A tale from the Lion City – A Stanford Ph.D. turned taxi driver

A tale from the Lion City – A Stanford Ph.D. turned taxi driver

SINGAPORE – Not too long ago, the Singapore government targeted Biomedical Sciences as a potential avenue for growth. Life Sciences became the talk of the town. Places in the universities leading to a Life Sciences degree increased. There has always been the danger that we could end up producing an over-supply of Life Sciences graduates, and soon we will face the conumdrum of having too many Life Sciences graduates competing for a limited pool of Life Sciences-related jobs. Thus, Life Sciences graduates are advised to upgrade themselves to the Ph.D. level. Non-Ph.D. holders are qualified to wash test-tubes, according to former A*STAR chairman, Mr Philip Yeo. However, not all graduates can qualify to do a Ph.D. Most if not all graduate programs require at least a second upper honors performance for an undergraduate degree. And not all undergraduates will be able to muster that level of performance. Only with a Ph.D. can a candidate work as a Principal Investigator in an academic or research institution.

Given such a context, Dr Cai Mingjie’s experience has some sort of an unexpected twist. Dr Cai underwent his Ph.D. training at Stanford University, a top institution that has seen five of its faculty members or former students receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. Majority of Dr Cai’s work at Stanford revolves around the study of yeast proteins, and a list of his publications on that topic can be accessed at Scientific Commons, a repository of scientific publications by researchers. Yeasts cells are considered biological models for eukaryotic cells found in our bodies, plants and animals. Thus, they are popular subjects of study which allow scientists to better understand what goes on inside a typical eukaryotic cell.

Armed with his Stanford Ph.D., all went on well for Dr Cai initially. According to his account (now published in his blog), he worked as a Principal Investigator at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) under A*STAR for 16 years. Back then, IMCB was still located at the NUS campus and he described the old IMCB as a “once flourishing, promising, and pleasant” place to work in. However, things changed for the worse when there was a takeover of IMCB’s leadership by some “big shot” foreign scientists. According to Dr Cai, the previous style of “democratic and consensus-oriented management system that had worked well for more than a decade in the past” was ditched, and in place was a management style marked by “domineering, manipulation, and incompetence”.

“Since the takeover of leadership by some western “big shots” a few years ago, the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) of A*STAR, Singapore, a place I have worked for 16 years as a PI (principal investigator), a place that was once flourishing, promising, and pleasant to work in, has been in a mess. Bestowed with the kind of power they had never seen before, these once reputable scientists turned everything in the institute upside down. The previous democratic and consensus-oriented management system that had worked well for more than a decade in the past was thrown out of window and replaced by one that was marked by domineering, manipulation, and incompetence. What they lacked in experience of management, adequate understanding of the institute, and proper respect for fellow scientists as their colleagues, they made up for in arrogance, prejudice, and naked muscle of political power. ” – Dr Cai Minjie on his blog

What subsequently transpired was that a few Principal Investigators were sent packing, and Dr Cai was one of them unfortunately. His employment contract was terminated in May 2008, and to further rub salt into his wounds, he wasn’t given any form of compensation. He became jobless at a vulnerable age, but nonetheless, he sent out resumes in the hope of landing a job. That wasn’t to be and with the onset of the financial crisis, he finally made the decision to become a taxi driver. He underwent the Express Taxi Driver’s Vocational License Course, and finally obtained his taxi driver’s license and embarked on his new career as a taxi driver.

If Dr Cai’s account is true, the nature of the management at IMCB which precipitated his departure may be a cause for concern. A Research Institution should be the last place where one can find autocracy and domination by a few select personnels. An ideal environment should be a democratic one tolerant of diverse views, just like how an academic institution should be open to diverse academic views. Thus, Dr Cai’s account suggests a potential endemic problem and raises the pertinent question of whether the correct people have been selected to run the Research Institution. Doing research is a different kettle of fish from the administration of a Research Institution. A*STAR has always embarked on an aggressive recruitment drive to lure big name scientists to set up shop in Singapore; they are in Mr Philip Yeo’s words “whales brought in to train the guppies”. A top researcher may not have the necessary expertise to run a Research Institution. Thus, the assumption that a top researcher can flawlessly run a Research Institution is flawed. What is necessary are conditions that allow the ‘guppies’ within the Research Institution to flourish.

However, Dr Cai’s experience was like a fish getting suffocated out of water, or more accurately in a suffocative environment marked by domination, prejudice and arrogance in his own words. It is good for a nation like ours to dream of becoming a Biomedical hub, but first and foremost, we must create an environment to allow our talents in the field to flourish. If such an environment remains suffocative, such dreams will only remain as hallucinations.

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