Skip to main content

Who is David Sabatini?


 There has been a fair amount of talk recently about David Sabatini, an MIT scientist, whose mug is shown here. Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman is now financing his research. 

According to the local paper of MIT, the Boston Globe, Sabatini is "a biologist who once generated Nobel Prize buzz."

Before going any further into the reason for the recent talk: what was the reason for the Nobel Prize buzz that preceded it "once"?

It involved the study of rapamycin, a natural antibiotic found in the soil of Easter Island. In 2009, Sabatini received the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research for the study of rapamycin's anti-tumor effects. 

The more recent development? Two years ago the University investigated charges of sexual harrassment by Sabatini and he was placed on leave. The investigators concluded that Sabatini had violated its policies and it recommended his tenure be revoked. He said in essence "you can't fire me, I quit." 

Now (so says the Boston Globe) Sabatini wants his comeback. He claims that the accuser, a graduate student, pursued him sexually. When he rejected her, she became vindictive -- hence the charges.

All of that is under dispute in the usual charges and countercharges. In the meantime, one might wonder: who is looking out for the cancer patients of the future? The folks who might benefit by years of continued life from an understanding of why rapamycin seems to counter-act the development of tumors? Yes: MIT can and should enforce its policies in such matters, and a biomed lab can be as toxic a working environment as any other. And no, I doubt that Sabatini is indispensable. There are lots of other very bright people pursuing the anti-cancer cause.

But in this case, the "cause" is a very targeted one. There may be only a few people in the world who are up to date on the latest research regarding rapamycin and the implications of that research for eventual application in human tissue. 

Are there any mechanisms in place in the biomed world for seeing to it that someone among those few picks up the torch? 



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.   We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...
10 comments
Read more

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere.  At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...
21 comments
Read more

The Lyrics of "Live Like You Were Dying"

Back in 2004 Tim McGraw recorded the song "Live Like You were Dying." As a way of marking the one-decade anniversary of this song, I'd like to admit that a couple of the lines have confused me for years. I could use your help understanding them. In the first couple of verses, the song seems easy to follow. Two men are talking, and one tells the other about his diagnosis. The doctors have (recently? or a long time ago and mistakenly? that isn't clear) given him the news that he would die soon. "I spent most of the next days/Looking at the X-rays." Then we get a couple of lines about a man crossing items off of his bucket list. "I went sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing, I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu." Then the speaker -- presumably still the old man -- shifts to the more characterological consequences of the news. As he was doing those things, he found he was loving deeper and speaking sweeter, and givin...
2 comments
Read more