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> scientists have finite time, it's valuable, and are just as prone to chasing the new hotness as programmers. Yes, I agree. Scientist time is valuable for at

> scientists have finite time, it's valuable, and are just as prone to chasing the new hotness as programmers. Yes, I agree. Scientist time is valuable for at least a couple reasons; science funding is a scarce resource, and trained scientists are scarce. I'd argue that those are related, and both could be helped by increasing interest/excitement/awareness toward science in the general public. If we were to sort people in to two beakers, "trained scientist" and "general public", I think the people who were excited about LK-99 and making "shitty examples" of it, would mostly go in the second one. (also, I 100% agree that "can't you just..." is one of the most irritating phrases in English)

dekhn 3y ago
I have a different perspective on your statement "trained scientists are scarce .... both could be helped by increasing interest/excitement/awareness"... When I was a kid I read about DNA and genetic modification of organisms (this was back in the 80's when it was still fairly new) and decided to become a scientist to genetically modify humans using gene therapy as an alternative to standard pharmaceuticals. The articles I read suggested that if we just sequenced the human genome, and did a bit more research and applied computing, that gene therapy would be a viable solution. Biotech was undergoing a revolution at the time. Fast forward- I've finished grad school, postdoc, and am now a principal investigator at a national lab. I was a beneficiary of a massive growth in science funding during the Clinton era that ended right about the time I was looking for a faculty position. There are almost no faculty positions available, compared to the supply. Guess what? Real science doesn't look anything like what I thought. The majority of the time is spent writing grants and papers, your competitors are super-hardcore, it's really not a fun job and it gets in the way of work-life balance. And the entire area I wanted to work in, gene therapy, was almost entirely stopped for 20+ years due to the death of a single patient in a single trial (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Gelsinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Gelsinger). The risks of gene therapy had been greatly understated, and even today, the few gene therapies that do exist aren't great, and cost $$$. We hear constantly that human genome sequencing is going to revolutionize drug discovery- it didn't. So, I am not so sure that breathless articles about technologies that could reasonably have been anticipated not to work (like LK-99) to excite more people to sign up for science is really a good idea.

dekhn 3y ago

I have a different perspective on your statement "trained scientists are scarce .... both could be helped by increasing interest/excitement/awareness"... When I was a kid I read about DNA and genetic modification of organisms (this was back in the 80's when it was still fairly new) and decided to become a scientist to genetically modify humans using gene therapy as an alternative to standard pharmaceuticals. The articles I read suggested that if we just sequenced the human genome, and did a bit more research and applied computing, that gene therapy would be a viable solution. Biotech was undergoing a revolution at the time. Fast forward- I've finished grad school, postdoc, and am now a principal investigator at a national lab. I was a beneficiary of a massive growth in science funding during the Clinton era that ended right about the time I was looking for a faculty position. There are almost no faculty positions available, compared to the supply. Guess what? Real science doesn't look anything like what I thought. The majority of the time is spent writing grants and papers, your competitors are super-hardcore, it's really not a fun job and it gets in the way of work-life balance. And the entire area I wanted to work in, gene therapy, was almost entirely stopped for 20+ years due to the death of a single patient in a single trial (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Gelsinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Gelsinger). The risks of gene therapy had been greatly understated, and even today, the few gene therapies that do exist aren't great, and cost $$$. We hear constantly that human genome sequencing is going to revolutionize drug discovery- it didn't. So, I am not so sure that breathless articles about technologies that could reasonably have been anticipated not to work (like LK-99) to excite more people to sign up for science is really a good idea.