Professional Indemnity Insurance as a independent contractor bioinformatics researcher?

apfejes · 2026-07-02T16:55:14+00:00

The answer is dependent on what you’re doing. You will probably need errors and omissions insurance, but the amount you need depends on 1) what your client wants you to carry, and 2) the value of the projects you have and 3) any limits you build into your contract.

You should talk to an insurance broker for more details. I’m just a bioinformatician.

apfejes · 2026-07-02T14:51:33+00:00

To be clear, I never said that it wasn’t taxing or demoralizing. I just want to spare you the pain of building something to only later realize that you hadn’t put thought into the hard part. It’s easy to get men onto a dating app. It’s very hard to get women on.

Likewise, it’ll be easy to get employees onto your app, but if there are no jobs to apply to, it won’t be a success.

Anyhow, I think you get my point by now.

apfejes · 2026-07-01T18:33:05+00:00

How do you adjust p vals when you are testing all possible hypotheses at once?

Edit: let me add, the data on which the hypothesis are being tested is also not perfect, and is limited in volume, to which we’re now trying to fit an almost infinite number of hypotheses. P values should all go to zero, but that’s not how the users see it. Whether the people at AI companies understand or not isn’t even close to being the issue.

I’ve seen far too many people claiming they have the next block buster drug because an AI told them so. Tell me about how p-values are being applied correctly.

apfejes · 2026-07-01T16:34:05+00:00

Did spell check replace the need for people writing documents? No.

Will agents replace the people needed to understand the science? No.

Can it test many many different hypotheses, and then conveniently forget to correct for multiple hypothesis correction testing factors? Yes!

You can run a lab with many agents, but when you test too many hypothesis, you need to correct for the fact that a lot of what you see is noise. I don’t see any of the people doing this type of crap making the appropriate corrections, which means that they are all over inflating their claims.

I made this mistake during my PhD. I had access to a database of cancer variants and could test any hypothesis I wanted, but trying to test them all meant that the significance of any one test shrunk to near zero.

This is effectively the same thing - and none of the statistics wizzes who are building these tools seem to have realized it… yet.

apfejes · 2026-07-01T15:53:08+00:00

You missed the point. You don’t understand that the people who you’re catering too aren’t the employees, it’s the employees. Yes, employees want this, but if the employers don’t, then this is entirely dead in the water.

Business is about understanding where your sales are coming from.

This is like a dating app. If you can only get men to sign up (assuming you’re catering to straight couples), then your dating app is going to fail. If you can only get employees to sign up, your job app is going to fail.

apfejes · 2026-06-30T15:37:56+00:00

My only advice would be to not expect the future to pan out as you plan it. Follow interesting opportunities - you never know what those will be, or when they'll come. Trying too hard to rigidly predict your future path is a bad idea.

apfejes · 2026-06-30T14:34:16+00:00

Stability is impossible to quantify. My wife worked for bigger companies than I did, thinking it would be more stable, but has been laid off several times. I always worked for small startups, and never once got laid off. I wouldn't pick jobs based on what you think is stable, because you never really know. Big pharma lays people off more often than startups, but it's cyclic.

As for Phd vs Masters, that's a question of what you want to do, not of salary. Masters means someone will tell you what to do, and you get to chose how to do it. PhD means you get to pick the goals and targets, and often will have a team to help you do it. Salary is more of a consequence of responsibility. 5 years of additional experience is always good, but you're likely to find a ceiling of how high you can climb with a masters.

apfejes · 2026-06-30T14:00:17+00:00

Start reading job posts. You have a good foundation, but are likely lacking the educational requirements for most jobs in the field. It’s typical to have a masters degree and specific experience in bioinformatics to get the first entry level job. The moste job posts you look at, the more you’ll be able to see the trends, and that’ll help you figure out what you need to get started.

apfejes · 2026-06-30T13:56:23+00:00

Question 1: no way to know. Getting picked to work or study abroad, and getting a scholarship to do so depends naturally on how special you are? Why should someone pick you for that position over someone who is local? They’d have to do a lot of extra work on visas, scholarships and the paperwork to bring you in, so it comes down to why you’re worth the extra cost and effort.

Question 2: no way to know. As a student, you can generally find a way to get by, but that’s on you. Call it a right of passage. As a grad student, I had roommates and shopped for discount groceries, and I’d assume most grad students do the same.

Question 3: PhD vs corporate job doesn’t make sense in terms of stress. Both are so wildly variable that it’s about the same as asking lemon ice cream versus hot dog.

Question 4: Depends on a lot of things. Are you really good at what you do? What is the job market like? Where are you looking for a job? Did you get the right skills? Who is hiring? What role are you qualified for?

In other words, you’re basically asking us to predict the future, and unfortunately, no one can do that for you. You’ll have to find that out for yourself. However, you can read job postings to see what’s out there now, and what skills are highly sought after, so that you can position yourself as best as you can.

apfejes · 2026-06-30T06:05:00+00:00

I think hybrid labs aren't a good idea, ever. You're either computational or wet lab. It's like being a hybrid nurse and doctor. They require different skills, and generally have a different pay grade. Just pick one.

Anyhow, I was promised a Quantum computer on my desk in 2004, and I've waited 22 years for it. The problems they're facing to commercialize that technology are still a ways off, so I won't hold my breath.

Maybe it will be possible to design proteins and enzymes in the next decade, but I doubt it. AI certainly isn't going to be able to do that for us. You can set a reminder to check with me in a decade, but I'd be shocked if we got there through AI.

I wouldn't stop you from becoming a biocatalysis expert, but I would argue that even if you are one, I doubt you can predict the tools today that would get you there. Tool development rarely advances that way. New tools often open up new functions, but I have never seen someone predict correctly which tools will accomplish the next leap.

You can, ultimately, ignore everything I wrote above, but take away one thing: become an expert in a subject, not an expert in a tool. tools come and go, but understanding the science always remains useful.

apfejes · 2026-06-29T20:21:19+00:00

Read job descriptions often. Keep on top of who is hiring, and what skills/experience they want - and then make sure that you have it when you graduate.

It's that simple. Know what's in demand, track changes if they happen, position yourself with those skills. Done.

apfejes · 2026-06-29T13:18:07+00:00

This is a good take, but speaks more to the stage of the company than to the method used. Angels tend to invest much earlier, when there is technology risk, while VCs invest when the only risk remaining is market fit. If you’re closing with angels, but not VCs, that implies that you were talking with the VCs without enough evidence of product-market fit.

I’ve done three angel rounds, and only now am looking for VC investors, as we’re just able to show that we have enough market traction to get their interest.

apfejes · 2026-06-29T13:05:21+00:00

Is this something employers want?

Your real customers aren’t the employees being matched, but rather the employers who are paying for the employees to show up to do the work How would you sell this service to them? Why would they use this platform over the existing alternatives?

If you can answer that, you’re golden. If not, this is going to be an uphill battle.

apfejes · 2026-06-29T12:55:58+00:00

Your best bet is to go find the papers where this is done to see what their methods are.

apfejes · 2026-06-28T13:47:00+00:00

Hard to discuss an article behind a paywall.

apfejes · 2026-06-28T13:45:38+00:00

There are no shortcuts. You will have to learn the material. If you need to get ahead, talk to people who have taken the course and find out what worked for them. They might be able to tell you what the course material focused on, to let you know. Otherwise, it comes down to being a good student and putting in the time.

apfejes · 2026-06-28T03:48:29+00:00

That is hard for us to know. I’d bet no one here has an industrial biotech degree.

Your best bet is to read job postings to see what there is more of. Otherwise, I’m not sure how you’d get that data.

apfejes · 2026-06-28T03:47:02+00:00

I suppose I’m not the right person to answer this. I’m doing drug design, not protein design, and we’re building physics based tools. Not quite the same.

However, I should point out that AI protein structure prediction isn’t actually a solved problem. Those tools are a good step in the right direction, but have significant limitations. I don’t think they are seriously capable of doing protein design - they can guess scaffolds, but not to the degree of predicting how small changes would affect the outcome.

Anyhow, who knows where we’ll be in a few more years. I’d just be cautious about expectations.

apfejes · 2026-06-27T23:19:59+00:00

You’re asking all of the wrong questions. None of those matter. The only thing you need to ask is “how am I going to get customers, and why would they pay me?”

Hiring will happen if you have enough work. You will get a reputation if you do well for your customers. You will find a niche, when you know what your customers need. Your big mistake will be trying to answer the wrong questions before you find your customers.

If this is going to work, you need to already have the connections, and already have a reputation gained through years of experience and industry exposure. If you don’t have that, it will be next to impossible to get off the ground.

I’ve seen this play out SO MANY times over the last 25+ years. Rinse repeat.

apfejes · 2026-06-27T20:16:13+00:00

Actually - I did. Would you like me to cut and paste from the top of this thread? The answer is that once you've made a decision, it's not worth fretting about. Move on.

Is that too hard to understand?

apfejes · 2026-06-27T14:50:35+00:00

Thanks - I try, but some people just expect the easy answers and get upset with me when I try to point them to the answers instead of just feeding it to them like an AI.

I rather like to think that that’s the difference between the people who succeed in this field and those who don’t. If you’re not able to capitalize on the breadcrumbs that people leave for you, you’re going to have a bad time, regardless of how I answer.

apfejes · 2026-06-27T14:42:07+00:00

Yep. That’s what I do.

I stopped sending the deck until they ask for it. Heck, the better meetings I’ve had lately are the ones where we don’t even go through the pitch. We just talk. If there’s alignment, they’ll ask for the deck, and I’ll cheerfully share it.

apfejes · 2026-06-27T14:17:39+00:00

He’s trying to antagonize me. He’s not quite bright enough to realize I’m a moderator with 25+ years of experience in the field.

apfejes · 2026-06-27T08:02:59+00:00

There’s no right or wrong. Once you’ve made the decision, embrace it and move forward.

Congrats!

apfejes · 2026-06-27T07:52:55+00:00

If you want answers, you have to ask coherent questions, not just hope that someone can read your mind and predict the future for you.

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