Medical and other scientific research is kept secret

Doing science outside of science these days is far from easy or simple. Just consider the fact that if you're not part of a university, it is very hard to get your hands on the research papers that are the lifeblood of knowledge exchange. "I'm part of the paywalled 99 percent, the masses who don't actually get access to all these great journals," says Perlstein."

Scenes from the Postdocalypse
Ethan Perlstein was a young, bright Ph.D. from Harvard. Then he hit the academic job market.
By Indre Viskontas and Chris Mooney
Mother Jones
Mar. 28, 2014

How do you become a scientist? Ask anyone in the profession and you'll probably hear some version of the following: get a bachelor's of science degree, work in a lab, get into a Ph.D. program, publish some papers, get a good postdoctoral position, publish some more papers, and then apply for a tenure-track job at a large university. It's a long road—and you get to spend those 10 to 15 years as a poor graduate student or underpaid postdoc, while you watch your peers launch careers, start families, and contribute to their 401(k) plans.

And then comes the academic job market. According to Brandeis University biochemist Gregory Petsko, who recently chaired a National Academy of Sciences committee on the postdoctoral experience in the United States, less than 20 percent of aspiring postdocs today get highly coveted jobs in academia. That's less than 1 in 5. Naturally, many more end up in industry, in government, and in many other sectors—but not the one they were trained for or probably hoping for. "We're fond of saying that we should prepare people for alternative careers," explains Pesko, "without realizing that we're the alternative career."

Ethan Perlstein was one of these postdocs—before he decided he'd had enough. He had gotten his Ph.D. at Harvard under Stuart Schreiber, the legendary chemist, and then gone on to a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship in genomics at Princeton. He'd published in top journals, like the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Genetics. He'd put in 13 years. But that "came to a close at the end of 2012," says Perlstein on the latest episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast, "when I encountered what I have been calling the postdocalypse, which is this pretty bad job market for professionally trained Ph.Ds—life scientists, in particular." After two years of searching for an assistant professorship, going up against an army of highly qualified, job-hungry scientists, he gave up.

But it wasn't just the competition for jobs that deterred Perlstein. Once you land a tenure-track job, you often have to get a big government grant in order to actually get tenure. And those grants are becoming ever more competitive, meaning that young faculty members usually need to apply multiple times before securing one. That is, if they actually do get one before the university that employs them loses patience.

"I guess I just thought, 'Well, I don't want to keep waiting any more,'" recalls Perlstein. "At the time I was 33, and thought, 'Well, I'm also seeing the statistic that says that the average age at which an independent biomedical research gets their first big grant from the NIH is 43 or 42.' And I just thought, 'Another 10 years of just waiting around for my turn in line?'"

You've probably heard the claim that the United States needs to produce more scientists, like Perlstein, to remain competitive with up-and-coming science powerhouses like India and China. It is a familiar litany whenever we hear laments about American science and its disturbing habit of resting on its laurels. But what you rarely hear in this argument is the fact that we don't have nearly enough jobs to put to work the scientists we currently have. "U.S. higher education produces far more science and engineering graduates annually than there are S&E job openings," writes Harvard researcher Michael Teitelbaum, "the only disagreement is whether it is 100 percent or 200 percent more."

This situation is not new. Eight years ago, in 2006, George W. Bush's National Institutes of Health director, Elias Zerhouni, lamented that by denying young scientists the opportunity to try out their ideas, we're in effect "eat[ing] our seed corn," likening the situation to farmers who fail to prepare for the future. And that was before budget fights and sequestration dealt a further blow to the science funding stream that heavily influences whether our country can provide opportunities for its talented young researchers.

The life sciences, the field in which Perlstein works, are a case in point—and arguably the most challenging arena of all. According to the National Science Foundation's Survey of Doctorate Recipients, between the years 1993 and 2010, the number of US biomedical scientists with Ph.Ds rose from 105,000 to 180,000, even as the percentage employed in academia decreased from 58 percent to 51 percent, and the number holding tenured or tenure-track academic jobs decreased from 35 percent to 26 percent. That, in a nutshell, is the postdocalpyse. (Note that the vast majority of these Ph.Ds do find jobs somewhere, but fewer and fewer find the sort of academic jobs for which the postdoctoral experience is designed to train them.)

The ultimate cause? Funding. "Obama put out the latest 2015 budget for NIH—flat again. It's been $30 billion ever since I basically entered grad school," says Perlstein. "I was in college in the late '90s, when the NIH budget was doubling. So I remember someone telling me for the first time, 'They pay you to go to graduate school.'" The NIH itself recognizes that its own budget largely determines how many Ph.D. students in life sciences there are, because these students are supported by grants: training grants, fellowships, and research grants.

A doubling of the NIH budget from 1998 to 2003 created dramatic growth in the biomedical science field—positions, infrastructure, postdocs, and everything else. But that set many people up for a fall. As Science magazine reported in 2007, the doubling "provoked a massive expansion in biomedical research, and expectations of federal support surged to a level that could not be sustained when the budget stopped growing. The crash is hitting labs, careers, and the psyches of scientists with a vengeance." How did that affect postdocs? You can see as much in this NIH figure, showing that as the agency's budget doubled, the length of time spent as a postdoc decreased, but once the doubling ended, it shot up:
National Institutes of Health

That's right: The postdocalypse is partly the result of science funding policies put in place by our legislators, who love science until they don't any more, who double budgets and then slow or freeze them.

So what do the more than 80 percent of postdocs who leave academia do? Some get jobs in industry, with large pharmaceutical companies or engineering firms. Some get MBAs or law degrees and use their scientific training to carve out a niche in a different industry. Some teach. Some write. Some few remain unemployed.

Perlstein did something radically different—something gutsy and surprising that has garnered him recent profiles in the Wall Street Journal and Science Careers. He decided to break from tradition and forge a new path: build, fund, and run his own independent science lab. To become an "indie scientist." To in effect hack the scientific system, work within it yet outside of it, and support himself through crowdfunding, a compelling social-media presence, and, of course, good ideas.

He's not just building a biotech startup or monetizing some scientific finding. He is using alternative revenue sources to fund basic research, hearkening back to the 19th century, when citizen-scientists usually had family money, a rich patron or a day job.

Doing science outside of science these days is far from easy or simple. Just consider the fact that if you're not part of a university, it is very hard to get your hands on the research papers that are the lifeblood of knowledge exchange. "I'm part of the paywalled 99 percent, the masses who don't actually get access to all these great journals," says Perlstein.

Then there's the growing costs of technology, with most scientific endeavors relying on very expensive equipment. A university department might be able to purchase a multimillion-dollar MRI machine, for example. But it's a lot harder for an independent scientist to make that investment.

But Perstein has figured out a way to make it work. His independent research focuses on so-called "orphan diseases," which the FDA defines as conditions that afflict fewer than 200,000 people in the United States. The NIH estimates that there are more than 6,800 rare diseases, which in aggregate affect more than 25 million Americans. Perlstein's focus on orphan diseases satisfies his passion for basic science—giving him the opportunity to make long-lasting contributions to our understanding of our bodies—while also having a clear application that makes the work fundable. You might think that biotech and pharmaceutical companies would have little incentive to develop drugs for these diseases because the market is small compared to ailments than affect millions of people, like diabetes or Alzheimer's. But orphan diseases have other incentives for investors: premium drug pricing, protection from competition, and expedited development timelines.

And then, there are the rich patrons who want to see them cured. Perlstein now has to actively court them. Foundations or wealthy families with a stake in finding a rare-disease treatment are increasingly becoming important funders of research. Perhaps the best example is the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, which committed $75 million dollars to the development of an innovative new CF treatment approved in 2012.

"I want to take the best elements of academia, the best elements of industry, try to make a business model that is sustainable, and then push forwards toward a real scientific objective," says Perlsten. "I call it a rare disease moon shot."

To do his work, Perlstein raises money through crowdfunding sites like Experiment.com, and rents his own lab space in a San Francisco incubator called QB3, which offers the "biotech equivalent of garages: small spaces for entrepreneurs to lay the foundations for companies that may spearhead new industries." Organizations like QB3 are now partnering with major research universities to create innovation hubs. In these hubs, you can rent bench space or share costs of expensive equipment with other independent scientists or academics, without having to make multimillion-dollar investments yourself. This strategy reduces waste—not every lab needs an expensive MRI machine. If you can simply rent some time on a machine to meet your needs, science becomes much cheaper.

So is Perlstein an anomaly, or is he the new face of science? Maybe he'll succeed as an indie scientist, and maybe he won't. It's hard not to cheer for him. But at the same time, perhaps the most resounding lesson is to lament a system that is forcing some of today's best scientific minds out into the cold.

To listen to the full Inquiring Minds interview with Ethan Perlstein, you can stream below:

This episode of Inquiring Minds, a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas and best-selling author Chris Mooney, also features a story about the upcoming release of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report on global warming impacts, and a discussion about the difficult question of when screening for disease conditions is (and isn't) a good idea.

To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. We are also available on Stitcher and on Swell. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow and like us on Facebook. Inquiring Minds was also recently singled out as one of the "Best of 2013" on iTunes—you can learn more here.

How UCLA's Millionaire Doctor/public employee David Feinberg got $1.3 million amid tuition hikes, budget cuts and a recession

Dr. David Feinberg

[Maura Larkins comment: Both Dr. Feinberg and Chancellor Gene Block are psychiatry professors. A lawsuit has been filed against yet another professor of psychiatry at UCLA. Dr. Alexander Bystritsky is accused of causing the wrongful death of a woman by giving her dangerous medications in order to make her feel happy and to believe she was cured of her illness, causing her to give a large donation to UCLA.

What kind of ethics does Dr. David Feinberg have? What's he going to do with all this money? I'm guessing it's not all going to scholarships for students who can't pay tuition at UCLA.]


UCLA's Millionaire Doctor David Feinberg
How Feinberg got $1.3 million amid tuition hikes, budget cuts and a recession
By Beth Barrett
LA Weekly
Mar 31 2011

Last year, when Stanford Hospital & Clinics was considering poaching Dr. David Feinberg from UCLA, where he is the associate vice chancellor and CEO of its public hospital system, the university brass and the powerful UC Board of Regents decided to do whatever was required to keep their golden administrator.

Things were bad at UCLA when the feverish bid to retain Feinberg broke out. It had just been slammed with $60 million in academic program cuts by the deficit-riddled state of California, and faces another $96 million bite on July 1. In a series of recent hikes, the university raised average student tuition 40 percent from about $7,000 to more than $11,000.

More tuition hikes were coming, and the university owed its employees $21.5 billion in future pension payments that it had no clear-cut way to pay.

But the vast Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, a public nonprofit, had experienced a financially robust previous year under Feinberg, and the facility in 2009 enjoyed high patient-satisfaction rankings as usual. Despite California's stubborn recession, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block — like Feinberg, a psychiatry professor at the School of Medicine — decided to make his colleague a staggering offer: He would nearly double Feinberg's $739,695 base salary to $1.33 million.

That included a 22 percent pay raise of $160,300 and an annual "retention bonus" of $250,000 paid every year that Feinberg does not leave for another job. Block also decided to continue Feinberg's "incentive bonus," which had hit $210,739 in the previous fiscal year.

There was nothing else quite like Block's offer elsewhere in California's university medical schools. The next highest paid is UC San Francisco's CEO Mark Laret. San Francisco, like UCLA, is a top facility, ranked seventh in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, close behind No. 5 UCLA.

In 2010, Laret's $739,700 pay was reduced as a result of the systemwide pay cuts. But with an "incentive" bonus of $176,912 and a car allowance of $8,916, he earned $876,215. Now, suddenly Feinberg was in line to earn nearly half a million dollars more than Laret.

On June 30, Feinberg will begin getting his annual quarter-million-dollar bonus simply for not leaving for another job.

Feinberg's juicy pay package led to uncomfortable headlines for UCLA on Sept. 17, the day after the Board of Regents approved it.

Then, in late December, Feinberg earned UCLA another round of unwanted media attention. The San Francisco Chronicle obtained a private Dec. 9 letter in which Feinberg and 35 other executives in the UC system lashed out at the Board of Regents. The highly compensated group weren't demanding help for academic programs and students. They were threatening to sue the struggling California universities if the regents didn't boost the executives' long-standing $245,000 salary caps used to calculate their pensions.

The change would create a sizable pension boost, costing the universities $5.1 million per year — for just 36 government employees. In addition, the 36 executives insisted the new pension deal be retroactive to 2007, taking from the universities an additional bite of $51 million.

In the letter, Feinberg and the others wrote that it was "the University's legal, moral and ethical obligation" to hand over the pension boosts. They also threatened, "Failure to do so will likely result in a costly and unsuccessful legal confrontation," and emphasized that they were writing "URGENTLY."

The letter, which proved to be deeply embarrassing to UC officials and the regents, was widely assumed to have been leaked by a UC university system insider disgusted by the demands.

The demands from the 36 were a direct political challenge to UC President Mark Yudof, who had publicly opposed bigger pensions for university executives. The University of California system owes $21.6 billion in future pension payments to all its retirees — but it hasn't got the money, and doesn't know where it's going to get it. Yudof is pursuing fiscal reforms to raise the missing billions, including upping the retirement age for future employees from age 60 to 65 for maximum pension benefits — and, once again, raising student tuition and fees.

The leaked letter enraged students, critics of cushy government pensions and salaries and incoming Gov. Jerry Brown, who is a nonvoting member of the Board of Regents.

Brown opined in the Chronicle in December: "These executives seem very out of touch at a time when the state is contemplating billions of dollars in reductions that will affect people who are far less advantaged."

In early January, under a media spotlight, Block opposed the pension boosts, and the demand was not approved by the regents.

But three weeks later, without a formal vote, the regents — who include such notables as investment banker Richard C. Blum, husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and Sherry L. Lansing, former chair/CEO of Paramount Pictures — found a way to give Feinberg and other UC system medical center executives statewide a different costly reward: "incentive" bonuses totaling $2.6 million that had been deferred from 2009.

Feinberg topped the bonus recipient list, raking in $218,728.

The popular doctor now has critics aplenty. Students, facing further tuition hikes as Gov. Brown struggles with a massive deficit, are flabbergasted at the Wall Street–like disparity between how the UC system treats its highfliers versus its students.

Student Matt Margolis, president of the Bruin Democrats, says thousands of UC, California State University and community college students "have to take quarters off, drop classes, get kicked out of their housing." For UC leaders "to respond to the need to scale back by cutting the budget and raising tuition — I don't see how that sits well with the CEO of the medical center having his salary doubled...