Question: What do Hurricane Katrina, the San Diego fires, and PAT have in common?

Answer: They all attract mercenaries, wanting to profit from confusion.

The sheer numbers of people involved in these programs leaves a lot of "wiggle-room" for experts to appear and skim some cream off the large amounts of money floated by major projects. Case in point: all the NIR "experts" I keep reading about all the people offering NIR services; people I have never seen publish a paper on NIR; people who have never worked in the pharmaceutical industry; people who had an instrument company's training, then set themselves up as experts.

As I said in a recent column, "You can't cheat an honest man." If the "Internet Generation" would take the time to actually investigate these "experts" they might not be fooled. However, most "young guns" don't do literature searches, but rely on webpages for information. As with Madison Avenue advertising, anyone can put lipstick on a pig. That doesn't make it beautiful. Add to that the politically correct habit of not being able to say what someone did at your company, other than "yes, he worked here," and you have a fertile field for faux experts.

When you look for someone to do PAT or NIR or anything, ask to see some damn credentials, not just a glossy webpage!!!!

Thanks, I had to get that off my chest. I feel better now.

Remember the Rolling Stones before they received the AARP magazine? (Click here for the classic video)

They really hit that one on the head!

Consider the corporate "dual-ladder" career system. What a joke. Through the 1990s, the only way a scientist could improve his income level was to move into management. As a result, the company lost a good scientist and gained an inexperienced supervisor

Back in the 1980s, the idea of a dual ladder system became popular. That meant that two employees, one in the lab and one in the office, would be "compensated" equally. That worked well on paper (as do Escher paintings), but, in reality the Golden Rule always took over: namely "Thems what gots the gold, makes the rules."

Inevitably, managers move ahead of lab personnel in perks. At Sandoz (back in the 1980s), Senior Scientists and Managers were both at Grade Level 15. The pay grades were roughly equivalent, but other things tended to happen. Managers were assigned parking spaces, for instance, or could attend end-of-year "meetings" (with spouses) at resort sites for weekends, und so weider.

I don’t mean to sound like a Socialist, but there is an old saying about not ****ing on me and say it’s raining. I would appreciate some honesty. If a company feels that managers are more important, then simply say, "They get more because they give more" or some such thing.

Doesn’t mean I’d like it any better, but I might have more respect for the HR people.

One of the things I truly enjoyed (before I became an independent consultant...while I was still employed full time by companies within the pharmaceutical industry) was getting the monthly company newsletters.

They were all alike. Each month, we were treated to pictures of the Marketing and Sales people in Cancun (or some such place) as they celebrated the success of the drug that was discovered, tested, formulated, manufactured, assayed, packaged, and shipped by those of us sitting in the facility in January in the snow.

Made me feel warm and tingly all over.

But what better way to show the disconnect between management and the “worker bees?" The inspiration for most “lab rats� is the science, love of discovery, good feeling at finding a medicine that helps people.

Others, who will remain unnamed (hard way to go through life: called “hey, you.�) are motivated by money and expensive perks.

Nonetheless, we are all still human. Prick us and we bleed. We have mortgages, kids to send through college.

We lab rats are aware that we make far less than sales types, and we’re ok with that…intellectually. Just don’t rub our noses in the class differentials and we’re happier. [BTW, when I complained about the newsletter to the people in corporate communications who published it, their solution was to stop sending lab personnel copies.]

Greetings. This is my first attempt at micro-publishing, a.k.a. "blogging." I plan, however, on trying to use correct grammar, not "IM-isms." After a few feeble attempts, I think I have it now. So, Happy Hallowe'en to everyone..

 Question: What do skyboxes at sports stadiums and Carribbean trips have to do with drug education?

Answer: Thay are more fun than actually taking courses or reading the literature.

When  doctors take freebies from pharmaceutical company reps, do they feel a responsibility to prescribe that company's product or do they still care more for the patient? I have heard pharmacists comment that they can tell which reps have been in the area by the plethora of prescriptions written for that company's products.

Years ago (in the 1970s), when I asked about becoming a rep for the company for which I worked, I was told that, having worked in the lab, I "knew too much." In other words, I might actually be able to answer questions posed by doctors and not just give the information on the handouts I carried. Thus, I was told, the sales department preferred Liberal Arts grads to chemists and pharmacists.

 We could do something radical (like in Europe for decades) and allow pharmacists to prescibe drugs for the illnesses that a doctor discerns. After all, pharmacists had 5 years of pharmaceutical education, while most MDs had a 3-credit course in Med school...oh yes, and all the handouts reps give to them (and TV ads...do they count as education?)