CEOs and Sports Coaches – Joining the Club

Being a CEO or a Professional Sports Coach (whichever sport you prefer) has gotta be the best gig going. What do these positions have in common, you ask? In most positions, including the execs and assistant coaches one notch down the totem pole, your hire-ability is based on past performance. You’re good at what you do and people decide to give you more responsibility, see if you can take it to the next level. If you’re a corporate executive, this means that you’ve come up with some new synergy that’s saving your company millions. If you’re an assistant coach in the NFL, it means you’ve got a defense hotter than an old lady’s hair on a Florida summer day – you make Peyton Manning look like Kyle Orton. At any level but the top, you work your butt off, hoping that one day you’ll get the winning ticket to a very exclusive club.

CEOs and Professional Sports Coaches, on the other hand, have no accountability at all. You can run your company into the ground and still get hired at another company – because of your “experience”. I don’t know about you, but as a shareholder I wouldn’t want someone with the experience of bankrupting a company at the helm. Or again, let’s take Professional Sports. Rod Marinelli, who led the Detroit Lions to the worst record in sports history, now has a position as an Assistant Head Coach with the Chicago Bears. What was Lovie Smith thinking? – “Hey, this guy is the worst of all time, we need him on our team.” Mark my words – Phillip Schoonover of Circuit City, Richard Fuld Jr of Lehman, and even James Cayne, the famous bridge-player of Bear Stearns, will all have new positions in a couple of years when the heat dies down.

Heck, let’s throw politics in here too. The political club is a family club. In our supposed meritocracy, how likely is that that the father and son Bushes were both the best candidates to run our country? Are they really that genetically superior? And now they’re talking about Jeb running – Canada here I come! Let’s assume Jeb is comparable with George. Why would we want to continue what was arguably one of the least successful presidencies in our history? Shouldn’t our economic collapse, endless war, and poor reputation abroad rule him out of the running? And what about Caroline Kennedy (who admittedly has left consideration for the New York Senatorial seat)? Just because Daddy was a decent politician doesn’t give her any skills. My Daddy was a mechanic and I probably couldn’t even change the battery in my car.

What does all this have to do with science? It’s all the same thing. Science is supposed to be objective and fair – you’re funded based on the quality of your ideas and published based on the merit of your work, but it works just like sports or business or politics. People get funding because they’ve had funding. They get published in high profile journals because they had a big name at an important university. Peer review isn’t double blind – reviewers know who they’re reviewing and make allowances for “famous” scientists that they wouldn’t make for the new assistant professor or brilliant postdoc. The average age of the first R01 grant for new investigators in 2007 was 42. These people are considered “young” investigators. I, for one, don’t consider 42 to be young. In mathematics, you’re past your prime at 25. Computer science entrepreneurs are in their teens and 20s. Scientists in their 20s and 30s have the passion and freedom to take risks, to make the truly great discoveries and not just pad their CVs. Imagine the biomedical breakthroughs that we’ve missed because the system is broken, because of the old-boys club. Who needs a malaria vaccine or a cure for childhood leukemia anyway?

So what does this mean for the standard schlub – Joe Stuck-in-a-Rut or Dr. Nancy I-Can’t-Get-A-Faculty-Position-Because-an-80-yr-old-Guy-is-Clinging-to-his-Lab-and-Hogging-All-the-Funding? How can we break into the upper echelon – become one of the deservedly maligned elite? Before he left the NIH, Elias Zerhouni changed the funding rules to favour first-time R01 applicants. It’s not a solution, but it’s a start. The system IS broken – our best and brightest are trapped in indentured servitude (postdocs) during what should be their most productive years. And I’m not even going to start on the below sub-standard pay these “hopes for the future” receive. (How can you attract the best talent if you pay an administrative assistant more straight out of college than you pay your 30-year-old Ivy League PhD postdoc? But I’ll save THAT for another time).

We have to change the culture of Science. Postdoctoral organizations (aka unions) are a start, but it’s hard to gain much bargaining power when by definition the position is a 2-5 year slot. Sure, postdocs are leaving academic science to go into industry, consulting, policy, editing (like me). But with the technological challenges the world is currently facing, we need MORE scientists, not less. If the Bush administration has taught me anything, it’s that we can’t rely on government to solve our problems. My dream is a series of independent institutes, not unlike academia, where young scientists can have the capital to fund their riskiest dreams. It’s not a practical plan, but we need somewhere to start fresh and leave the old culture behind. In order for things to change, we need funding from outside the government – always a dinosaur behind the times – funding that will pay commiserate with our specialized skills, reward creativity and not conservative small-scale “safe” experimental plans, and allow for decent quality of life.

Where will this money come from? – that’s where I fall flat. I’m not a financier. Industry is a prime target, but how do you do basic research with industrial backing? Philanthropic organizations could do it, but how do we convince people to donate money to such risky ventures? Of course, successes would inevitably pay for themselves (and the myriad failures that would likely result), but until then where would we get the money? Maybe from the CEOS and Professional Sports Coaches or others who are already in the club? Unfortunately, I have a lot of questions but very few answers, vision but no means to make it a reality. So I open the question to you, especially those who are outside the ivory tower. How can we fund young scientists, give them the drive and freedom to address the challenges we face today and in the future? How do we start a new club?