Steven McKnight

Steven McKnight
Institutions
Alma mater

Steven McKnight, Ph.D, is a professor and chair of the department of biochemistry at UT Southwestern. His research is in the area of transcriptional regulation.

McKnight received his bachelor's degree from University of Texas in 1974 and his PhD from University of Virginia in 1977.[1] He was an Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator from 1988 to 1992.[2]

Criticism

As president of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, McKnight published messages in the society's newsletter critical of young scientists, calling them "riff-raff" and saying that "The average scientist today is not of the quality of our predecessors”.[3] He complains that biomedical research now attracts researchers who “never would have survived as scientists in the 1960s and 1970s", and that the funding crisis can be attributed to the NIH review committees being “undoubtedly contaminated by riff-raff”.[4] The month prior, he had derided young scientists for being uninformed on the historic methods of biochemistry.[5] These opinions attracted media attention and criticism from many in the scientific community.[4]

Awards

References

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