We should all do what we can to get young people interested in science and spark their own excitement and wonder. We will depend on them. We offer Summer Internships to talented students from a variety of backgrounds during the summer. These internships give students a chance to work and live at Niche and learn about how the pharmaceutical business works. Our interns work with experienced professionals on real, interesting projects in a contract research company, which is where 75% of all pharmaceutical research is done.
We had more applicants than usual this year. Instead of turning down applicants, we decided to make a chance for a group of young people to work together to solve a unique problem that the pharmaceutical industry is currently facing: cutting down on the time it takes to finish the research programmes needed to register new drugs. We named the event "The Infinite Monkey Cage Challenge," after Aristotle's original idea, not after the Radio 4 show.
The infinite monkey theorem says that if a monkey hits random keys on a keyboard for an infinite amount of time, it will eventually get to any given text. For example, the entire works of William Shakespeare may show up one day. If you work in science long enough, you'll notice that there are so many unlikely things that can happen that you can be sure that unlikely things will happen. That's why we gave our interns this job. Or, in the words of Terry Pratchett, "Scientists have calculated that the odds of something so obviously ridiculous existing are millions to one." But experts have found that chances of a million to one happens nine times out of ten.
Young people still have the power to mix magic and science, in our opinion. These skills are something we want to use. They have been given a real problem to solve, and other study groups are already trying to do the same. In other words, our "Cagers" will also be working on a business problem: how to beat our competitors. It's clear that there is no right or wrong answer to the question. As a group, the team would be successful if they could come to an agreement and show their findings in a professional way to the Niche team at the end. We didn't give the Cagers too much information about their challenge because we didn't want our old ideas to cloud their knowledge.
We think the trip will help them become better scientists. Also, we want them to be able to add the results of their work (project report, talk, etc.) to their portfolios. This way, they can use what they've learned and anything they make when they get their next chance or challenge. Let's wish them luck on the task they have coming up.
I am continually reminded that I must work toward better relationships with my sons than the one I had with my dad.
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Welcome to the seventh issue of the Refractory Asthma Stratification Programme (RASP-UK) newsletter
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The proceedings of the Association for Human Pharmacology in the Pharmaceutical Industry (AHPPI)
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