For junior faculty members and staff, hiring other researchers is an important way to boost career success. But without management training, it’s a guessing game.
For young scientists, hiring the first postdoc or lab tech is critical but daunting. In an article entitled “Ready, Set, Hire” in this week’s edition of Nature, I explore some of the issues around hiring, proven ways to deal with them, strategies to manage a research team. There are also links to free training in scientific management.
I recently had the opportunity to interview Frankie Trull, a long time animal welfarist and President of the Foundation for Biomedical Research. The interview appears in the February 2008 edition of Nature Medicine.
Ms. Trull explained to me the difference between animal rights and animal welfare: Animal rights activists tend to think that no animals should be used in scientific experiments; whereas, animal welfare activists tend to think that there is a role for animals in science, but that those animals should be treated humanely and used only when absolutely necessary.
WIRED Magazine also interviewed Frankie Trull in May 2007. Here is a link to that interview: “Frankie Trull”.
An opposing view is expressed at www.awionline.org.
Recently, I had the opportunity to talk with Mark Hodosh about the $10 million Archon X Prize in Genomics. The interview is published in the January 2008 issue of Nature Medicine. Ten million bucks is a lot of cash, and I wondered why award so much to speedy gene sequencers.
Apparently, the major technical breakthrough needed to make personalized medicine a reality is what is at stake. Personalized medicine means a fundamental shift in the way people are treated. Instead of reacting to symptoms and diseases with drugs and procedures, doctors will be able prevent disease altogether. Think of it: proscriptive not prescriptive medicine. That’s like knowing your car will break down before it does because a warning light goes off.
Compared to how many billions of dollars prescriptive medicine costs us each year, 10 million to get us a closer to personalized medicine seems like a bargain.
Local knowledge about the Hawaiian Islands
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