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A big employer for chemistry PhDs that no one in the West has heard of is Wuxi Pharmatech, a contract research outfit in Shanghai. They do everything, synthesi

A big employer for chemistry PhDs that no one in the West has heard of is Wuxi Pharmatech, a contract research outfit in Shanghai. They do everything, synthesis, discovery, lead optimization, clinical testing, process development, formulation, the whole pipeline. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies stateside have turned into IP brokerages, if you think you have a promising target you buy a startup that has a compound for that and hand it off to your offshore contract firm. Research, where you need PhDs, has been cut savagely, because of the short time horizon Wall Street demands that is totally incompatible with the realities of research.

refurb 12y ago
This is a great point, employment stats are not the same across all PhDs. Back in the early 2000's organic chemistry PhDs were in very high demand. Salaries went from ~$70K/yr to start to over $100K/yr by 2005 or so. Since 2005 two things have happened: (1) as mentioned above, a lot of off-shoring of basic research has happened, particularly to China and India (not saying this is good or bad) and (2) a shift by the biotech industry away from small molecule drugs to biologic drugs (antibodies and other proteins). The result is that organic chemistry PhDs have been hit pretty hard while PhDs with knowledge areas that support biologic drug development have done pretty well.
- purringmeow 12y ago
  That kind of offshoring is definitely bad, IMO. We aren't talking about outsourced PHP web development sweatshops, but incredibly high-tech research. As one poster below mentioned, you are losing institutional knowledge & traditions. That has to have a negative long term effect on your economy.
  - refurb 12y ago
    I don't think it's really all that avoidable. If you can outsource high tech work for less, why wouldn't you? That being said, I've heard that wages for PhDs in China and India have gone up from 30% of that in the US to 70-80%. Combine that with the hassle of outsourcing (knowledge transfer, etc) it's become less advantageous than it was 10 years ago.
WalterBright 12y ago
> the short time horizon Wall Street demands Companies that sacrifice long term for short term profits will, assuredly, do poorly long term. Their stock price will decline. Investors will see this and will short the stock. The stock will have low P/E ratios. On the other hand, companies that sacrifice for the short term and invest for the long term will see high P/E ratios, as investors see that and go long on the stock. Amazon is a prime example. I don't believe that investors (Wall Street) are too dumb to know the difference.
- aquadrop 12y ago
  If short term companies will kill their long term competitors in short term, i.e. now, long term may never come and global trend won't care about the future. Isn't that a danger?
- HarryHirsch 12y ago
  Companies that sacrifice long term for short term profits will, assuredly, do poorly long term. Their stock price will decline. Investors will see this and will short the stock. The stock will have low P/E ratios. We see this play out right now. Facebook and Google offer faster return on investment than Merck and Pfizer, and that's why stock prices are where they are. But when you shut down a research facility you instantly lose decades of institutional knowledge, something that you can't buy for all the money in the world. At some point society has to ask what it wants: more targeted advertising, or antibiotics that actually work.
- protonfish 12y ago
  Few comments have made me want to downvote as much as this one. I still have another hundred or so points to go until I am allowed so I'll have to settle for explaining to you how much I disagree. Your argument is a logical fallacy that I see a lot, but doesn't have a fancy Latin name. It is a combination of appeal to authority and circular reasoning so I'll give it a name right now: the Authority Circle. It has the form of: "I believe X person/company/country is doing something dumb/bad/foolish." "If it wasn't a good idea, they wouldn't be doing it." This assumes that person X is smarter than you, therefore the fact that they are choosing to take an action is evidence that it is good. This is a lazy and unconstructive argument and you should be ashamed of yourself. (Unless you are a Wall Street shill doing PR spin. In that case, well done.) So logically your argument is not well formed; what about factually? The behavior we see in investors is incredibly focused on short term gains and why not? There is no benefit to long term success to a public investor. Once the company (a small percentage of) their money is invested in flames out, they can simply invest in another company and drain them dry until it is time to bleed another one. (Hopefully unloading their stock to chumps along the way at the right time, before anyone realizes they are being sold a sick cow.) We know from history that unless government regulates the stock market, it is a short matter of time until the house of cards collapses. Today, the most long-lived publicly-held corporations are the ones where the CEO has the power to say "no" to intense investor demand for short-term gain. (We are waiting to see how long Apple can survive this now that Jobs is gone.) Everything we know tells us "yes, investors are indeed that stupid." You have offered no new or useful facts or reasoning to this discussion. I give your comment a 0/10 for your unhelpful waste of everyone's time.

refurb 12y ago

This is a great point, employment stats are not the same across all PhDs. Back in the early 2000's organic chemistry PhDs were in very high demand. Salaries went from ~$70K/yr to start to over $100K/yr by 2005 or so. Since 2005 two things have happened: (1) as mentioned above, a lot of off-shoring of basic research has happened, particularly to China and India (not saying this is good or bad) and (2) a shift by the biotech industry away from small molecule drugs to biologic drugs (antibodies and other proteins). The result is that organic chemistry PhDs have been hit pretty hard while PhDs with knowledge areas that support biologic drug development have done pretty well.

purringmeow 12y ago
That kind of offshoring is definitely bad, IMO. We aren't talking about outsourced PHP web development sweatshops, but incredibly high-tech research. As one poster below mentioned, you are losing institutional knowledge & traditions. That has to have a negative long term effect on your economy.
- refurb 12y ago
  I don't think it's really all that avoidable. If you can outsource high tech work for less, why wouldn't you? That being said, I've heard that wages for PhDs in China and India have gone up from 30% of that in the US to 70-80%. Combine that with the hassle of outsourcing (knowledge transfer, etc) it's become less advantageous than it was 10 years ago.

WalterBright 12y ago

> the short time horizon Wall Street demands Companies that sacrifice long term for short term profits will, assuredly, do poorly long term. Their stock price will decline. Investors will see this and will short the stock. The stock will have low P/E ratios. On the other hand, companies that sacrifice for the short term and invest for the long term will see high P/E ratios, as investors see that and go long on the stock. Amazon is a prime example. I don't believe that investors (Wall Street) are too dumb to know the difference.

aquadrop 12y ago
If short term companies will kill their long term competitors in short term, i.e. now, long term may never come and global trend won't care about the future. Isn't that a danger?
HarryHirsch 12y ago
Companies that sacrifice long term for short term profits will, assuredly, do poorly long term. Their stock price will decline. Investors will see this and will short the stock. The stock will have low P/E ratios. We see this play out right now. Facebook and Google offer faster return on investment than Merck and Pfizer, and that's why stock prices are where they are. But when you shut down a research facility you instantly lose decades of institutional knowledge, something that you can't buy for all the money in the world. At some point society has to ask what it wants: more targeted advertising, or antibiotics that actually work.
protonfish 12y ago
Few comments have made me want to downvote as much as this one. I still have another hundred or so points to go until I am allowed so I'll have to settle for explaining to you how much I disagree. Your argument is a logical fallacy that I see a lot, but doesn't have a fancy Latin name. It is a combination of appeal to authority and circular reasoning so I'll give it a name right now: the Authority Circle. It has the form of: "I believe X person/company/country is doing something dumb/bad/foolish." "If it wasn't a good idea, they wouldn't be doing it." This assumes that person X is smarter than you, therefore the fact that they are choosing to take an action is evidence that it is good. This is a lazy and unconstructive argument and you should be ashamed of yourself. (Unless you are a Wall Street shill doing PR spin. In that case, well done.) So logically your argument is not well formed; what about factually? The behavior we see in investors is incredibly focused on short term gains and why not? There is no benefit to long term success to a public investor. Once the company (a small percentage of) their money is invested in flames out, they can simply invest in another company and drain them dry until it is time to bleed another one. (Hopefully unloading their stock to chumps along the way at the right time, before anyone realizes they are being sold a sick cow.) We know from history that unless government regulates the stock market, it is a short matter of time until the house of cards collapses. Today, the most long-lived publicly-held corporations are the ones where the CEO has the power to say "no" to intense investor demand for short-term gain. (We are waiting to see how long Apple can survive this now that Jobs is gone.) Everything we know tells us "yes, investors are indeed that stupid." You have offered no new or useful facts or reasoning to this discussion. I give your comment a 0/10 for your unhelpful waste of everyone's time.