Managing new discoveries

Managing new discoveries.

One major disconnect between new ideas discovered by university scientists and their translation into drug discovery projects is the paucity of data characterizing the new discovery.   As discussed in my last (first!) blog, the lack
of information about reproducibility is a huge problem for anyone needing to prioritize new ideas for follow up.

My understanding of the early days of scientific research is that it was generally carried out by people with independent means who funded their own lab.  These gentlepeople scientists often hired a person to manage the daily research operations of the lab.  And often this lab research manager was to become the next shining light in scientific research.   This type of manager position could be one solution to our present problem of substantiating new discoveries.  However, very few labs today have the luxury of such a hands-on research manager.  Many labs are mish-mashes of siloed graduate students and postdocs scaring up enough supplies to run their experiments, and hoping the ‘senior postdoc’ (if there is one) has the time and inclination to help them get up and running.  Finding the lab’s leader requires scheduling meetings even just to talk; only rarely to actually help learning techniques.

Postdocs try their hands at a number of different techniques – funding agencies don’t favor one-technique wonders –

and publish a series of papers giving them enough material for a good interview presentation.  They are then thrown into an assistant professor position for which they generally aren’t ready.  So, I propose that instead of sending promising postdocs out to sink or swim, let’s reinstate high status to the concept of assistant research professor.  Larger labs may even have more than one to provide skill and experience with disparate techniques within the lab.  After some time as a successful postdoc and promising researcher, these people would remain in their present labs for say, up to six years (the time generally given to new assistant professors to obtain tenure or move on).  During this time they would continue to carry out their own research program without being fettered to the faculty committees and such that can overwhelm a new assistant professor.  They would also guide/manage grad students and postdocs, including helping them learn techniques from the lab manager.  The lab manager would work closely with the lab chief to write funding grants for the lab and their own projects – RO1’s etc., not postdoc fellowships.  They would learn how to manage obtaining supplies for the lab.  And, for me and my drug discovery needs, they would assign newer grad students and undergraduates to learn a technique, e.g. prepulse inhibition, running it until they obtained consistent results and consistent effects of standard pharmacological agents, and then (and only then) seek to reproduce the novel findings of the lab manager and other postdocs and graduate students.  The lab manager would also need to lecture for some courses in order to have that experience, but also as a set of lectures they could use to teach a course once in their own position.

This structure allows for clean transfer of and consistency in techniques in the laboratory, ensures training and proper use of lab devices, ensures reproducibility of new findings, and gives the lab manager the training and experience necessary to jump into setting up and running their own lab.  It also ensures smooth, continued research progress for the lab chief.  Brilliant scientists are too often called or lured away to administrative positions leaving their labs to languish.  With
their additional experience and skills, lab managers could move straight into (provisional) associate professorships – maybe a one-year probation on tenure to ensure that they continue their high level of activity.