Fascinating - this is essentially the backstory to Breaking Bad in real life. If Prasher goes bald, time to worry.
Chalfie and Tsien invited Prasher and his wife, Virginia Eckenrode, to attend the Nobel Prize ceremony, as their guests and at their expense. All three of the 2008 Chemistry laureates thanked Prasher in their speeches.
In June 2010, Prasher was finally able to return to science, working for Streamline Automation in Huntsville until December 2011, then from 2012 on, in Roger Tsien's lab at the University of California in San Diego.
Osamu Shimomura, not Osama Shimomura!
Bad timing/luck was compounded by the fact that he was a bit of a loner and not driven to follow through on that area of research, even when given the opportunity to do so.
One other issue that this story brings up: There are a lot of out-of-work postdocs and PhDs, owing to the major reduction in funding/grant opportunities and the consolidation taking place in certain industries, such as pharma. A very talented science blogger who covers this (as well as biochemistry research) is Derek Lowe -- I recommend bookmarking his blog at http://www.pipeline.corante.com/
Around 40% of my view was header and navigation, another 25% ads, another 25% "social" junk, and maybe %10 for the headline and part of the first sentence of the story.
Needless to say, I didn't bother trying to read the article.
There's two things I'm trying to do to help with this. The first is to get as many collaborations with different people as possible. Most of my work so far has a lot of different names on each paper, and I feel this is useful in that co-authors might remember me when they're starting a new research project. The second thing I'm trying is to create an online presence. I was initially opposed to this for a long time because it feels like "tooting my own horn" but at the same time, it's starting to feel like a necessity. So I created a LinkedIn, a ResearchGate page, and a little personal webpage.
Earnest in that you take a genuine interest in understanding (and not just undercutting) other people's work, and unafraid in that you're not afraid to email anyone questions, talk to them at conferences, or ask to stop by and chat when you're traveling through their city.
After doing this for several years I basically accidentally found myself 'highly networked.'
> co-authors might remember me when they're starting a new research project
If you're co-author with someone, that is a pretty good start! The work of networking is to take the "might" out of the equation. If you stay in touch with them regularly, they will definitely remember you.
But yeah, annoying.
“I was always told the myth as a child that we need scientists and I get here and find out that we don’t need scientists.”
At a minimum, kids who "want to grow up to be a professor" should be told in no uncertain terms what the prospects look like, so they at least go in with open eyes.
Video of her talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xZZ1c7diUI#t=535
Turning the clone into the tool required the usual resources of brains, skill, and luck, but it also took years and years of hard graft - Tsien's lab in particular has put an insane amount of work into building an entire rainbow of practically useful fluorescent proteins. I'm sure Prasher would have been only too happy to have bent his shoulder to bear his share of that graft, but sadly, things didn't go that way, and so, in the end, it wasn't him did the work, and it wasn't him who won the prize.
But yeah, poor guy. Academia is an incredibly hard road, and it sheds good people at every level. I was lucky enough that when my scientific career ran out of runway, i had programming to fall back on. Not all of my former colleagues have been so lucky.
That said, my first and last desire is to close tab and flee screaming. But if it works for her ...
"Reputation" is ... hardly what I'd see being established in a good way by that site though.
One observation: her site is very strongly reminiscent of many native Kanji sites (I'm slightly more familiar with Japanese and Korean than Chinese websites), which lack a number of the typical signifiers of emphasis which are found in Western / Roman characterset communications. The result is an interface that's typically exceptionally loud. Ling's site is in many ways a direct transliteration of that design motif to English.