Dr. Steve McKnight is President of the American Society For Biochemistry And Molecular Biology and chairman of the biochemistry department at the University of Texas-Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. He has probably also made a few enemies among young researchers in the society he manages. 

In a recent column at the ASBMB website he launched a SCUD missile at the current generation of biomedical scientists, stating that "the average scientist today is not of the quality of our predecessors" and that well-funded government biomedical research attracts riff-raff who never would have survived as scientists in the 1960s and 1970s because of the funds.

Well, he isn't wrong that there is a lot more money in academia today. Sometimes it is hilarious, like when physics professor Paul Frampton of UNC Chapel Hill, a public school, wanted a raise on his $107,000 annual salary because it was only 18th out of 28 in pay in his department. Yes, just one department at one public school had a guy making $107,000, and he was in the bottom half and complaining about it even though he was sitting in an Argentinian jail collecting a check.

But McKnight had some valid points. Some people are reactionary about it - as expected, they want to indict him using a social justice prism rather than a science one - but the criticisms he levels are not a one-off. There are a whole lot of biomedical researchers who feel the same way.

I wrote in detail on the subject at Genetic Literacy Project, which if you don't follow in order to stay up-to-date with all things biological, well, you should.

Beware of the biomedical industrial complex by Hank Campbell, Genetic Literacy Project