So says an ex-cop. And what it allegedly pulled its punches on was police corruption.
On an unrelated note, this story of a man who could have shared a science Nobel, but wound up making $300 a week as a driver, brought back memories of my earlier musings on wasted potential before starting my current job. I’m certainly not doing anything ground-shaking, but a number of industry folks think our company is on the forefront of something big (which I am in now way responsible for) and I feel glad to be a doing a little bit to facilitate folks in that. I suppose I could be doing more for my employer, but right now I’m a lot more satisfied than I was before and occasionally learn new things that would be helpful in the broader job market. I’ve certainly got no problem having a boss (Will Wilkinson’s faint praise for David Ellerman’s heresy is enough for me to damn him as commie, though I honestly would have done that regardless). Going back to the scientist in discussion, some of my sympathy for him built up earlier in the article was depleted when it noted how many opportunities he turned down subsequent to the Nobel hubbub since he didn’t want handouts. It indicates a level of self-sabotage, though it does conclude with a decently happy ending.
July 19, 2011 at 2:31 pm
The scientist story tangentially reminded me of the recluse Perelman’s solution to the Poincare conjecture and his bizarre refusal to accept both the Fields Medal and the Millennium Prize for it.
Now, about that Riemann hypothesis and PvNP …
July 20, 2011 at 8:37 pm
I suppose there is significant wasted potential there as well, but I mentally categorized it differently as weird eccentric recluse. I’ve heard Grothendieck behaved similarly, so maybe it’s more common among mathematicians. I’m definitely not a math theory guy, so I don’t actually know that well.
July 19, 2011 at 8:13 pm
how many opportunities he turned down subsequent to the Nobel hubbub since he didn’t want handouts.
BS. He didn’t have many opportunities. None, if fact. Accepting a job with Tsien would have been a daily torture. No sane person would accept such a handout. If Tsien is such a good Samaritan, where TF was he before? It’s not like Tsien can plausibly claim that he was unaware that the guy who handed him an idea and means to develop it is cannot find a decent job in science.
The story is, above all, about the way we allocate scientific funding. Mediocrities favoring mediocrity is how it was done twenty years ago and it is still how it is done today (worse now, actually; perversely, because of the increased competition).