Research Economics

Pfizer just anounced that they were finally pulling the ripcord on the merger with Wyeth. At the same time they anounced cutting another 8,000 jobs, which I am sure will be followed by anouncing cutting jobs at Wyeth. Since 2007, they have cut almost 60,000 jobs. I am not an economist, but I have always thought that Pfizer has a terrible business model. Of the global pharmaceutical super powers, Pfizer has more buyouts than all the others combined and it is not nearly as old. Pfizer is in an inflated balloon, absolutely unsustainable. Consequently, they are constantly on the lookout for anything that be able to put air back in the balloon. I have a lot of friends that work for Pfizer, they make sure to update their resumes rather frequently.

I thought that working at a well-funded hospital would be a way of avoiding big pharma's roller coaster ride. I was wrong. University-wide emails reveal that a third of the endowment has been lost in the stock market. Along with the job freezes there have already been a number of cuts in the facilities services. Elevators are out of order, it takes twice as long to receive common supplies, and every day is an experiment with water pressure. Perhaps the greatest loss will occur in April, our NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) facilities manager is leaving and he will not be replaced. An NMR is as complicated as it sounds, but it is also an invaluable chemistry tool. The way things are going, I give it a couple weeks after he leaves before we have to outsource all of our NMR. At that point, some may wonder why certain forms of research here continue at all.

Just so I end on a lighter note....I saw The Big Bang Theory last night. It is a funny show about some research nerds, which is a huge in-joke for people involved in the sciences because everyone knows someone who IS one of the characters on the show. In last night's epiode, one of them found it more convenient to simply live at the lab. During our all-pain no-gain work schedule, Mike and I used to talk about how convenient it would be if we could just get a cot in the lab. There were several nights I didn't go home.