• Log in with Facebook Log in with Twitter Log In with Google      Sign In    
  • Create Account
  LongeCity
              Advocacy & Research for Unlimited Lifespans

Photo

For profit vs. academic


  • Please log in to reply
3 replies to this topic

#1 John Schloendorn

  • Guest, Advisor, Guardian
  • 2,542 posts
  • 157
  • Location:Mountain View, CA

Posted 05 April 2005 - 11:47 PM


Should an individual immortalist researcher today strife for an academic career or try to get involved in big buisness? The biggest drawback I see for the academia is that an individual researcher cannot make all that much of a difference. The most you can hope for is the position of a group leader, with more or less direct control of at most a few postdocs and a handful of phd students, and even that eats time. Since we are not many at all, the individual almost has to make a bigger difference than that. I can see the power to make a sufficiently big difference only come from for-profit life-extension business. What do you think?

#2

  • Lurker
  • 1

Posted 06 April 2005 - 12:06 AM

"Big business" does provide greater lateral span but the constraint there is that ROI becomes paramount therefore there is more pressure to come up with results in a shorter period of time and when results are not consistent with the economic objectives of the company then one's career is in danger. Irrespective, of whether one is operating from an academic or private enterprise environment, the astute principal investigator would carefully choose lines of investigation whose research objectives and data can be lent to more than one area. Additionally, most labs are not operating 24/7 and have the capacity to undertake additional investigations provided human resources are available.

#3 John Schloendorn

  • Topic Starter
  • Guest, Advisor, Guardian
  • 2,542 posts
  • 157
  • Location:Mountain View, CA

Posted 06 April 2005 - 07:13 AM

So let's break this down into a number of objectives...

Power - Only business can grow indefinitely. In how far an academic position can confer sufficient power to make a substantial contribution towards the escape velocity vector is hard to assess. In the theoretic area, Aubrey does an amazing job to demonstrate this level of power, but as far as experimental R+D is concerned, such a figure has yet to emerge.

Focus - Both academia and business have other goals than getting us to escape velocity. Money is to businessmen what splashy publications are to academic staff. Businesses simply shut down which is really an argument from the risk category, but I guess they can also get stuck with developing stuff that is only vaguely related to life-extension for profit reasons. Academic projects, for example cell replacement interventions, often suffer from lack of long-term follow-ups because of the need to maintain a high output rate of publishable data. I imagine it is an exceedingly difficult strategic feat to both keep the data versatile, as you suggested, Prometheus, and keep a decisive focus on escape velocity in either occupation.
In addition, I suppose, many academic people's focus suffers from teaching and grandwriting, while a CSO's focus could suffer from the need to follow the dynamics of the contemporary market.

Risk - Yes, the academic career is both easier and safer. It requires almost active resistance not to be drawn into it. If it is necessary to go the high risk, high return for-profit road, in order to get any chance to produce the effect we all desire, then that has to be done. A career, or indeed (put any material good here) is well worth risking if it plausibly increases our chances to keep up with escape velocity.

Skill - I guess starting a business requires more of the ability to be a "shark", which can be very hard to learn if it's not inborn altogether.

Edited by John Schloendorn, 06 April 2005 - 07:31 AM.


sponsored ad

  • Advert

#4

  • Lurker
  • 1

Posted 06 April 2005 - 11:58 AM

Skill - I guess starting a business requires more of the ability to be a "shark", which can be very hard to learn if it's not inborn altogether.


Not so much a shark as a blend of strong people skills, a thick skin and persistence of vision. Academics tend to lack the people skills and are unable to deal with the sort of stresses that entrepreneurial activities typically demand. There have been anecdotal correlations between psychopathic and entrepreneurial personality elements, however. ;)

In comparison, once a doctorate is obtained, an academic career is -like you said - effortless. I cannot think of a less stressful occupation.




1 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 1 guests, 0 anonymous users