Pressure and murder

First off, nothing really excuses murder. Dr. Bishop cannot, and should not, be excused. But some details are worth discussing anyways.

Postdocs have recently been discussed over at Ms. PhD and DrugMonkey quite a bit. In summary it seems, that established faculty tend to not see the problems with long postdocs, and current postdocs seethe at being underpaid and under respected.

A friend of mine, in his 4th or 5th year as a postdoc, was recently told that there is nothing else that he can do to improve his chances for a faculty job but to publish in Science or Nature. This was not for a job at Harvard or Standford or anywhere close. It came from people well towards the end of their career, who are sitting on the hiring committees and who have never ever published in Science or Nature.

Unrealistic expectations and pressure...

But postdoc is not the final rat race. Tenure is.

She had developed a new approach to treating Lou Gehrig’s disease, which a company was in the process of licensing for development. And she and her husband, a computer engineer with a biology degree, had invented an automated system for incubating cells that investors said would be a vast improvement over the petri dish. The system is to be marketed by Prodigy Biosystems, which raised $1.2 million in capital financing.

“From the way it looked to us, looking from the outside, she’s had success,” said Krishnan Chittur, a chemical engineering professor. “I’ve been here longer than she has, and she’s had more success raising money than I’ve had.”

Geez! I wish I were that successful. Making progress on a horrible disease, making progress in a technique, and getting more funding? No! That is not good enough anymore.

What Dr. Bishop did is deplorable and inexcusable. But are we truly surprised?

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As a foreign scientist, I found some other things disturbing. It was mentioned that the department chairman, who was shot is not American. I wonder what is the value of this information?

Should we sympathize more or less with him? He and others are dead. It is an equal tragedy whether the person killed is American or not. Or should we sympathize more with her? I mean this foreigner is taking the jobs of the hard working Americans?

Either option is in bad taste and inflammatory. And sad.