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I've heard through the grapevine that he has been (is?) very unpleasant to researchers who work on embryonic stem cells, and that he's been known to ask them at conferences how many people they've killed recently.
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<p>Well, that would do it.</p>
<p>Tarhunt:</p>
<p>Somebody who's received a $2.5 million grant surely has options other than enduring ill-treatment (if that is indeed what happened to him) at MIT? It's not as if he had no other options, surely? I gather that this was not the only grant he won.</p>
<p>I find this situation quite baffling. I looked up his papers in a more general scientific database, and found a few more than Mollie did (26). But many of them were opinion pieces, letters to the editor, etc. Most of his scientific papers had NO citations (meaning that other researchers did not refer to them in their papers). This is quite strange. BUT two of his early papers, from 1988, had huge numbers of citations - 229 and 78! He was first author on both.</p>
<p>And about the $2.5M grant - not such a big deal. I've had $2-3M NIH grants awarded 5 times so far. And I looked up this famous grant. It is NOT and R01 (the usual investigator-initiated grant). It's an "NIH Director's Pioneer Award." </p>
<p>This is what it is meant to support:</p>
<p>"The NDPA is designed to support individual scientists of exceptional creativity who propose pioneering approaches to major challenges in biomedical and behavioral research. The term “pioneering” is used to describe highly innovative – potentially transformative – approaches that have the potential to produce an unusually high impact..."</p>
<p>I'm wondering whether this was a politically motivated award. The folks at NIH must be under some pressure to support adult stem cell research. From the grant abstract, this man intends to "focus on human ASCs and their conversion into embryonic stem cell (ESC)-like cells." If he were able to do this, it would certainly solve a lot of problems.</p>
<p>He did have a 3-year R01 awarded a few years ago, but I couldn't find any other NIH funding in the past 10 years.</p>
<p>I'm surprised this guy was promoted to Associate Professor. He would have had a hard time making Assistant Professor in my field.</p>
<p>I can't understand why you'd create a position without enough lab space. That's like cutting someone off at the knees. When dh was applying for postions, lab space offered was always a big part of the discussion. I'm also surprised that this prof. didn't notice it was inadequate. Huge questions on both sides.</p>
<p>mathmom:</p>
<p>Agreed. Things just aren't adding up.</p>
<p>NYMomof2:</p>
<p>If you don't mind my asking, and you don't mind revealing it publicly, what's your field? You are certainly welcome to send me a message if you prefer.</p>
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I can't speak to the Sherley case, but it is my understanding that few of those hired as assistant profs at a place like MIT expect to be awarded tenure at the end of five or six years.
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<p>It is also my understanding that they are also a most brilliant bunch, working their hardest hoping to get to stay. I wonder how much of such pressure transmit to students there and is it good for students there?</p>
<p>I can't say that I ever thought that the pressure I felt as a student at MIT was displaced tenure aggression. Almost all of the pressure I felt personally was self-imposed.</p>
<p>I worked for three years in the laboratory of a young professor. He had already gotten tenure, but that didn't do much to change his attitude about the appropriate level of work in his lab, and he expected everyone in his lab, from postdocs to undergrads, to put in a great deal of effort and to get great results. I chose to be in that environment, and I thrived in it.</p>
<p>This whole "victim card" is getting overplayed.</p>
<p>As post #23 points out, Dr. Sherley was not as productive as he should have been in his position. In his field at that level (MIT), one has to be unbelievably productive in research.</p>
<p>And he was not.</p>
<p>In his own letter, he frequently used the phrase "my lab." How did he not have a lab if he used such words?</p>
<p>"My lab" can mean "my group." I agree with other posters that lab space is normally a crucial component of negotiations for positions like his. Perhaps someone told him that he would start out in borrowed space and get his own space later, perhaps when someone else retired, or a new building was constructed? I can't imagine him coming to MIT without some assurance that he'd have the facilities he needed to do his work.</p>
<p>His NIH grant is almost certainly portable, but I'm not sure that it would be seen as a "real" NIH grant. It does not appear to be renewable after the 5-year period. I read the abstract, available on the nih.gov site (CRISP database). I've written a few NIH grants myself, as well as helping on many others and reviewing hundreds. I thought the abstract was quite vague and general.</p>
<p>The most telling comment, in my opinion, is Mollie's, about his reluctance to talk about his work. All the scientists I know will talk at length about their work to other scientists or students, and will even risk glazed expression by talking at length about it to non-scientists.</p>
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and will even risk glazed expression by talking at length about it to non-scientists.
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<p>GUILTY!!!!</p>
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I'm surprised this guy was promoted to Associate Professor. He would have had a hard time making Assistant Professor in my field.
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<p>I am puzzled. Would this implies that MIT will use affirmative action to hire an unqualified minority and will not even follow up with proper memtoring and minimum support? This is hard to believe.</p>
<p>Regardless of the surrounding circumstances it seems that his reaction to go on a hunger strike wouldn't serve his career well.</p>
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All the scientists I know will talk at length about their work to other scientists or students, and will even risk glazed expression by talking at length about it to non-scientists.
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Wait, I've never done... ahem.</p>
<p>What I find particularly odd is that he seems to be demanding tenure based primarily or completely on what he considers irregular circumstances in his tenure review. He very rarely discusses his own research, even in this context, in which presumably it would be extremely relevant.</p>
<p>I would have had more sympathy for Dr. Sherley if he had not chosen the grievance elite route of crying "racism" simply because he didn't get what he wanted at the moment.</p>
<p>Going on a political tirade is far more acceptable than trumpeting racial grievances.</p>
<p>Sooner or later, the "victim card" will disintegrate.</p>
<p>I just hope that when that day comes, we will decide to treat people equally instead of hyping up a victimhood mentality.</p>
<p>inverse, He had two apparently groundbreaking papers, judging from the large numbers of citations, in the late 80's, about the time that MIT hired him. He was first author, and the other author was Thomas J Kelly: </p>
<p>"In 2002, Thomas J. Kelly joined Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center as Director of the Sloan-Kettering Institute after a 30-year career at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he served as Director of the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics and Director of the Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences. He was recently a cowinner of the 2004 Alfred P. Sloan Jr. Prize for his seminal contributions to the understanding of the molecular mechanisms of DNA replication."</p>
<p>They were both at Hopkins, and I assume that Kelly, who has many, many publications, all with many citations, was his professor. It looks like Sherley was not able to make the transition to independent research.</p>
<p>NYMomof2:</p>
<p>Thanks for that information. For the first time, the pieces make sense, assuming your hypothesis holds.</p>
<p>It also seems likely that Kelly would have been asked to provide one of the letters of reference for Sherley's tenure review, given that the two had worked together in recent years. Given Kelly's prominence, a good letter should have helped Sherley's case considerably, but a negative one...</p>