The Pasigraph will make regular postings on a topic familiar to us all. As mere plebes, we fleetingly encounter some very peculiar animals of science. This breed is notable for: breezing past the editorial board; being peerless in peer-review; breaking the study section’s back; filching from venture capitalists like a hooker from her John; making the tenure committee weep; getting the folks in Stockholm itchy to pick up the phone and call them; and generally squeezing the scientific oxygen out of the very rooms in which we try to breathe.
Friends, to document these beasts before they devour us whole, we present the Sonic Hedgehogs (SHH). Every so often, we’ll delve into the lives of scientific wunderkinds to ’suss out their victories, their embarrassments and record the names of the people who picked on them in middle-school. Having covered this, we’ll rank every SHH with a rubric even us mortal folk can understand.
1. Marry- How much do the super-human exploits of the SHH make you want to: grant them an invited review; cuddle next to them at a conference; or give them shit-loads of money for a speculative start-up that you’d question more, but you’re too stupid to care or know any better?
2. Fuck- We can’t all be Alphas, and sometimes the SHH elicits our base-st emotions. You would write your own grants or run your own experiments, if only the SHH didn’t make you so god-damned horny every time they spoke, wrote or had some flatulence.
3. Kill- If you can’t screw your way up the ladder, you might as well be the murderous Beta. You’re good at what you do, but can never get positive reviews. Your burn-rate sucks and Series C financing is only going to come when Jesus himself returns. You’re bad, the SHH is better, and it makes you hungry for blood.
Our first SHH post will introduce us to a person who would make our comparatively miserable, listless lives in science last an unbearable eternity:
David Sinclair
Lucky for us, David has a lovely Wikipedia entry. We think he made it himself, but hey, you tried too and couldn’t keep it alive long, could you? Wiki-living is as sure a proof as any of long-lived-ness, and David knows best here. He’s the wickedly young head of the The Paul F. Glenn Laboratories at Harvard. We find their website a little too Glenn-y for our tastes, but hey, we’re poor and stupid, so who cares? Also, David’s a founding member of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, which, with its piddling public market cap at ~$300 million, means David should buy you drinks if you see him at the bar. And my, will you see him at the bar. David simply can’t get enough of this resveratrol stuff, which may or may not make you live forever. Unfortunately, our sources tell us that David’s nose for wine is middling at best…so he’s renown for eating grams of the wine extract in a synthesized form on a daily basis. Seeing that Sitris’s clinical trials are being conducted in India, the Pasigraph is holding out on recommending the same route for you. Sadly, however, your life isn’t worth prolonging, at least in comparison to David. Having discovered STACs only a few years ago, he’s roiled investors in the Boston area and reportedly gotten former advisor Lenny Guarente to recently flip from Elixir to Sirtris after some convoluted non-compete minefields. Personally, some members of the Pasigraph were raised on homeopathic cures, so we’re all waiting carefully for this xenohormesis junk to truly pan out. Regardless, David’s boundless energy and singular style make him our very first Sonic Hedgehog.
And now, the MFK honors for our fine Dr. Sinclair:
1. Marry (40%)- David is positively breaking everyone’s spirit with thoughtful and precise articles that may really prove durable in the literature. Unfortunately, he was also remembered for mailing self-addressed envelopes containing his ideas during his post-doc. When another lab member would utter derivative thoughts, David would hand them the post-marked letter from a stack, to prove to the peons how mind-numbingly stupid they (and the rest of us) really are.
2. Fuck (20%)- David is loaded, and should any good news drop in India, this category will doubtlessly grow. Sadly, David will not, and his recent mediocre performance on Charlie Rose diminished our lust. Not to worry, Dave, the combined power of Charlie’s yapping and the Boston backdrop would leave most anyone grasping for words (we’re talking to you, George Daley).
3. Kill (40%)- There are surely folks David has stepped over and knee-capped during his meteoric rise. Maybe they haven’t lived long enough to tell. While life is high-on-the-hog now, the Pasigraph is pricing in several factors in our high “kill” ranking. First, he’s just too fucking good…and that can only mean the inevitable rise of playa-haters. Putting he and Chris Westphal in one room only burns-in the pains of our intellectual limitations. This duo is scary good and Westphal delivers babies on foreign sidewalks. Second, any ill winds from India could blow Sirtris out, and we’re always concerned about the freakiness of sour-shareholders. Should resveratrol prove itself, though, David will have been dosing himself for years, and then we’ll all have to clamor together to attempt to kill this invincible Gulliver before he crushes us with his time-less beast hands, which will prove to be the only noticeable side-effect of living forever.
Kudos, David, for being our first Sonic Hedgehog. Coincidentally, we’re drunk on wine as we write this, you tricky bastard.
