Well right now this would be highly implausible (still possible though).
But what I garner is that AI/robotics led wet lab work is in progress. And hacking the AI running the wet lab to make a virus is definitely plausible as that seems to be one of the directions we’re going in the AI+biopharma space
impressive to me, but sadly i feel a little misleading since this is only the data-science part of life sciences.
every few weeks though i test claude and chatgpt on their scientific reasoning and it has definitely improved over time. in my experience without specific instruction on what is known/unknown they typically are lagging behind the leading edge of the field (dev bio/pluripotency in my case). probably because scientific research articles are not open-source so they can't crawl them.
claude has definitely outperformed chatgpt in this regard however, it's scientific reasoning is impressive.
i'm very late but i just wanted to give you kudos for a succinct yet spot-on comment on the state of funding. you captured everything i've been trying to put into words and failing miserably at.
the recent drama about science funding to me highlights one of the main problems with our grant-based distribution system: which is that it is unsurprisingly very frail to fast-moving changes in government and society at large.
science as an apparatus often works on timescales that are decades, not 4 year political cycles. so rapid pendulum swings are particularly dangerous to the pursuit of science as a whole. you could just as easily describe a scenario where the pendulum has swung left instead of right and a bunch of right-leaning research gets cut and people lose their jobs, we lose progress etc.
these days i'm pretty in favor of a system where funding is guaranteed and investigators are allowed absolute academic freedom. think something along the lines of each principle investigator gets $Xmillion to study their research topic in perpetuity without fear of reprisals or sudden funding cuts.
i naively think this would solve a LOT of the issues in academia currently, which already in the absence of the recent Trump shake-ups has devolved into a metric chasing, paper-mill, grant funding behemoth whose sole purpose is to churn out papers of dubious quality, game metrics, and bring in research funding to the university. the modern professor's job is not to advance our understanding of the natural world, but to generate positive KPIs and bring in as much revenue as possible to the university in the form of overhead costs (66% of all the federal funding we bring in at my institution goes directly to the school). it's a business, and that's not what basic science research is supposed to be in my opinion.
The stem cell field is also quirky. IMO it is one of the most cutthroat, competitive, ruthless fields of life sciences that is new enough in history to still have a bunch of pioneers fighting to be the figurative Oppenheimer. One PI’s fraud is quickly detected and fought over.
Meanwhile the Alz and Neuro field as a whole are well established, and the amyloid hypothesis was a foundational theory taken as a fact. Any initial questioning of this and they would brand you as a lunatic.
> They're in a sticky spot where their most successful customer is one that they will never see another dime from, and there's not really a way around it.
naive question: why has no one made an app with the reverse incentive structure? i understand that the current business model is much more lucrative...but i feel like with how fed up people are with the inability of modern online dating to provide quality, long-lasting relationships a new platform that optimizes for match quality and longevity would eat all of Match Groups offerings lunches. i guess there just isn't enough money to be made so it's not even worth it?
firstly, there are basically no legal repercussions for scientific misconduct (e.g. falsifying data, fake images, etc.). most individuals who are caught doing this get either 1) a slap on the wrist if they are too big to fail or in the employ of those who are too big to fail or 2) disbarred, banned, and lose their jobs. i don't see why you can go to jail for lying to investors about the number of users in your app but don't go to jail for lying to the public, government, and members of the scientific community about your results.
secondly, due to the over production of PhD's and limited number of professorship slots competition has become so incredibly intense that in order to even be considered for these jobs you must have Nature, Cell, and Science papers (or the field equivalent). for those desperate for the job their academic career is over either way if they caught falsifying data or if they don't get the professorship. so if your project is not going the way you want it to then...
sad state of things all around. i've personally witnessed enough misconduct that i have made the decision to leave the field entirely and go do something else.
every few months i like to ask chatgpt to do the "thinking" part of my job (scientist) and see how the responses stack up.
at the beginning 2022 it was useless because the output was garbage (hallucinations and fake data).
nowadays its still useless, but for different reasons. it just regurgitates things already known and published and is unable to come up with novel hypotheses and mechanisms and how to test them. which makes sense, for how i understand LLMs operate.
i am very glad to see others (presumably non-scientists) in this thread dunking on the false paradigm that "peer review = true". anyone who peddles this notion is naive or a moron.
while the author is correct that the for-profit publishing is definitely a negative externality, i can't help but feel they are missing the forest for the trees when it comes to all the other worse issues in academia.
a full explanation of which would be much too onerous for a hn comment, but in no particular order: rampant scientific fraud, waste of tax payer dollars, wage suppression via "students" and visa-dependent laborers (J1 visa abuse), publish or perish evaluation criteria, lack of management training, blatant and rampant racism, etc. etc. etc.
the whole system needs to burn down and be rebuilt from the ground up.
some added context (both my parents are/were in the Foreign Service):
your location is assigned based on a competitive bidding system where you select from a list of cities to do your next tour. some countries/cities are obviously dangerous for a variety of reasons and they are called "hardship tours" (think iraq or afghanistan). you get bonus money for these and sometimes are forbidden from bringing family.
posts in places like Europe or East Asia are very desirable and highly competitive. but often it's a matter of fit. my dad was a hedge fund manager before the Foreign Service so his first posting was actually in Frankfurt. you can also do a tour in the continental US, such as in DC or NY. because of his economics background he has done a few of those.
most of the time the head ambassador is a political appointee, but the grunts are regular people who have made this their career.
at the dissolution and decentralization of empires feudalism in it's many forms historically seems to be the most common outcome.
i would say that we firmly live in the American Empire with techno-feudalistic tendencies, but a historical event of such magnitude as the complete dissolution of the American state will probably see a reversal to a more traditional feudal system. Think Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates buying up and becoming the Dukes of the PNW.
personally though i don't think we are at this stage yet or even close to it. until the federal government becomes COMPLETELY inept and the average citizen cannot buy food, this won't happen. yes market conditions are currently not the best but we are nowhere near starvation.
my own institution launched an internal investigation into a professor who i know for a fact committed fraud and was "unable to prove intentional wrongdoing". academic institutions have taken the "this never happens because we are morally pure" approach which we all know is a load of baloney, they are perversely incentivized to never admit fraud.
the witness and reportee who i am friends with was directly instructed by this professor to falsify data in a more positive light in order to impress grant funders. multiple people were in attendance in this meeting but even that was not enough to see any disciplinary action.
duke also has a notorious reputation for being a fraud mill.
the greatest travesty of modern science is that fraud is not illegal.
in every other industry that i can imagine, purposely committing fraud has been made illegal. this is not the case in modern science, and in my opinion the primary driver of things like the replication crisis and the root of all the other problems plaguing academia at the moment.
I think about this quite a lot. I’ve come to the conclusion that in the past acting with integrity was rewarded and lacking integrity was punished.
In 2025 it seems integrity is meaningless, “winning” is all that matters. Particularly, you are not punished for acting without integrity but definitely “punished” for having it.
My portfolio was +94% in 2024 and +52% in the past 6 months (I took a massive haircut thanks to April's tariff saga and by having biblical levels of greed...lesson learned).
How do I declare for the inaugural Hedge Fund Draft?
yup, anecdotally the majority of postdocs these days are internationals who are willing to work 60+ hour weeks on $50k a year, for the infinitesimal chance to land a R1 tenure-track faculty position. americans have no interest in getting a phd and then subjecting themselves to this kind of indentured servitude.
But what I garner is that AI/robotics led wet lab work is in progress. And hacking the AI running the wet lab to make a virus is definitely plausible as that seems to be one of the directions we’re going in the AI+biopharma space