going to spend one million dollars to create 71 jobs. Who will get the money? 

The $14,000 grants will underwrite training for six months for up to 50 percent to 90 percent of the employee's salary - although jobs in the pharma sector typically paid much higher than that.

At 50 percent we are looking at an annual salary of 48K. At 90% we are looking at $31K per year. 

The most curious logic in this plan is the training. 

"Every company is going to train their new employees," Flatley said. "This allows us to pay a portion of that training."

What is it about former BMS, Roche, Merck, and Pfizer scientists that lead people to believe they need more education and a $14K dowry? Were they lacking value? Are they still lacking value? Does a Cargo Cult worker have anything to offer the next cult?

Douglas Prasher and Science Careers

One of the most perplexing thought experiments that I engage in here involves employment. You can't experience the joy and the power of science by working in a Cargo Cult. Real scientific thought involves that understanding illustrated in Feynmans CCS speech. You must appreciate Feynmans Wesson oil example. Wesson oil doesn't sink into food as advertised. But neither does any other brand of vegetable oil when applied to food above a certain temperature. A scientific mind will find such marketing tactics disdainful. The disdain towards this kind of dishonesty will lead you into a career in science. You discover that your personality is best suited for utter-bend-over-backwards honesty. Scientific progress will be your revenge on the higher paid marketing execs and the child molesting priests who wish to influence those around you. You have faith that you can succeed by harnessing that power and providing the world with new and better products or services. You've had an epiphany, that science is a way of thinking that leads to things that change our world.

Then comes earning a living in a world that has not had that science epiphany.

It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.  - Niccolo Machiavelli

In my last post I discussed the career of Gertrude Ellion.

"I would just go ahead and make the compounds, and then the question was, well what do we do with these compounds?" How do we find out if they really do anything?"

She had to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. What did that involve? She first had to succeed at making the molecules. She had to provide evidence that she had succeeded. Then she had to find out if they did anything.

That brings me up to modern times and the career of Douglas Prasher. Douglas Prasher cloned GFP. It is a great tool for conducting research. Like Gertrude Ellion, he just went ahead and completed the first step. Gertrude made her compounds through chemistry. Douglas cloned his genes through molecular biology. When it came time to find out what could be done with it, Douglas Prasher had a difficult time. He had envisioned that the gene could be inserted into the end of the hemoglobin gene. When hemoglobin was being made by the cell it would have a green glow. GFP was a small protein that could possible by expressed without disrupting the normal function of the gene into which it was cloned. Unfortunately, he ran out of funding before he could express his GFP clone in the manner he had envisioned.

Since then many others have taken the baton and sprinted on. GFP was a huge success. D. Prasher ended up driving a courtesy shuttle for a car dealership in Huntsville Alabama for $8.50 an hour.  Two of the scientists, Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien, took the baton sprinted on to win the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. It's not their fault however that the Nobel committee left D. Prasher out. They were working outside of the Cargo Cult. Dr. Prashers enemies were inside.

Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. 

- Niccolo Machiavelli

The enemies of innovation and lukewarm defenders are the many people one will meet along the way. Pursuing a career in science will not be a success if you only focus on the science. What we set out to accomplish is something new and in direct opposition to the goals of those who have done well under the old ways. Gertrude Ellion and Douglas Prasher both brought about new ways of conducting research. Only one however, succeeded in having a long career in science.  Both scientists had menial occupations mixed in with their science jobs. Gertrude was a secretary and a substitute teacher before taking an unpaid laboratory job. Dr. Prasher drove a shuttle bus. Gertrude is the success story. What did she do differently? It's hard to pinpoint. She lived in a different time and worked under different people. Did she have better Machiavellian skills? Perhaps she didn't need them. Perhaps there is a mixture of interpersonal skills and the need to apply them in your work environment. One thing is for sure, there is more to a successful career in science than simply being a good scientist.