Red Herring Editor Jumps Into New Overhyped Trend: Biotech
from the follow-the-hype-trail dept
Jason Pontin, former high profile editor of the now out of business Red Herring, has moved onto a new gig, as editor of a new magazine about the biotech industry. Yes, this sounds like someone moving from one overhyped industry into another – but Pontin insists he’s learned his lessons from Red Herring, and the magazine, the Acumen Journal, won’t make the same mistakes. It’s easy to say that early on, of course.
Comments on “Red Herring Editor Jumps Into New Overhyped Trend: Biotech”
Heh
Biological sciences have a chronic oversupply of brilliant PhD’s chasing their dreams, working for low salaries. Biotech places premium value on the researchers’ scientific accomplishments. IT support for them, in the form of bioinformatics, is a relatively trivial support role (despite its claimed importance). And there is already an oversupply of brilliant bioinformatics experts with at least masters degrees. It is not the next dot com hiring boom for IT techies.
In pharmaceutical research, 99.9% of research fails. The 0.1% that succeeds is handed off to production, so the researchers lose their jobs anyway. If you want to go into the biotech industry, you’re looking at a life of bouncing from one failed company to the next. Unless you have a PhD in biology, and unless you think that squiggly molecules are the purpose of your life, it is not a fulfilling career.