Funding Your Own Research

[DendWrite]

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Say that you did an MD/PhD program and were sick of academia but still had an interest in research, just because you enjoy it and find it fun and rewarding. Could you theoretically be an attending at a hospital and make decent bank, and then fund your own small research projects on the side? Is this feasible or possible? Obviously would have to be working with cell cultures and not animals. But if you get the adequate certifications, separate building, licenses, etc, and set up shop in your backyard, could you do your own research like this and submit papers to journals?

Mostly I was thinking that you wouldn't be able to get papers accepted if you didn't hold an academic position (in spite of your PhD) except in maybe journals like PLoS or something. What about patents...if you discover it on your own, you can patent it, right?

I really like science, but I'm not too sure if I could see myself being a PI someday. I want to get the MD/PhD, but am not 100% sure if I want to do the academic career track. Is what I'm describing here possible or just a far-fetched dream?

I know it would COST a lot, obviously...I just mean logistically possible, not fiscally / emotionally / physically possible.

Also, please don't interpret this post as "I think of myself as a genius and am going to discover all this stuff on my own and patent it." I just like playing around with stuff...demoing / testing out new techniques / methods / protocols ... the sort of thing that fails 9 times out of 10 and thus isn't so grantworthy...(okay, I know this statement is true of some experiments too).

 

[ranmyaku]

The better question is why would you use your retirement money to pay for something you could just write a grant for?

 

[DendWrite]

The better question is why would you use your retirement money to pay for something you could just write a grant for?

I was told by my PI and some other people in the department that you can't get NIH grants without holding a faculty position. Is this not the case?

And I don't like the idea of turning into my PI (who just churns out grants all the time and doesn't actually get to do much science).

 

[tortuga87]

what about working as a research scientist for a PI part-time?

 

[DendWrite]

what about working as a research scientist for a PI part-time?

Hey guys...no offense, but I don't know if you really read my post (or, more likely, it was just too long and rambly to be clear 😀).

Basically, the reason I was asking, is because say you come up with some new discovery while working under a PI. You don't own that discovery. If you want to patent it, the university (definitely) and your PI (most likely) will have their names on it.

Also, research scientists (in my experience) have little to no freedom as to what they are actually researching. You're hired to focus on a particular area, and typically, since you aren't paying the bills, you are pretty rigidly locked in to what your PI wants. Admittedly, I can only speak for my lab and the labs around me on this...perhaps some places it's different.

The reason I'd want to do it independently is the freedom to pursue any idea that I chose without having to bother writing a grant or gettng a PI's approval, and the fact that, should I develop some new technique or discover someting patentable, that I'd be the sole intellectual proprietor.

 

[hardy]

Of course you can do this... your papers might or might not get published, it depends. There is some politics involved in publishing but if your work is solid you will still find a reasonable journal to publish. Also, you seem to be more interested in inventions and patenting (you cannot patent discoveries). You do not need to publish something in a journal for it to be patented. You just need the financial resources (around $100k for a worldwide patent) and you can patent whatever the patent office finds worthy.

On the other hand, it generally is considered a good arrangement for the university to patent something as they also take care of marketing and technology transfer. Depending on the university you get 30% or so of profits which is pretty good. But I totally understand why you wouldn't want to be limited by academia, simply too much politics involved.

For ranmyaku, what are you going to do with all that money once you are retired? Sit on your ass all day and watch TV? Sit on a cruiseship? Leave a ton of money to your children? Even travel gets old after a while. The best thing that can happen to you is doing something you love, whether retired or not, and if that's doing self-funded research this sounds like a great option.

 

[Charles_Carmichael]

I'm curious, why do you want to pursue and MD/PhD if you are "sick of academia?"

 

[DendWrite]

I'm curious, why do you want to pursue and MD/PhD if you are "sick of academia?"

I really enjoy science and want PhD training, however I don't want to be in mainstream academia for a career. I don't think that these are mutually exclusive desires--they might be a bit "out of the spirit" of the NIH's goals for the MD/PhD program, but so are all the applicants who go into private practice.

I can see myself as a full-time physician and "hobbyist" scientist, or perhaps doing some consulting work. I honestly don't really know at this point -- what I do know is that I enjoy both researchh and medicine and that I'd like to get degrees in both, but that I can't see myself being a PI. Maybe that will change over time.

 

[dl2dp2]

I really enjoy science and want PhD training, however I don't want to be in mainstream academia for a career. I don't think that these are mutually exclusive desires--they might be a bit "out of the spirit" of the NIH's goals for the MD/PhD program, but so are all the applicants who go into private practice.

I can see myself as a full-time physician and "hobbyist" scientist, or perhaps doing some consulting work. I honestly don't really know at this point -- what I do know is that I enjoy both researchh and medicine and that I'd like to get degrees in both, but that I can't see myself being a PI. Maybe that will change over time.

I think you should put that in your admission essay when you try to apply to MD/PhD programs.

 

[mrsanator]

I really enjoy science and want PhD training, however I don't want to be in mainstream academia for a career.

I can see myself as a full-time physician and "hobbyist" scientist, or perhaps doing some consulting work.

I think what other posters are trying to get at is that if this is your career goal, MD +/- a research year in medical school or residency would make much more sense than a MD/PhD. The time and opportunity costs of the PhD (the stipend and tuition support only offset a small fraction of these) don't make any sense if you want to be a hobby scientist.

what I do know is that I enjoy both research and medicine and that I'd like to get degrees in both, but that I can't see myself being a PI.

Just because you like research doesn't mean you need to get a degree in research in order to pursue it at the level you describe, and it certainly doesn't mean you ought to get a PhD.

they might be a bit "out of the spirit" of the NIH's goals for the MD/PhD program, but so are all the applicants who go into private practice.

I was 21 when I submitted my AMCAS, and I'll be 34-35 when I become a fellowship-trained attending. So, if I live 80 years, I'll have spent nearly 20 percent of it in post-college career training. That's a long time, and people do change their minds along the way. The MD/PhD programs and NIH expect some attrition.

However, there's a big difference between people who change their mind along the way and decide to go into private practice, and someone like yourself with this plan prior to entering a program. You certainly would have to flat-out lie on your AMCAS and during interviews. Few MSTP-funded institutions would take a candidate that didn't state a commitment to research as a major part of their career (not necessarily R01-based academic), because they are evaluated on their graduate's career paths at each grant renewal.

 

[DendWrite]

I think you should put that in your admission essay when you try to apply to MD/PhD programs.

I think it might go better in the letter I write them accepting my admissions offer, but you give an interesting suggestion. I'll have to think on it.

Also, come on...this is the whole "holier-than-thou" attitude that everyone seems to adopt when you're talking about going into medicine, yet that is in no way reflected by the correlation of competitiveness of a given specialty and that specialty's reimbursement. People want to make money, be happy, and live a good life. That's okay. Many try to make themselves out to be some kind of crusader or altruist when applying to medical school. It's all part of the game.

However, there's a big difference between people who change their mind along the way and decide to go into private practice, and someone like yourself with this plan prior to entering a program. You certainly would have to flat-out lie on your AMCAS and during interviews. Few MSTP-funded institutions would take a candidate that didn't state a commitment to research as a major part of their career (not necessarily R01-based academic), because they are evaluated on their graduate's career paths at each grant renewal.

I mean, it could be a big part of my career, my major point being that I'm just not interested in doing the R01-based academic track -> assistant professor -> etc. For me, the downside of just doing a year of research during medical school is that, from my experience already, I know that a year is hardly enough time to do something substantial, or to acquire significant research expertise. If you already have some experience, and work REALLY hard, it's possible to get things done, but it's nowhere near where you'd be after a 3 to 4 year PhD program. This is compounded by the fact that you'll likely be doing your research in a new lab where you haven't worked before, and so just getting used to different protocols / equipment / etc. can take a few weeks to get everything dialed in.

And, anyway, attrition is attrition. One person is one person, whether that person knew they weren't going into research before they applied or after they applied. One more person eschewing academia isn't going to cause a program to lose it's grant. I guess you could say I'm taking a spot away from someone who really wants it. But if so many people end up not wanting it anyway after they experience it for themselves...

 

[gbwillner]

Hey guys...no offense, but I don't know if you really read my post (or, more likely, it was just too long and rambly to be clear 😀).

Basically, the reason I was asking, is because say you come up with some new discovery while working under a PI. You don't own that discovery. If you want to patent it, the university (definitely) and your PI (most likely) will have their names on it.

Also, research scientists (in my experience) have little to no freedom as to what they are actually researching. You're hired to focus on a particular area, and typically, since you aren't paying the bills, you are pretty rigidly locked in to what your PI wants. Admittedly, I can only speak for my lab and the labs around me on this...perhaps some places it's different.

The reason I'd want to do it independently is the freedom to pursue any idea that I chose without having to bother writing a grant or gettng a PI's approval, and the fact that, should I develop some new technique or discover someting patentable, that I'd be the sole intellectual proprietor.

You missed the point of Tortuga's post. There are a fair number of academic physician-scientists who do not write grants, and survive by doing collaborative projects with people who DO write grants. From my experience, people interested in statistics/computational biology do this often, but it does not have to be limited to these fields. In pathology there are a lot of faculty members who do a fair amount of research without grants- primarily because they are already in charge of a clinical laboratory and use their "free" resources to perform experiments and write papers. Most faculty only sign-out 50% of the time anyway, leaving them 50% of their time to do science.
And if you really do have an aversion ot academia, there is always industry. They are always looking for bright physician-scientists to run their R&D. The good side is you never have to write grants. The down side is they can tell you to scrap your project on a whim and tell you to do something else. Then there is always the NIH, where you don't have to write grants AND you get to be in an academic-type environment.

 

[echod]

Most faculty only sign-out 50% of the time anyway, leaving them 50% of their time to do science.

Can you elaborate more on this? Is this what a lot of non-basic science lab running medical school professors do? If yes, then the salaries that med school faculties get seems to be a fair deal.

 

[Reticent]

I've had a conversation with a developmental biologist who did kind of what your asking after, but it was only after retiring from a long academic career and he was already famous in his field.

If you shop around you could probably get all the basics of a wet lab for a little under $50k (fridge, freezers, incubators, centrifuge, vortex, pipettes, thermocycler, glassware, reagents, spectrometer, etc). What you WON'T get independently is any kind of approval to work with vertebrates, so you're looking at cell culture or at best very exotic/niche model organisms (I know a lab that works with hydractinia for example).

There is also EXCELLENT open source computational biology software, so that's free if you have a pc up to spec to run it on (look at GPU accellerated software like CUDA enabled NAMD for the more hardware intensive stuff). There's research you could be doing in silico pretty much for free right now.

The only probably genuinely hard part I can think of would be getting your stuff published without any academic backup. Well, that and finding time to do all this while you're a practicing medical doctor.

 

[gbwillner]

Can you elaborate more on this? Is this what a lot of non-basic science lab running medical school professors do? If yes, then the salaries that med school faculties get seems to be a fair deal.

I can only speak from my personal observations... but yes. In my department (pathology), most attendings sign out 6 months out of the year. These are the clinical and tenure-track professors. They use the downtime to catch up on cases, run their clinical laboratories, attend conferences, vacation, write papers/books, and do research. Those that have their own clinical laboratories obviously have an advantage to doing their research with little outside funding. The department does provide funds for small projects with minimal effort.

There are a few faculty members who will sign out significantly more than this. Our best clinical attendings always have a service they are covering... but they tend not to be as interested in research, or are so "good" that taking cases does not hamper other efforts.

Basic science-minded attendings need "protected" research time... They tend to have extremely restricted calls/sign-outs, and cover services that either non-billable (like autopsy coverage) or allow flexible sign-out time (general surgical pathology or molecular pathology) vs. Frozen sections. Non-pathologists I know in medicine function much like non-scientist attendings, but tend to give senior residents more responsibility, and just cover their respective services for a few months (or weeks) of the year. Maybe they'll have a half day of clinic/week. Maybe.

 

[gbwillner]

If you shop around you could probably get all the basics of a wet lab for a little under $50k (fridge, freezers, incubators, centrifuge, vortex, pipettes, thermocycler, glassware, reagents, spectrometer, etc). What you WON'T get independently is any kind of approval to work with vertebrates, so you're looking at cell culture or at best very exotic/niche model organisms (I know a lab that works with hydractinia for example).

50K? Maybe if you are doing very very very basic type experiments. For pete's sake, a standard gel-electrophoresis box and power supply will cost you $1K. A set of Micropipettes will be like $1500. And then there are reagents. Antibodies go for $350-$1000 each. A 500g tub of agarose is almost $1K. More basic examples... Bench top tube centrifuges (the cheap plastic kind) is like $350-500 and those that can go 13Gs (necessary for all Quiagen kits)... probably $5-10K. Those are just a few items. And then the experiments... A single run of next gen sequencing will run about $1K. The Illuminal machine itself will cost you roughly $800K.

 

[Reticent]

50K? Maybe if you are doing very very very basic type experiments. For pete's sake, a standard gel-electrophoresis box and power supply will cost you $1K. A set of Micropipettes will be like $1500. And then there are reagents. Antibodies go for $350-$1000 each. A 500g tub of agarose is almost $1K. More basic examples... Bench top tube centrifuges (the cheap plastic kind) is like $350-500 and those that can go 13Gs (necessary for all Quiagen kits)... probably $5-10K. Those are just a few items. And then the experiments... A single run of next gen sequencing will run about $1K. The Illuminal machine itself will cost you roughly $800K.

You're right, molecular bio reagent costs kill it when you actually itemize what is needed. You can get a lot of hardware though for $50k if you are willing to buy used (and no, I wasn't under the impression that he'd be buying an Illumina machine).

 

[bd4727]

You could not fund molecular biology research on a physicians salary, period. Most of the labs use their grant money only for specific project related expesnes (and these grants are like 1mil for 5 years) while the equipment is all bought by the university, and is an enormous amount of money. Not to mention the ancillary support you need to run all this equipment. Anyway, it would be nice but I think it is a silly idea to be honest.

You sound like you would be interested in raising venture capital funds or some other kind of private investment money to run a company based on whatever your discoveries are. This is commonly done by people who are in academia, find something that has great therapeutic potential, and then they transition to biotech under the VC or other funding models. So there is a lot of small groups of people doing research not in academia, but they are being funding by lots of money from other parties. Your notion of someone doing science in their barn on the weekends, while romantic, is a vestige of the 1700-1800s for sure.