[HN Gopher] Philly scientist behind COVID vaccine tech was demot...
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Philly scientist behind COVID vaccine tech was demoted by UPenn
Author : apsec112
Score : 99 points
Date : 2021-01-03 18:14 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (billypenn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (billypenn.com)
| Duller-Finite wrote:
| A similar article was published in Wired about a month ago:
| https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mrna-coronavirus-vaccine-pfi...
| pjc50 wrote:
| Saving the world is one thing, but she failed at the most
| important metric: securing grant funding for her institution.
| Probably her impact factor was terrible too.
|
| /S
| api wrote:
| You get what you measure. We get publications.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| The follies of human organizations since time immemorial
| summed up in a single point.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| Indeed, never heard of her until a few months ago. How many
| followers has she?
| jonny_eh wrote:
| How many citations? Clearly it's those that count.
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| It sounds like she was not able to raise the money to continue
| her research. That's not really UPenn's fault. No one can know in
| advance which ideas are promising enough, so it isn't reasonable
| to blame them.
|
| This isn't a scandal or an embarrassment. If, after working for
| decades, no one is willing to fund you, it's kind of expected
| that they have to cut their losses at some point. She was
| apparently working on it for over 20 years! It turned out that
| all of the grant money and VC money didn't see the right
| risk/value potential in it, so they declined to provide their
| money, but BioNTech did and hired her as a VP. I suspect this
| ended much better for her than staying at Penn would have.
| justicezyx wrote:
| > It sounds like she was not able to raise the money to
| continue her research. That's not really UPenn's fault. No one
| can know in advance which ideas are promising enough, so it
| isn't reasonable to blame them.
|
| As one had wrote 2-3 grant proposal during graduate studies, my
| takeaway is that the system failed to give the really impactful
| ideas the right amount of resources.
|
| That's matching a 2-day-old submission [1] about peer-reviewed
| research papers are becoming boring, as another sign that the
| existing research management systems are not producing
| interesting results, even just from reading the papers, which
| presumably is already the most interesting thing can be
| produced from a research project.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25605156
| mannykannot wrote:
| An institution of the prestige UPenn aspires to is supposed to
| provide research leadership, and not just be a place for VCs to
| subcontract their work.
| ruined wrote:
| shouldn't it be the university administration's job to find
| funding and allocate it? sure nobody can know the future, but
| people in positions of power should at least understand the
| potential results and implications of the projects they decide
| to terminate or support. researchers themselves shouldn't have
| to waste time essentially paying rent to a parasitic
| bureaucracy.
| mattkrause wrote:
| Isn't it slightly embarrassing that we a) can't predict the
| impact of most research programs very well but
|
| b) make pretty drastic decisions based on them, and
|
| c) [for Penn specifically], never revisit those decisions.
|
| Her publication record from 2005 onwards is pretty solid:
| Immunity and Nature papers with a thousand citations each, an
| out-licensed patent, and a bunch of other papers too.
|
| It probably wouldn't kill anyone for UPenn to say "The
| value/success of her work wasn't obvious to our P&T committee
| at the time" or something vaguely apologetic.
| m0llusk wrote:
| This mRNA technology is amazing. One of the great hopes is that
| it may be possible to target specific cancers with great accuracy
| thereby saving many lives. Hopefully these vaccines are just a
| start.
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| I'm surprised there are few articles in the news about how they
| work, and why it's a big deal. One of the other vaccines
| developed in China uses a common adenovirus as a carrier for
| the SARS-COV-2 genetic material and that was why it had lower
| efficacy. The Oxford vaccine uses some less-common adenovirus,
| which is somewhat better, but mRNA lets you bypass using
| viruses as a vector altogether.
| kken wrote:
| This is actually quite a good background story on the mRNA COVID-
| Vaccines, that also explains Karikos role in more detail.
|
| https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-...
|
| WSJ also has a number of good articles:
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-pfizer-delivered-a-covid-va...
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-a-couples-quest-to-cure-can...
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-pfizer-partner-biontech-bec...
|
| What I found quite interesting was the latest news release from
| BioNtech where they thank all their partners. Some parts of the
| supply chain are only served by very small companies.
|
| https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-det...
| netsharc wrote:
| Curious that they mentioned their local pharmacy (Phoenix-
| Apotheke Mainz, on the same street as their office). I wonder
| what it supplied.
| joshuakelly wrote:
| As a few other commenters have mentioned, this is a story about
| how Kariko was sidelined early in her career. The Penn demotion
| occurred in 1991. She eventually left in 2013 when, despite
| publishing groundbreaking research in the mid 00s, she was never
| returned to a tenure-track position.
|
| Nonetheless an impressive story of conviction and perseverance.
| Penn has decades-old egg on its face, rather than months-old
| fresh egg.
| eastendguy wrote:
| 7 year old egg (but in hindsight good for the world). They
| pushed her out, so she went to BioNTech. There she helped to
| create the world's first Corona vaccine:
|
| https://biontech.de/sites/default/files/2019-08/20140202_Bio...
| lou1306 wrote:
| It's also a depressing tale for wannabe academics, however.
| mRNA vaccines are an impressive, groundbreaking development. Dr
| Kariko (and others) may get a Nobel for that. And yet, she was
| kicked off the tenure track because she _failed to secure VC
| investments_ , for chrissake.
| nyokodo wrote:
| If there is not an appropriate award that already exists then it
| should be created and then given to her and any other unsung
| heroes in this area. If no institution does it then it should be
| crowd funded and presented by a new foundation. I will donate!!
| signal11 wrote:
| There is some talk of a Nobel Prize in chemistry for Dr Katalin
| Kariko and her collaborator Dr Drew Weissman. From what I've
| heard, mRNA as a technique is quite an advance -- if true then
| they deserve all the accolades they get to make up for the
| years of fruitless, unappreciated research.
| vmception wrote:
| Researcher fails to make money for half a decade because they
| were working on something that they wouldn't figure out for an
| additional two decades.
|
| Okay...?
|
| If this still bothers you, please tell me what kind of
| organization would exist to support 25 years of false starts, and
| what needs to change to make that kind of organization exist.
| brokencode wrote:
| You realize that academic research can take years or decades to
| pay off right? Look at nuclear fusion research. Should we give
| up just because we are still decades away even after decades of
| research?
|
| I think this is a major problem in our society. We expect
| immediate profits off of research, but that limits us to
| research that is less bold and innovative. We should allow our
| brilliant scientists to follow their passions instead of
| following grants.
| vmception wrote:
| I understand that argument, and it is usually in the context
| of the folly of quarterly results in the private sector,
| which is a far cry from six years and twenty five years.
|
| Regardless, back to my question, what needs to change to
| support all the other researchers toiling away right now that
| won't gain any consensus or utility till the year 2050.
| AlexMoffat wrote:
| See lb504's answer.
| brokencode wrote:
| We need a mindset of doing research for its own sake rather
| than just as a way to profit. What profit could come of
| going to the moon? Yet we developed many technologies along
| the way.
|
| Realistically, the funding would probably need to come (and
| already does come) from the government. The government
| should be funding manned missions to Mars and investing
| much more in longshot technologies like nuclear fusion, to
| name a couple obvious ones.
| derstander wrote:
| My opinion is that this sort of long-term and/or high-risk
| research and development is precisely what universities and
| governments (and government grants) are for.
| vmception wrote:
| and what needs to change, for the researchers right now who
| won't have any useful milestone or breakthrough until the
| year 2050.
| lb504 wrote:
| > If this still bothers you, please tell me what kind of
| organization would exist to support 25 years of false starts,
| and what needs to change to make that kind of organization
| exist.
|
| A Federal Universal Basic Income along with a Single Payer
| Healthcare system would go a long way to supporting 25 years of
| false starts for projects where the primary initial investment
| is intellectual labor. Many science, engineering, and cultural
| projects fit this description.
| easytiger wrote:
| And yet, it was developed under free market principles and
| delivered to market with no one getting a UBI.
|
| UBI is a fantasy for children.
| krona wrote:
| You're implying she could've done all this research in her
| bedroom? I doubt it.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > If this still bothers you, please tell me what kind of
| organization would exist to support 25 years of false starts,
| and what needs to change to make that kind of organization
| exist.
|
| Academic research is supposed to be for such long-term
| research. Plenty of scientists research for entire life, just
| to explore dead ends.
|
| Also, WTF it is considered as OK to base scientific research
| decisions on profit generated within 5 years? (I know how it
| happens and why, but considering it as OK is ridiculous)
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| > what needs to change to make that kind of organization exist.
|
| Stop modelling universities, national education and research
| systems on profit-seeking businesses.
|
| Businesses already cover that niche; it's entirely unhelpful
| for universities to exist with a profit-making premise.
| rodgerd wrote:
| I would expect academia to absolutely be the place for long-
| term, speculative research to be at the heart of what they do.
| hollander wrote:
| > Penn officials declined to comment on their relationship with
| Kariko, previous or current. "We are unable to discuss specifics
| about faculty or staff employment matters," spokesperson Stephen
| Maccarthy told Billy Penn.
|
| Privacy is the such a convenient and perfect excuse for
| institutions to cover up their mess.
| trianglem wrote:
| Put away your pitchfork, this demotion was in the 90s
| p_l wrote:
| And the demotion was for focusing on the less and less
| popular mRNA with idea of using it for vaccines, instead of
| something that would bring grant funding.
|
| She was demoted precisely for doing what led to the
| techniques used by Biontech and Moderna.
| varjag wrote:
| That mostly means we could have mRNA vaccines a decade
| earlier.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| perhaps, or maybe it means we would have mRNA vaccines
| decades later.
| [deleted]
| asciident wrote:
| What would you have them do? You can't have privacy only for
| things you want privacy for, and transparency for things you
| don't want privacy for.
| Shared404 wrote:
| I would argue for institutional transparency, tempered by
| individual privacy.
|
| For example, in this situation UPenn is not sharing the
| information out of "Privacy concerns". These could be
| alleviated by the scientist in question saying that they are
| free to share information about that time -- leaving no
| reason to continue hiding the information except for
| embarrassment.
| nerdbaggy wrote:
| While the title of this article is accurate it's deceiving. She
| was demoted sometime in the 1980-1990s. The article even says she
| stopped working for the school in 2013 and went to work for a
| pharma firm. The article even says she went pack to UPenn this
| year to get her vaccine.
| signal11 wrote:
| Not just any pharma firm, she joined BioNTech, which created
| the Pfizer vaccine.
| foepys wrote:
| Why is it always called "the Pfizer vaccine" when it's
| clearly a joint operation between Biontech and Pfizer with
| Biontech being the inventor of the vaccine and Pfizer being
| the pharma giant that is able to help with resources and
| producing it at scale?
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Easier to say. Just like "Oxford" vaccine instead of
| "Astrazeneca/Oxford".
| the-dude wrote:
| GNU/Linux please.
| rantwasp wrote:
| this escalated quickly
| foepys wrote:
| But in this case it's the BioNTech vaccine then.
| rsynnott wrote:
| That's essentially the opposite situation, though.
| Presumably Oxford has better PR people than BioNTech. It
| also has the great advantage of being easier to spell.
| notacoward wrote:
| Because Pfizer has a marketing department many times bigger
| than all of BioNTech.
| easytiger wrote:
| > Why is it always called "the Pfizer vaccine"
|
| False supposition, in most cases in my reading it is called
| Pfizer/BioNTech in reference
| jonas21 wrote:
| It's also misleading in other ways (perhaps unintentionally).
| For example:
|
| > _After six years, her bosses at Penn were reportedly so
| frustrated by the lack of momentum that they cut her salary and
| demoted her._
|
| Actually, she was denied tenure. At most universities, going up
| for tenure after 6 years is just part of the process, and it's
| fairly common for people to be denied. It's not like they
| singled her out.
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