TTU and UTC

The last couple of weeks I have given lectures at local universities, both about 100 miles away:   Tennessee Technological University and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. These colleges do perform research, but the weight of their activities lies closer to teaching. Both want to increase their research weight, though, so the question is how to do that best.

Tennessee Tech

TTU and UTC should use their two best assets  - their young enthusiastic faculty and their curious and bright students. These, and laptops, are all you need these days to perform first-class research. OK, some experimental equipment is useful too, but they have that of course.

I've always been of the opinion that research success is built from the grass roots upwards (this is why ORNL and UTK REALLY need to work together better to greatly increase the student participation in research at ORNL).  This means that the faculty need to integrate research into undergraduate curricula earlier than at present, and need to encourage materially faculty who are doing productive research. With a solid foundation of lively undergrads performing research under faculty supervision, TTU and UTC will quickly increase their research profiles, and everyone will benefit from it.

No space for today's young Einsteins?

In a recent opinion piece in the Guardian the excellent science writer Philip Ball wonders whether a young Einstein could survive today, given the need for young scientists to get grants and publish work of immediate high impact.   In fact, I  think it might  be easier  for him to flourish. However, maybe he would be less likely to think about physics in the first place.

I'm no expert in the history of science, but from what I read Einstein's first paper, on capillarity, was published as an undergraduate in 1900 (when he was 21) in the then prestigious journal Annalen der Physik. Now, this would be entirely possible today, and getting the work published as a sole author in a prestigious journal would certainly make admissions tutors for graduate school sit up and notice. As a result, Einstein probably would probably be admitted into graduate school in theoretical physics. Instead, for some reason back then he did not go to 'graduate school'. Perhaps this is because they didn't exist, as such? The idea of paying people after a degree without them having to teach perhaps hadn't started up?  So, instead, he had to do it the hard way, while working in a patent office, doing his PhD on the side. He was awarded it in 1905, the year he published  four groundbreaking papers. Now, lets snap back to 2016. Any young theorist with five single author papers in a reputable journal would certainly be offered a postdoctoral position in a leading institute, if not already a professorship. By 1908 the significance of his work was beginning to be appreciated, as it would have been today as well, and he was made a Lecturer.

So I think it was tougher for the young Einstein 110 years ago to do his physics than it would have been for him today. However, another valid question  is whether Western culture today  is as generally conducive to free-flowing creative scientific thought as was the culture in Germany and Switzerland in the 1900s. Einstein  wondered what free-fall really was, and what riding on  beam of light would be like. Has there been a general dumbing down of today's youth  and family life, and if so, does this mean that such questions might never even cross the minds of today's potential young Einsteins?

Patent Pending

Recent discussions we have had about intellectual property in inhibitor design highlight how artificial it all is.  One needs "composition of matter", it seems, i.e.,   a new molecule. One cannot patent a new use for an old molecule as easily - it seems to be not worth it for investors. One cannot patent a molecule that has been published. Etc etc.

One wonders, then, what patents are really for. Are they to give due financial reward for creative people who make new, useful things or processes?  If so,  a lot of people deserve the rewards.

Assume someone designs a drug using molecular dynamics.
Who should get the credit?
Here's a very partial list.

a) Isaac Newton, Erwin Schroedinger etc, who laid the foundations.
b) Everyone who contributed to the simulation methodology.
c) The computer manufacturers and sys admins etc.
d) The team who did the simulations.
e) The experimental team who tested the compounds that failed and those that succeeded.
f) Everyone in decades gone by who devised the experimental methods for e)
g) All the preclinical researchers who optimized the lead.
h) The clinical trial patients and doctors etc.
i) The drug company that makes and distributes the drug.
j) Everyone who taught everyone to do a)-j)
etc.

That's a whole lotta folks;  some dead, some alive. Those still alive should share the profits somehow. That would be ideal. Unworkable, surely, but ideal, I think.

Cheap drugs - yeaaahh!!

We hear a lot these days about the "greed of big pharma" and how it pushes up drug prices.
Well, rather than taking the easy way and demonizing companies here's an opinion from someone not particularly qualified to give one (me!) on what could be done..

1) A tax holiday for repatriating offshore cash stashes under the condition that the money all be spend to increase R&D spending. A Merck manager once told me they had $13B stashed offshore. Lets get it back. Then think of ways of discouraging companies from doing it again (lower corporation tax rates?).

2) Banning marketing of prescription drugs. Isn't prescription drug advertising tantamount to recognizing that MDs don't know what they're doing? They should be up to date on the best treatments based on the scientific literature, rather than being swayed by rep visits and clamoring patients. I know marketing works for drug companies, but for something so technical plain, dumb ads seem wrong.

3) Allowing insurance companies and government entities to negotiate the costs of drugs.  Without this in place you are preventing market forces from working. This is what happens in other countries and certainly reduces prices there. Also, while we're at it, the purchase of prescription drugs from other countries (e.g. Canada) should be legalized.

4) Government initiatives to discourage companies ploughing profits into share buybacks. Here I am on slightly wobbly ground, not knowing an awful lot about this aspect of corporate economics, but it seems to me that many companies  spend a large portion of their earnings in  buying up their own shares. They do it to artificially drive up the value of the remaining shares, increasing their value to shareholders. Indeed, in 2015 about a trillion dollars of US company earnings was spent in this way. Money spent in share buybacks is not being invested in the future of the company. Short-termism kills pharma R&D.

5) Increasing federal R&D spending on drug discovery. This, of course, removes some financial R&D burden from pharma, but is necessary to counteract the short-termism in the industry. It is not anti-market, because pharma companies have the choice of doing this research themselves or buying expensive licenses from government-funded institutions later on. Of course, as I'm one of those who believes in  not increasing the overall tax burden on the country, that federal R&D money would have to come from somewhere. Hmm...At least some of it would be regained in the future, though,  through cheaper Medicare and Medicaid drug costs  and the availability of more effective medicines with fewer side-effects and hospital readmissions, reducing overall health care costs.

Cheap drugs - wayhayyy!

Never mind the quality, feel the width.

Stuyvesant High School Logo

New York's specialized  Bronx and Stuyvesant high schools have an incredible history of excellence. For example, no fewer than 12 Nobel laureates have emerged from their ranks, as well as many Pulitzer prizewinners and business and political leaders. These kids are darned high achievers. However,  there appears to have been an initiative to 'dumb them down';  local Schools Superindendent Aderhold recently wrote a 16-page letter worrying that the constant pressure on students to achieve high grades risks leading to depression/suicides etc and suggesting, through some concrete measures, that the pedal should be taken off somewhat.  Mixed in with this are racial issues, such as  the observation that most of the students admitted to these elite schools are now Asian-American, the parents of whom seem to be firmly against reducing the pressure on students.

My first, knee-jerk  reaction to this story was my usual one - don't compromise the quality! I don't like to see excellence destroyed. If whites, hispanics, blacks etc are not making it into these schools then actions need to be taken for these kids at younger ages to increase their competitivity. However, one of the observations of Aderhold is something that I sympathize with: students and their parents appear to be obsessed with grades, at the expense of actually learning the material they are given. I know that when I was in high school I was also grade obsessed. You learn what is necessary to get the answer right on expected questions, rather than trying to really understand what the subject is about. Never mind the quality, feel the width. Hence, standardized testing systems  don't measure the depth of understanding a student has.

I don't have an easy answer for this one. What we had at Heidelberg University seemed the closest to perfection to me.  It was old-fashioned I think. Students were indeed placed under intense exam pressure, but with hour-long oral exams with two professors determining their degree grades. I found these oral exams perfect for testing understanding, because they were interactive. We profs could dig deeply into the comprehension of students. Personally, I would ask each student what their favorite topic was and try and get them to explain it to me. Even if I knew next-to-nothing about it myself I could tell if the student knew what they were talking about. And I personally wasn't that interested in how much a student knew, more in how deeply they conceptualized their favorite topic, and how they had thought about it. Of course, this kind of examining  is almost impossible to quantify and standardize. For that reason it has probably been dumped in Heidelberg by now.

[Oh, and yes, about the 'problem' of getting more non-Asians into these schools, the answer is to get those kids off their asses and working harder in middle school. Thought that was obvious?]

Pike O'Blisco

The Summit of Pike O'Blisco with Bowfell in the background.

Pike O'Blisco, in the English Lake District -  the first mountain I ever climbed. Alfred Wainwright wrote: "the man has no blood in his veins who does not respond eagerly to its fine-sounding, swashbuckling name".  My Dad took me and Nigel up it when we were 6. We were in thick fog, and saw nothing, and he tied us all together with a rope, though I don't know why really: probably just to keep us close to him. But I LOVED it, and a couple of days later we climbed Bowfell as well, this time in sunshine, and I was blown away (not literally of course; that would have been terrible). Thus was a lifelong hobby seeded......

Christmas Fun at UTK

Over the last few days the University of Tennessee at Knoxville has been dragged into a debate concerning a web post from the Office of Diversity and Inclusion trying to instruct us on how to hold festive parties at Christmas-time. The post tried to encourage inclusivity by suggesting the removal of Christmas themes from holiday parties, leading to calls for the resignation of the UTK Chancellor, Jimmy Cheek.

I'm from Europe, and so my views may be colored by my prior experience there. But here's my tuppence:

In Europe we would simply say, "What's the Fuss?" Europeans hold their Christmas Parties and everyone is invited, whatever their beliefs.  One reason this does not create a problem is that Christmas parties are not particularly religious, in themselves. For many, Christmas trees and Santa Claus have long been decoupled from religious belief, but allow us to celebrate in a traditional way.

Now, in my past I have been invited to plenty of events stemming from beliefs that have not formed part of my upbringing:  Hindu, Shinto, Muslim, Buddhist, Hopi etc. Each time I felt honored to be invited, and did not feel excluded,  fully partaking in any ceremonies that I was asked to. So why should non-Christians feel excluded when they are invited to a Christmas party? Exclusion comes from NOT being invited to an event because of what you believe, or, conversely, not attending one when you are invited. So, personally, while, of course, US campuses need to be 'inclusive' and 'diverse',  the recent web-site entry from the Office of Diversity seems ridiculous, supercilious arrogance to me. Leave our parties alone! Don't tell us how to have fun!

HOWEVER,  though,  some words for those local politicians who wish to remove the Chancellor for this, including, as I have read,  John J. Duncan, Dolores Gresham and John Bell.  It's sad that  your primary concern for UT appears to be fighting occasional manifestations of overboard political correctness. You clearly have no interest in judging Jimmy Cheek on his overall contribution to  UTK.  Instead of spending your time  trying to impose your own narrow views on what should be a citadel of free, creative thought, why don't you take an interest in helping us reach the Top 25 Public Universities, or take a lesson from your Governor, and do something to help those kids trapped in terrible poverty, on your door-steps in the Appalachians, get an educational lifeline?