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A comment on Gene Therapy Makes Near-Blind Patients See by Strengthening Neural Connections. Parent comment

Re:Gene Therapy Makes Near-Blind Patients See by Strengtheni... by dekhn on Tuesday August 11, 2015 @10:24PM (#10045660)
I used to be a postdoc at berkeley and I've seen older professors exited from the university to make room for younger ones- even though they were extremely good teachers.

You can't make the same amount of money just teaching classes- professors have to bring in money to pay their summer salaries.

Note, also, that the general trend in universities has been to move away from full professorships- while the tenure program is great, it reduces the freedom of the administration when it comes to dealing with low performers (I'm not making a value judgement, just an observation).

It don't know what it means for biology to be less mathematically difficult (I'm a biophysicist by training and I assure you the math is pretty hard, especially when you get into grad-level quantum chemistry).

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Re:Gene Therapy Makes Near-Blind Patients See by Strengtheni... by frozenport on Wednesday August 12, 2015 @05:06PM (#10050615)
>>It don't know what it means for biology to be less mathematically difficult

It means that wet lab biology can be learned after a few years of work, making professors less valuable as a source of knowledge.

>>grad-level quantum chemistry I would be suprised if the guys running the elisa have more than second semester calculus. Certainly not a requirement for undergrads at our school.

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Re:Gene Therapy Makes Near-Blind Patients See by Strengtheni... by dekhn on Wednesday August 12, 2015 @07:11PM (#10051367)
You're talking about technical work, not biology. The same applies to any number of other domains. Sounds to me like you just have a chip on your shoulder.
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Re:Gene Therapy Makes Near-Blind Patients See by Strengtheni... by frozenport on Wednesday August 12, 2015 @11:55PM (#10052176)
>>You're talking about technical work, not biology.

Well, people get PhD for it. Tell them its not biology :-)

>>just have a chip on your shoulder

Yeah, I blame the academic system

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Re:Gene Therapy Makes Near-Blind Patients See by Strengtheni... by dekhn on Thursday August 13, 2015 @08:12AM (#10053525)
Nobody gets a PhD for doing lab work. People get PhDs for publishing papers and they do lab work because there isn't enough grant money or capable techs for doing really hard experiments.
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