I represented my company on a scientist to scientist basis with a very senior scientific executives responsible for procuring key intermediates for a major pharmaceutical company.
My boss - who knew almost no science - decided I need an MBA to tag along with me. The MBA was a total ass, who somehow got a degree - obviously by cheating - from Rice University in Chemical Engineering, but nevertheless did not know the structure of an ethyl group. Then he got an MBA, which he interpreted as a license to lecture everyone on "business" from the perspective a ring wing racist "Isn't Dick Cheney a wonderful guy" perspective.
I took him to a meeting, and was forced to introduce him, much to my embarrassment, to this distinguished pharmaceutical executive scientist, an extremely gracious man with whom I'd had many highly technical and interesting scientific discussions relative to our respective rolls. This executive was a real gentleman, concerned for the welfare of patients, very ethical, extremely knowledgeable, incredibly experienced, kind, serious, fair, honest and appreciative and again, I can't say it enough, gracious.
He listened for about 60 seconds to the asshole MBA, looked at me, and said, shocking me with language I had never heard from him before and said, "You know what's wrong with my fucking company? It's now run by MBA's with history degrees!"
I could have hugged him. (I quit that job not long after this event. The MBA lost all the business I'd worked years to build.)
It takes a lot of personal skill, perseverance, and yes, administrative ability to rise in an academic setting to be a PI. The caricature of scientists being clueless eggheads with no negotiating or administrative skills is insulting and demeaning to the extreme.
Robert Oppenheimer administered the Manhattan project in spite of Lesley Groves, not because of Lesley Groves. (Groves was a trained Civil Engineer.) Nobel Laureate Glenn Seaborg was the key player in negotiating the 1963 atmospheric test ban treaty, dealing personally with Nikita Khrushchev.
I have a lot of respect for John Kerry, and was pleased to vote for him to be President of the United States. But to hear that he is better qualified for this task than a scientist beggars belief, and in fact, shows very little appreciation of the skill of scientists as human beings.
I am not saying that Kerry will be bad at this job; I am simply saying that a scientist would be better qualified to understand the issues and address them in a way that is not involved with glib wishful thinking. Frankly, as a student of climate change, with decades of serious focus on the subject behind me, most of what I hear about addressing climate change is heavily involved with wishful thinking that, while politically popular, has not worked, is not working and won't work.
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