Niche experts

30 and more years ago, in a fit of indignant lamp-post pissing, certain alpha-males in the man-and-boy department of my Alma Mater created a new Experimental Officer position with a special expertise in Clinical Genetics. As the One and Only Genetics Department in the country, they felt entitled to own that patronage. For many years previous to this adventure, Clinical Genetics testing had been carried out with quiet competence by Prof James Houghton at University College Galway UCG . . . on the other side of the country. It's a nice little earner: even before DNA sequencing started to deliver A Lot of tests for the differing clinical conditions. ~1 in 500 births in Ireland have The Down's = trisomy 21, for example. Take Tay-Sachs, for example, it's a journey which families tend not to want to repeat and Jewish communities where the condition is prevalent have implemented a scheme to minimize the likelihood. For any heritable condition, it's better to get an accurate diagnosis if available - to target therapy if available.

Anyway Alma Mater duly appointed the new E.O. who came qualified in cytogenetics, so he could, at a minimum, count human chromosomes in human cells and determine whether there was an extra Chr21 in the mix. If you think that's as easy as falling off a log, remember that up until Tjio and Levan (1956) Everybody Knew, erroneously that, like gorilla and chimpanzee, humans had 48 chromosomes! The new E.O. had no particular aptitude for business, so the Clinical Genetics Testing Unit (which was supposed to tap a market several multiples of an E.O. salary) was still-born. The E.O. was a permanent position, and the incumbent contributed a good deal to the intellectual life of the college - notably in poetry and a rigorously defended Catholicism. The alpha-males just had to chew their beards in frustration at the ruins of their imperial ambitions.

A few years later in the mid-1990s, that E.O. salary was dangled in front of me when I was aspiring to provide another sort of niche infra-structural service aka INCBI for the country. The salary was also dangled in front of at least two, smart but salary-challenged, friends of mine who are now full-professors rather than E.Os. My business sense, not to mention my killer instinct and alpha-maleness was equally deficient. As dierector and sole-employee of INCBI, I was presented with a challenge "IF, as you claim, your infra-structural expertise is so valuable to Irish science, THEN you should be able to persuade your salary from the numerous beneficial clients". That never happened, and the alphas were unable to Lady Macbeth me into, like, murdering my colleague for his job. Accordingly I slipped sideways into a, not particularly effective, research role until the money ran out after the crash in 2012 and then I started Bloggin' for The Institute.  The E.O. trundled on until, eventually, in due course, in the fullness of his years, he retired. I'm delighted that, as well as an E.O. there is now a Senior E.O.in the department who is doing more or less exactly what I should have been doing 25 years ago . . . and doing it was a lot more drive, talent and engagement than I could ever manage.

I guess my point is that, whatever your talents [borned] and toolkit [learned], you need a bit of luck and timing to make it. 'make it' should therefore be own-self defined broadly or most of us gonna fail.