Scott Kern's Message
October 5, 2010
You’ve read the stupid commentary “Where’s the Passion?” by Scott E. Kern, M.D. (pictured; note wedding ring) telling scientists they have no right to a life or a 40 hr workweek so long as cancer remains uncured. “It is Sunday afternoon on a sunny, spring day. I’m walking the halls—all of them—in a modern $59 million building dedicated to cancer research. A half hour ago, I completed a stroll through another, identical building. You see, I’m doing a survey. And the two buildings are largely empty…off-site laypersons offer comments on my observations. ‘Don’t the people with families have a right to a career in cancer research also?’ I choose not to answer. How would I? Do the patients have a duty to provide this “right”, perhaps by entering suspended animation?”
You’ve joined the hilarious Twitter fun with #k3rn3d!
Now read the analysis that cuts to the chase, penned by theshortearedowl:
Kern’s whole piece is a thinly disguised attack on women in science. He wants to return to the good ol’ days when a man could just spend all his time in the lab, when he’s not sitting around with other men talking about how very manly and scientific they are, and have the old ball and chain at home taking care of all the boring bits of life, like laundry and children and stuff, so he can do so.
Yeah. This.
This sums up all that is wrong with these jerks (Kern is not alone in this “kids these days should spend more time in the lab” nonsense). Their obsessive vocational approach to science was made possible in many cases by a spouse who picked up the pieces for them at home. In sadly too many more cases, Obsessive Vocational Scientist Man operated at the expense of children who had a Dad who was never around, couldn’t make the weekend soccer game, was constantly out of town on business and had to hide out in his study when he did manage to stay at home for a few hours.
The younger generations have chosen a different path. Deal, old grumpy dude. Deal. Your personal failure to cure pancreatic cancer (and thereby justify the choices you made vis a vis your personal life) are not the fault of the trainees you would like so desperately to exploit even more than you do already.
So Vogelstein got a big rep in part from the p53 work you did in his lab? And you haven’t had a soulless, zombie lab-slave make a similarly big discovery or breakthrough that would make your reputation in turn?
Call the waaaahmbulance.
October 5, 2010 at 8:35 am
Kern knew he was going to be attacked on that front. Thus the pre-emptive vaguely dogwhistle like comment of “cancer affects all these people- women of reproductive age included!”.
I think we could chalk up total obliviousness to the women-in-science angle to a classic failure of recognizing privilege. But since he’s not oblivious to it, he clearly feels utterly entitled to his existence being subsidized by under-recognized work of teh women, so long as he’s using it to cure cancer.
In other words, he feels totally entitled to participate in an exploitative culture, so long as HE benefits and can pursue HIS “passion”- and then, with a straight face, he manages to pretend it’s all a matter of selfless dedication to patients on his part. *puke on shoes, puke on shoes, puke on shoes*
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October 5, 2010 at 8:39 am
I love the comments after I tweeted K3rn’s essay. For one: “and why does he have so much fucking time to stroll the halls bugging people trying to get work done? grab a lab coat, grandpa.”
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October 5, 2010 at 8:43 am
m/
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October 5, 2010 at 8:45 am
Yes DM, Becca and Maitri!!!! Haha!! Right on to all of this.
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October 5, 2010 at 10:26 am
The other factor that skews Kern’s view is the funding situation. Although we’ve all endured insane 1 or 2- day grant deadline marathons, the better way to write grants is to put in a good 3-5 hrs per day of quality time for a couple of months on end. The rest of each day is only good for editing, administrative stuff, and lab management. Indeed, many people do their best grant writing on the weekends, working from home. No time to make it to the bench. If writing grants is taking up most of your time, then you are not positioned to do those 3-day 12 hr mega-experiments you did as a postdoc. I’ve got news for Kern: as I PI, I’m working just as hard as I did during my postooc years–I’m just not on site, pipetting. Frankly, I’d be much happier if I WAS pipetting more.
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October 5, 2010 at 10:36 am
I poopeted.
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October 5, 2010 at 11:04 am
This is from the Monday Austin American Statesman newspaper. Univ. Texas has hired a new Assistant Professor, a 2002 PhD. According to the department chair, “We were looking for an immunologist who’s a real star, and we got one.” The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas awarded $2 million for start up costs. One presumes Kern would be appalled that she is married and has two young daughters.
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October 5, 2010 at 11:06 am
right on
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October 5, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Dr. Kern should read “Why Crunch Mode Doesn’t Work”:
http://archives.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php
“More than a century of studies show that long-term useful worker output is maximized near a five-day, 40-hour workweek. Productivity drops immediately upon starting overtime and continues to drop until, at approximately eight 60-hour weeks, the total work done is the same as what would have been done in eight 40-hour weeks.”
“Workers can maintain productivity more or less indefinitely at 40 hours per five-day workweek. When working longer hours, productivity begins to decline. Somewhere between four days and two months, the gains from additional hours of work are negated by the decline in hourly productivity.”
“The ability to do complex mental tasks degrades faster than physical performance does. Among knowledge workers, the productivity loss due to excessive hours may begin sooner and be greater than it is among soldiers, because our work is more affected by mental fatigue. ”
“A hundred years of industrial research has proven beyond question that exhausted workers create errors that blow schedules, destroy equipment, create cost overruns, erode product quality, and threaten the bottom line. They are a danger to their projects, their managers, their employers, each other, and themselves. “
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October 5, 2010 at 12:45 pm
I know this is capitalism, but there’s nothing noble about working exhaustingly long hours. It is actually stupid, inefficient, and downright dangerous. Automobile accidents and on-the-job-errors (such as prescribing too high a dose of medicine) increase significantly for medical interns who work long shifts. We are not machines. Humans performed best under a balanced lifestyle: the “eight hours of work, eight hours of play, eight hours of rest” that was espoused even centuries ago.
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October 5, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Dear Scott Kern,
Regarding Monday to Friday:
I research when I want to, man. I’ll show more passion when I feel more respected. Where’s my guaranteed multimillion dollar contract that I can renegotiate for more at the slightest sign of over-performance? So you built a billion dollar stadi…errr. research facility — it ain’t putting any more food on my table, y’know? I’m told, in this society, that it is all about supply and demand, and all about what the market will bear. Well, if there was really a pressing need in the market, I’d be making a fuckton more money, not fighting for subsistence level funding. And it is not about the money, you know, it’s a matter of respect. If you want more, you’d be paying me more. It’s just a matter of what the market will bear. That, and respect.
Regarding weekends (or Sunday afternoons on sunny spring days):
You want me to research more, well then pay me more. yeah, we all love research but at the end of the day it’s a business, man. I could work my ass off and then get cut…errrr… not have my grant renewed and then what?
So the bottom line is this: If you aint payin…errr respecting me more, then what you’re saying is that there isn’t really a great demand for my skills in the marketplace. So either show me the respect or quit bitchin.
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October 5, 2010 at 5:43 pm
The most pathetic thing about K3rn’s Whiney McWhinerson act is that he isn’t even original. If he submitted that shit to the Mansplainer Foundation it would get summarily rejected for (1) not enough preliminary data, (2) craptastic data collection methods/protocols, and the death knell, (3) Not Original Work.
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October 6, 2010 at 6:01 am
Am I alone in thinking that it is absurd that cancer patients are theoretically affording researchers rights? When did researchers, cancer or otherwise, begin to “owe” patients suffering from the disease being investigated, anything? This isn’t to say that science isn’t a calling, of course. I, like most who go into science I’m fairly certain, made the decision to train in biomedical science so that I could contribute to helping people. I have made a choice to put my time, effort, (supposed) intelligence, and creativity into progressing science, and hopefully medicine, in my small niche. Every moment I spend doing any science is a moment that might not have been spent on said disease by someone else. The fact I, or anybody else working on the science of a disease, are doing this, seems to me to imply patients should be grateful to some extent, if anything, that we have dedicated ourselves to helping them. All the patients I have met that suffer from my diseases of study have been enthusiastic and happy to meet our team members, not pissed that we weren’t in the lab last Saturday. Am I totally off base, or does anyone else think this?
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October 6, 2010 at 10:08 am
One of my grad students had a system where he set out to complete one task per day and worked until that got done and then he went home to his family. Worked out ok and taught me how much time I waste doing things like commenting on blogs
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October 7, 2010 at 11:27 am
Forget the researchers, why is ANYONE spending money on frivolous things like nice dinners, clothes and vacations while cancer is still not cured? Shouldn’t they be donating every single penny and forgoing every single luxury until that glorious day?
No? It’s just the researchers who are supposed to sacrifice any kind of life and enjoyment?
Too bad. Well, if there’s not going to be a sudden massive influx of money, I’d better get back to writing grants instead of having anything as luxurious and unnecessary as a lunch break.
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October 9, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Aww darn. I thought he was going towards a peter singer style “charity should be mandatory” kind of thing, by saying our economy should prioritize medical research and make more shifts (& workers to fill em). Having half the population kept away from researching doesn’t make much sense, considering. Doesn’t it put research at a disadvantage to keep the dudes only approach? If you exclude 1/2 of the candidates for arbitrary reasons (like gender) you will end up with more mediocre people being hired and with really stellar thinkers excluded. Does this thought never cross the minds of dudes like scott? It isn’t that much of a leap.
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October 9, 2010 at 2:45 pm
“Forget the researchers, why is ANYONE spending money on frivolous things like nice dinners, clothes and vacations while cancer is still not cured? Shouldn’t they be donating every single penny and forgoing every single luxury until that glorious day?”
If I were to prioritize tradgedies the cancer cures of well off western people would be low on the list. There are completely preventable illnesses and starvation and torture and a global trade in human slavery (for sex or other purposes). People should not spend on luxuries and give money away as a basic part of human decency. Dollars spent on luxury items are the agents of life to other people.
I don’t care if a person is a researcher or not- everyone should give more. A lot more. I am guilty too, I won’t defend frivolous spending as acceptable. It is morally wrong.
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October 14, 2010 at 9:55 am
here’s an idea….. the funding system is not optimized for “curing cancer.” it’s optimized for perpetuating careers.
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October 22, 2010 at 10:34 pm
I sent this to Kern. I’ll let you know if I get a reply:
————————————————————
I read your diatribe on others’ work ethics and I have to say it’s the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time. If you were trying to write parody and humour, you couldn’t have been more effective.
“Do we have the army we need in this war? Where is the passion?”
You should change your name from Kern to Kurtz. You read like Brando during his “arm chopping” speech in Apocalypse Now: “If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly”. And you sound just as demented.
http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0002962/quotes
Obsession is not passion, and obedience is not commitment. My fellow comp-sci students who spent 40 hours a week in class and labs did just as well as myself and those who spent evenings and weekends in the lab, but we the latter did it because we *enjoyed* it. I learnt more than the work-week types, but both were equally able after graduating.
I hope you enjoyed making yourself a laughing stock of the internet.
“Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.”
– Ambrose Bierce
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October 24, 2010 at 7:21 am
Soooo many people who clearly hate children with cancer. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Get back to the bench!
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December 14, 2011 at 8:18 pm
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June 24, 2012 at 7:06 am
[…] and the first 6 months after Tiny Diva’s birth, I had totally kerned myself (See here and here for a definition of the verb “to kern”). I had completely mind fucked my way into […]
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September 3, 2012 at 9:46 am
[…] you’re like me and lack #PASSION, aka an underemployed spouse who can cater to all your and your family’s needs while you give […]
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January 3, 2013 at 12:34 pm
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