The Scientist Who Saved the World
But I was learning that succeeding at a research institution like Penn required skills that had little to do with science. You needed the ability to sell yourself and your work. You needed to attract funding. You needed the kind of interpersonal savvy that got you invited to speak at conferences and made people eager to mentor and support you. You ... See more
The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs
Jason Shen added
A quote from (Katalin Karikó, the co-inventor of the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines and 2023 Nobel Prize winner.)
The COVID vaccines, especially in the rapidity of their creation and testing, have been one of the greatest triumphs of modern science. And yet in some ways we seem little better off than we were in the Middle Ages, seeking medicines (including COVID antivirals) largely by trial and error, and having to hope that, if we’re infected, our god or blin
... See morePhilip Ball • How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology
watching her confidently walk the audience through her sleek slide show helped crystallize for me how she’d gotten this far: she was an amazing saleswoman. She never once stumbled or lost her train of thought. She wielded both engineering and laboratory lingo effortlessly and she showed seemingly heartfelt emotion when she spoke of sparing babies i
... See moreJohn Carreyrou • Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
Why had she never recruited a board member with even basic knowledge of blood science? And why hadn’t a single venture capital firm with expertise in health care put money into the company? For these observers, the story confirmed what they’d quietly suspected.
John Carreyrou • Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
sari and added
Let’s imagine that a radical life-extension startup succeeds at developing a product for our deeply flawed, often inaccessible healthcare market, and presumably protects the intellectual property for that product from diffusing into the wider world. What would that breakthrough mean for the rest of us?
Who Gets to Live Forever? A Conversation about Biotechno-solutionism with Tamara Kneese and Santiago Sanchez
She was the company’s most powerful marketing tool. Her story was intoxicating. Everyone wanted to believe in it, including the numerous young girls who were sending her letters and emails. It wasn’t a cynical calculus on his part: Patrick was one of her biggest believers. He had no knowledge of the shenanigans in the lab and didn’t pretend to unde
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