Part the First: How Not to Study a Disease – Update. We have covered the Amyloid Cascade Hypothesis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) here previously. Sylvain Lesné, who altered images in a now retracted paper on AD, has resigned his tenured faculty position at the University of Minnesota. Charles Piller, who wrote the long article in Science that led to this inevitable final act, has now published Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s. The former Professor Lesné engaged in scientific fraud and he will now find other things to occupy his time. That is a personal tragedy, entirely self-inflicted.
As amply demonstrated by Karl Herrup, it is true that the ACH has not been productive. And its champions have been arrogant. The opportunity costs have probably been large, and they may represent an unknown tragedy. But in my quick read of the book, I do think Piller overeggs the pudding a bit. There has been much good and important research on AD, even from the time of Dr. Alzheimer. The entire field is not corrupt. The situation can be recovered, but only if American biomedical research is resilient enough to weather the current storm that began on January 20th.
Part the Second: What’s New with the Pandemic? Contrary to current conventional unwisdom, vaccines are unlikely to be the answer to COVID-19. That leaves us with other approaches. One or more of them will work, but our biomedical science must get better, as in a current paper that describes a very promising “Antiviral covalent ACE2 vesicle spray.” This work is based on extracellular vesicles (EVs), which are relatively new to biology – we should always remember that as our sphere of knowledge grows, so does the boundary of what we do not know. Those who predict the end of science (with the inimitable Sabine Hossenfelder to the rescue) are no more prescient than those who predict the end of history. ACE2 is the binding protein that SARS-CoV-2 latches onto in its first step for entering its target cell. In this research, scientists developed nanovesicles that bind to the virus irreversibly and prevent it from infecting cells. There is a lot of work left to do, but this is clearly the right approach to a respiratory virus that cannot, by all previous research, be completely tamed by a vaccine. Very technical but paper is well done, summarized in Figure 1.
The FSY-ACE2-NV acts essentially as a circulating suicide sponge: Once the virus binds to the sponge it has reached its terminal destination. This sponge is not dependent on the SARS-CoV-2 variant. It is easy to imagine an effective nasal spray to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission and to treat the disease. Another Project Warp Speed, please! This time on an intervention that has legs. And no, it is not an accident this research was done in Beijing and Guangzhou. Young Americans who want to be scientists should skip French, Spanish, and German and learn Mandarin? See below.
And yes, masks still work! From the outstanding scientists who know, but have been scorned when not ignored. A guide for the perplexed:
Remember: Do not be bashful about keeping away from large indoor gatherings and wearing masks when necessary! Last month seven coworkers in my office of eighteen (39%) had COVID-19, most for the second or third time. Other respiratory viruses have not let up since October. A close colleague and friend died late last year of an apparent heart attack after a two-year battle with long Covid. She told me on more than one occasion that COVID would kill her. Alas, she was a veterinarian was right about everything.
Part the Third: What’s Up with American Science? This is really too depressing for me to ponder at the moment, but working staff and scientists at CDC, NIH, NSF, USDA, NFS, NPS, NOAA, and FDA are on the way out, apparently, whatever the courts may eventually decide. I do know from talking to friendly acquaintances that morale is shot, which is probably a main point of this episode of “Move Fast and Break Things” brought to you by The Oligarchy. Will morale return? Maybe. But trust is another matter. What the present Administration does not understand is that most of these people are pursuing a calling. But vocation has no place under the Neoliberal Dispensation, which is all about building your personal brand, faux gold-plated preferred in the current political climate , which is all about building your personal brand, faux gold-plated preferred in the current political climate.
Graduate programs are on hold across the country, and many are refusing to make formal offers after verbal assurances have been given to candidates in a very competitive market for the best applicants. This is potentially catastrophic. Once the pipeline is broken, it will be difficult to repair. These future graduate students have been working for years to get to this point. Preparation for graduate school in the sciences is not unlike preparation for medical school. No one gets into this kind of graduate program as an afterthought…“Hmm, college has been fun but what will I do now? I know, I’ll go to graduate school!”
There are prerequisites! For a biomedical sciences program at a leading research institution, these requirements include advanced courses in math, computer science, chemistry, physics, and biology. And just as important, experience! No leading graduate program accepts students who have not put in significant time in the lab, with results. Particular results do not matter). The test is whether the applicant can withstand the tedium while maintaining the attention to detail that scientific research requires. A biomedical scientist can work for months to complete one experiment. And every one of us has gotten to the moment of truth and been afraid to actually look at the result. If you can’t stand the disappointment, stay out of the lab! But when the result is positive, the high can last for the next six months. It is was a strange but rewarding life.
Which makes this particularly galling: Cancellation of NIH summer internships disrupts ‘vital’ training program for U.S. scientists. This is where thousands of American students have learned how to “do science” for as long as I can remember. And I got my first research job when Gerald Ford was President. Now, Satchel Bell of Colorado College says “the uncertainty is making him consider career options other than the M.D.-Ph.D. path he had been planning on. ‘With less money and less ways to get into the field, I’m thinking more industry, maybe pharmaceuticals…My priorities are shifting.’” This is exactly what we do not need, one of our future scientists tweaking the sixth generation of GLP-1 receptor agonists to extend the previous patent. Satchel Bell is the perfect applicant for this program. He attends an excellent liberal arts college, which means he will have research opportunities but probably not the kind that test one’s stamina and commitment for the long term.
In other news, according to a colleague who sits on an NIH study section (grant review panel) their meeting has not been rescheduled, and the knock-on effects will be devastating as grant applications and renewals are paused. Few academic institutions have the wherewithal and probably none of them has the desire to make up the difference. Graduate students and postdocs live from paycheck to the week before the next paycheck. This is why basic scientists feel so rich when they finally get a stable job: They can eat something other than ramen noodles on the 28th of the month if they want to. However, some do seem to get addicted to ramen just as polar explorers got to the point that they continued to eat pemmican even after returning to “civilization.”
Part the Fourth: Ecologists Doing Science and Having Fun. Birds documenting the Anthropocene: Stratigraphy of plastic in urban bird nests:
The amount of plastics produced annually continues to grow. Of all the plastics ever produced, 79% is still with us, as they remain in landfills or in the natural environment (Geyer et al., 2017). The disruption driven by our collective human activities on Earth may result in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene (Crutzen &Stoermer, 2021). This contemporary period in the geological history of planet Earth is defined by the impact humans have on our natural world and is already a firmly established term in environmental sciences. (Single use) plastic may be used as a global marker for the Anthropocene, which allows plastic items to be used as “index fossils” to date with accuracy sediment layers within the Anthropocene epoch (Corcoran et al., 2017)…
Indeed! The following figure is telling, about the breeding habits and ingenuity of the common coot and our capacity for defiling the Earth.
In the current political climate, this research undoubtedly will be considered frivolous, but urban ecology will become increasingly important in the coming Inconvenient Apocalypse. Maybe these avian architects can teach us something.
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If producing scholars is a central mission of universities, I wonder if there is at least some room to repurpose spending away from, say, administration to fund PhD programs. To mitigate some of the impact of lost public funding. Varies by institution I imagine.
I agree with the intention but worry how to implement it properly given “how things have always been done”.
Quite often you must propose a PhD title/area that passes some committee of insiders. Then get money to fund yourself. Some slightly better systems (like the UK MRC c1998) offered full funding of fees plus stipend (although stingy for me as non clinically trained compared to those who were) and gave the applicant some leeway in deciding their exact topic. The “general area” was predetermined but you could exercise a fair amount of leeway.
I think the MRC, although far from perfect, did have some insights as to how to promote genuinely original work, whilst staying within boundaries. Shame it all got dismantled 2007-2009 when new Labour really got into its stride.
Interestingly, universities being plagued with overweight and underutilized administrative bureaucracies is a relatively new thing Here’s an old Guardian article The irresistible rise of academic bureaucracy.
The Byzantine funding schemes employed in the course of research that you touch on could use some streamlining. In theory, an effective administration class should handle this.
I’m all for the repurposing idea.
There’s a lot of factors at play in college administration – expanding regulatory requirements, social service burdens, the prestige arms race to capture applicants, the grant and donor solicitation cycle. In my experience it’s ultimately rooted in the tautology of administration – administration exists and grows to justify itself. They will not repurpose spending to anything other than themselves (except when forced by circumstance), because they’re the ones bringing that money in in the first place.
If those PhD programs grow, it will only be to benefit the private interests of the industry they’re attached to. Broadly I think we’ll see a collapse and consolidation of smaller institutions and public schools. Uncertain federal funding, politicized and shrinking state funding, continued saturation of the private job market devaluing degrees and shrinking the applicant pool, all these factors are only going to get worse not better.
Not sure how much room there could be to divert administrative costs to research funding. Many of the administrative duties are mandated. To name some; Biosafety officer, radiation safety officer, bioethics officer. There could also be IRB and/or IACUC requirements along with the associate training and record keeping.
Speaking of lost public funding, Columbia University may have had $400 million (or possible more) in grants and contracts cut by Trump administration:
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/03/07/us/trump-news-crypto
A lot of the administrative bloat is a consequence of fraud prevention efforts. Whenever the federal government gives a dollar they have exacting standards for accounting of those dollars, managing them, regular reports, etc. It creates an overhead for researchers that requires administrative help.
I personally am pretty good at writing grants. But I do need help from administrators with creating the very pedantic budgets, or the fact every single agency requires a specific format for CVs, etc.
The solutions are not going to be as easy as people think.
Yes, these DOGE-cretins seem not to care that they’re destroying the last vestiges of career as a calling, not a mercenary 2 year gig, followed by either layoffs or a move up the ladder.
Even coding as a career is getting tougher, with Scam Altman and his ilk peddling “Agentic AI” to replace software developers. It’s all a load of crap, but who knows how many corporations drink the koolaid from the firehose.
Yes. I had the privilege to work with scientists from USGS and NOAA (and it was a privilege–these were the smartest people I have ever met). I recall one computer modeler who could have been a multi-millionaire if he’d gone to Wall St. instead of Woods Hole, but he really loved his job. And I recall a forester from the US Forest Service talking about how painful it was to see a Ponderosa Pine that had been ringed by a beaver (the beaver had eaten the cambium around the tree, thereby condemning the tree to death). The federal government gave these people a chance to pursue their passion and get a living wage. Many were happy with that.
Piller, in his new book, talks about what he labels as the scientific underworld of deceit and fraud. In the specific field of “scientific” Alzheimer’s research, Piller documents the “…100s of important Alzheimer’s research papers based on false data.”
But KLG states that the entire field is not corrupt and the situation can be recovered. What makes you so sure? Is deceit, fraud, and the creation of false data as common among symbolic professionals as among many bankers and billionaires?
Is this relatively new (last 100 years) elite of academics, scientists, consultants, lawyers, journalists, etc. as corrupt as the old-line elites associated with traditional capitalism?
Are both the super elites and the symbolic elites brothers and sisters under the skin? Do both groupings carry weight far outside their respective realms of supposed expertise? Are both tribes desperately searching for a legitimacy that is no longer attainable?
«Are both tribes desperately searching for a legitimacy that is no longer attainable?«
As scientifically verified reality becomes more complex, certainty enters short supply [Heisenberg, et al.]. The incentives for
fabricationpersuasion/salesmanship are enhanced.It’s the Art of the Deal.
Interesting that the infestation by the administrative class correlates.
Yea, uncertainty spellls opportunity for administrators.
It is useful to consider the prevalence of research misconduct. This study is a useful starting point, it seems to me. It discusses the prevalence of outright fraud and questionable research practices based on a survey conducted in the Netherlands. This is a similar article. Unfortunately, the abstract does not specify any geographic location. While these findings are relatively low, they are also an increase compared to previous levels.
It might be splitting hairs, but a field needs to only include one non-corrupt researcher to be ‘not-entirely corrupt.’ Corruption can take various forms though. Outright fraud and falsification of data is one example, but so are citation circles and similar practices. Both articles discuss both self-reported and observed misconduct.
The use of quantifiable metrics by administrators (impact factor, etc.) only adds to the problem as researchers are fully capable of gaming the system to their advantage. Virtually nobody wins a Nobel Prize or anything similar to that with the publication of negative findings, nor are most researchers rewarded in any meaningful material sense for trying to duplicate results. KLG has addressed this before.
Both ‘tribes’ may be looking for ‘legitimacy’ that would be undermined by such practices, but it takes a long time to find and document misconduct, and the prestige gain from publishing a striking finding takes a long time to wear down – about as long as it takes to uncover such misconduct.
Also, thanks to KLG for these discussions.
Gulag, one way of looking at this is seen in this retraction note. The wheels turned slowly but they did turn. The same slow thing happened with the MMR-Autism paper published by Andrew Wakefield in The Lancet. The original Lesné et al. paper from 2006 on A-beta*56 has been cited 1,227 times other than in the Retraction Note. It is safe to say that in the future it will be cited only to note it has been retracted because figures were manipulated. I get the impression that people want to say that all 1,227 of these papers are fraudulent. This kind of detrimental reliance is not fraud. Yes, much of the AD literature is a mess, but that is because of the epistemic closure caused by the Amyloid Cascade Hypothesis (ACH). Next Coffee Break may include a recent paper using a novel experimental model that apparently supports the ACH. I have not had time to read it, but fair is fair and it looks fascinating.
Scientists are people. Some people are dishonest about their work. Therefore some published scientific research will be dishonest. But incentives have been skewed for nearly 50 years, since the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. This has been covered here before multiple times and will be again soon. The other problem is the business of scientific publication in the era of open access pay-to-publish-anything, a hall of mirrors where honest peer review exists only at the far margin represented by some of the first open access journals that were founded before Gresham’s Law asserted itself in yet another area (still caveat emptor!). I might be harping on this again, but as of today there are 460,500 entries in PubMed in the past five years using “Covid” (caseindependent) as the query. This is not legitimately possible. And what it does is make the field incomprehensible.
Personally and professionally, I do not miss that rat race. But I do plan to rejoin at the first good opportunity, albeit at the far margin of evolutionary cell biology. No, NSF would not fund it, but in my case AlphaFold and better phylogenomic tools have opened the field to anyone who has a computer and willingness to think a little bit beyond the box.
Thanks, KLG.
Really appreciate the info.
The research paper describing what is new with the pandemic is indeed very technical, perhaps to the detriment of its ability to communicate. If I understood the new nasal spray and inhalant the paper describes, it sounds to me like the kind of antiviral approach needed to counter the new methods of viral attack. Existing mammalian immune systems cannot evolve as rapidly as attacking viruses. Vaccines depend too much on the capabilities of existing immune systems. Disease control using the approaches of this paper show how human invention can supplement the capabilities of immune systems, and I believe this approach and its variants more broadly considered might apply to designing new agents besides just nanovesicles.
I am not familiar with the ways of disease causing fungi. I am guessing they are as tricky as the Corona viruses. I hope new approaches to diseases caused by fungi might be developed before such diseases proliferate in the future’s warmer climate. And it would be very nice if similar unconventional preventive treatments might be developed for plant life. I fear plants may be more susceptible to new diseases that will evolve in the near future. The fate of Dutch Elms offers fair warning. The many blights and rusts afflicting soybeans, tomatoes, potatoes, and other food plants seem poised to become much more concerning. Crop yields are already threatened by the chaotic weather.
An interesting concept to provide a non-cellular ACE2 target that will covalent link to SARS-CoV2 rendering it incapable of infecting cells of the respiratory tract.
A long way from human use as a daily preventative. A look at the methods of production makes me wonder how it would be scaled up for mass production. Can’t access the paper now but if I recall the daily dose in mice was 100 micrograms, for humans it must be significantly more. Seems to be a fairly expensive method. So could anyone afford daily use ?
As it stands now, yes there is a very long way to go. Incremental science? Yes, all biology is incremental. But the idea of a benign nasal spray that sequesters infectious virus is promising, especially compared to what we have had so far. Stop the virus at its first contact. Other nasal potions seem to work, but they do so non-specifically. This concept along with an intranasal vaccine that is not “too” variant-specific could stop the pandemic.
First, thank you for the science-based coffee break, a great idea. I look forward to next week’s.
Second, thanks for highlighting this concept article. I agree with you it could be promising.
My initial reaction was that given scale-up costs of methodology combined with the daily dose (based on the mouse dose would be milligrams) the cost could be prohibitive.
Do you think governments would again use a warp speed program in support? I am not certain the US government would, given that some in the administration may not even believe that there is or was a pandemic, not to mention the ongoing science budget cuts.
“Do you think governments would again use a warp speed program in support?” Short answer in the current political climate: No. In the longer term, certainly not until money is removed from political campaigns and replaced by public funding in which, as a condition of their continued licensing, political ads are free but limited to two per primetime evening to the campaigns of anyone polling at 3% and above. I remember reading, probably in William Manchester’s very readable hagiography of Churchill, that a rich American offered to help fund one of Churchill’s general election campaigns. The American could not understand it didn’t work that way in the UK.
Do we have a longer term? Good question, that. I’m not sure we can survive the second recrudescence of fulminate Trump Derangement Syndrome. That being said, he has learned how to play this game and it shows. The Resistance? They continue to bring Cub Scout knives to a gunfight, because all they really care about is their status on Capitol Hill and K Street. (I wonder, do Cub Scout knives even exist anymore? I was proud to get my first in the 3rd grade and learn how to use it safely. We even carried them to school. Yes.)
You mention that Trump learnt how to play the game 2nd time round. Churchill did this (arguably more than once but I’m gonna concentrate on what I consider his most significant use).
In 1950 The Attlee Labour govt in UK had to call an election. It won, but only by the skin of its teeth with an overall majority of around 6 in the House of Commons. Attlee was way too honourable to keep wheeling in MPs on their deathbeds into the House of Commons to ensure govt victories in votes. So he called a new election in 1951. Arguably this is the most unfair election result in the history of the UK. We had something very close to universal suffrage, Labour got the highest percentage of all registered voters in the history of the UK in the modern era. Yet he lost.
Churchill played what some would call strategic (I’d call nasty) game in turning the last few Liberal Party supporters to him, exploiting fear etc and got an overall majority. We got what many USA people recognise – the winner of the popular vote not winning the election. What made it worse is that NO party has EVER exceeded the percentage of eligible votes in the modern era than Labour got in 1951 (yet Labour lost). What would the UK look like today if Labour had played as dirty as Churchill and won the 1951 election with a 20+ seat majority? Interesting thought experiment. Attlee’s Labour was clearly the most popular party in the ENTIRE MODERN ERA.
A crazy idea: perhaps this approach or some derivative approach could be used to design a quick test for the Corona virus. A test avoids the strenuous and expensive testing that acts as a barrier to new medicines. Perhaps the nanovesicles used in this approach or components of the nanovesicles could be combined with a fluorescent indicator and scaled up and the proceeds from sales of the tests could be used to pay for the development of the medicine. As I recall there was at least one test designed to test saliva and indicate presence of Corona viruses and a rough indication of the amount of Corona viruses in the saliva. I believe U.C. Berkeley and later a Tech Briefs announcement described such tests that could produce results in half-an-hour readable using a cellphone app. The trouble is that research labs are seldom set up to fund or encourage application of their results. I believe at many schools that is handled by intellectual property lawyers in a department that attempts to profit from selling the intellectual property that results from research, often with less than remarkable results. I believe the Corporations purchasing intellectual property do not always make the purchase to enable further development, but instead with an intent to protect some existing approach and often substantial investment in another competing approach. I know that sounds like a conspiracy theory of sorts, but I do not know how else to interpret the cycle of stunning announcement from a university research group followed by a stunning silence and the disappearance of that supposedly stunning discovery or advance, other than to wonder of stunning hyperbole by the announcing parties.
If the nasal spray as described were available and worked for even half-a-day I would pay for enough to use before getting my teeth cleaned or going in for outpatient surgery [inpatient surgery might be better handled with lots of masks and some Corsi boxes.]
Thanks again KLG. There’s a repeated long phrase at the end of the paragraph under Part the Third. I like the echo effect, but I don’t think it’s intentional.
> Birds documenting the Anthropocene: Stratigraphy of plastic in urban bird nests
Trimming the bamboo, I knew there were a couple of catbird nests. Turns out there were half a dozen, and one was almost completely plastic. Bits of food packs, some cover material for siding, but it did not hold together well, still picking up pieces.
Re. What’s up with American Science and [Part Four] having fun?
The LORD saith: You’re not here to create pleasure for the many; you’re here to make money for the boss.
The commercialization of science has redoubled since the assassination of FDR.
The hyper-specialization of Science has evolved primarily to benefit commercial, IP interests, not Science, much less the public good.
If only Trump were tearing down the Temple of Knowledge for the public good.
im trying so hard to remain unaffected but i am a bit worried for my future. i am just starting to get into research as an undergraduate and aaaaaaaaaaah scary. one of my friends is really deep into research as an undergrad and he’s like the most panicked friend i have rn. the professor im working under told me 2 apply 2 summer research programs and one of the websites just had strikethroughs of half the perks because their funding was cut bc trump admin. which i thought was a bit dramatic but respected nonetheless.
i am being super normal and chill about this. i am fine with going into industry in fact, my plan was to go into industry until recently when i learned about density functional theory and realized i liked that research specifically. so i remain unbothered. this is just what the rest of my life will be like. born into the decaying empire, forced to cope with the changes. (rip.)
Gotta tell you, matt, you’re one of my heroes here. You are looking at the world with a clarity and courage which may be unusual for someone of your cohort. See KLG’s comment at 9:12 for one path in pursuing one’s wonder.
matt:
From this and other comments, it is evident that you are thinking about how to create a career. You will do so — it’s just that career is also a kind of malformation (as the Italians say).
As my most charismatic yoga teacher, back in Chicago, used to remind us: The only way out is through.
From my vantage point here, outside the U S of A, I sometimes wonder at how twisty and time-wasting much of the career path is in the U S of A. But that seems to be how it works.
If you like research, head toward research. I worked in publishing a long time, and another editor once remarked, “Oh, you’re like the last remaining editor who still reads the manuscripts.” It is satisfying to be the heretic. Head toward research if you can, because every indication is that you will create something new and worthwhile.
It would not pay the rent … but you could continue doing research on your own by examining the protein structure results already reported and collected into freely accessible databases. My impression of density functional theory is that it provides a brute-force method for arriving at protein structure and perhaps some rudimentary notions about how a protein operates to perform whatever task it has in a cell. The AlphaFold AIs have demonstrated the ability to predict protein structures. No one knows quite how the AI works but as I recall it makes use of density functional theory in part of its operation. I recall reading about use of the DeepSeek AI to design proteins de novo to design protein structures and functions that are not found in nature. I am way over my skis — it would appear a lot of the data for understanding protein structures has been collected and placed in databases, and many of the tools you would need to study the data are freely available for download. One supposed advantage of DeepSeek AI is that it includes some rudimentary methods for tracing the way it operates. I believe further advances in understanding large molecular structures may result from someone studying the data already collected to arrive at understanding those structures. Brute-force may arrive at a solution to a specific problem but insight into how things work requires human contemplation and interpretation of how to reach solutions in general.
Should the quite bit be said out aloud? That with these constant attacks and undermining of the building blocks of the American scientific establishment, that in the years to come the US may end up as bit of a scientific backwater? Maybe not for weapons research but that is more engineering rather than actual science. You might even find that all those students that came to work and live in America may now start looking at other countries. Maybe even China if they played it smart. At the end of the day, a country that cannot be bothered investing in research and development will always be playing catchup with those countries that do and it will always hinder that country’s development. Present day Germany seems to be an example of that.
The Rev Kev: Glad that you said the quiet part out loud.
Further, as opportunities dry up, the U.S. can expect a brain drain. Naked Capitalism has already posted some articles indicating that Chinese students are leaving. It won’t take too long for U.S. universities to realize that faculty members from the EU likely can return to their home countries, too.
It almost goes without saying that the U S of A has a long anti-intellectual tradition. In the past, that was sometimes a feature of how the regular folks dealt with the budding intelligentsia. Now, though, we see the products of U.S. business schools and MFA programs and U.S. business culture — who do not know as much as they think they know — writing off basic research. Heck, they already wrote off industry, and we see what a resounding success the beancounters produced (!).
It isn’t just heady and “useless” topics like advanced math and statistics what will suffer. Pretty soon, it will be hard to find someone in the U S of A capable of overseeing an orchard to develop drought-resistant apple varieties or new breeds of chickens.
I assume that repayment of student debt is still deferred while in grad school, as it was for me in the mid-80’s. So now what? To most people aiming to become scientists, the Pharma option is just like the “learn to code” option is for normals. A likely disaster.
Way back in 1991, Christopher Lasch (one of my heroes) stated in his tome “The True and Only Heaven:”
“Politics, law, teaching, medicine, architecture, journalism, the ministry–they were all too deeply compromised by an exaggerated concern with the bottom line to attract people who wished simply to practice a craft. . . At every level of American society, it was becoming harder and harder for people to find work that self-respecting men and women could throw themselves into with enthusiasm. The degradation of work represented the most fundamental sense in which institutions no longer commanded public confidence.”
Lasch concluded–“It was the most important source of “the crisis of authority,” so widely deplored but so little understood. The authority conferred by a calling with all of its moral and spiritual overtones could hardly flourish in a society in which the practice of a calling had given way to a particular vicious kind of careerism…”
In my opinion, in 2025 this vicious kind of careerism is reaching new heights–where the falsification of data is now considered normal and perhaps necessary scholarship.
Would this affect the efficacy of an ace- receptor blocking approach to preventing covid?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9692829/ (ACE2-Independent Alternative Receptors for SARS-CoV-2)