Leaps of interest and deep dives into niches are both one of the best ways to research and one of the worst to produce any useful output.

When upskilling my biology before university, I knew my love for 'research' exploration was not mirrored in my ability to document or share that research (usually in the form of a paper). Whether it was a theoretical 'I should bring pen to paper' thought whilst tunnelling through books, or even a document with a near finished draft that I left abandoned, my beginning to end process typically ended before any output.

Now I justified this with 'who needs to hear my thoughts?' or 'I'm not qualified enough to bring my take or even converge the opinions that others have stated', but really it was my way of not facing the fears- academic and emotional- of attempting to create some sort of public output.

I am determined to start early and young, in part because the best way to learn is to do in cases such as this, but also because even if my work now doesn't make any impact, my work now will make it easier to both get and do impactful work later (CV writing tends to require some concrete outputs rather than 'I love learning about x'). It is because of that commitment that I opened up a fresh google document (as I often have), compiled some sources on a topic (also a common occurrence), and then started writing.. and writing.. and editing, formatting, writing, researching, checking, writing. To end up with the form of a first draft. The actual 'stay on track' cohesion was lacking a bit (and so editing is now something to look forward to), but I was proud of being able to at least produce the output in my ideas and content, even if it wasn't yet ready to be seen by others.

I am still determined to finish this paper in some sort of rational time frame, but I also know I need to push myself so it doesn't just become another forgotten 'Todo' item. So my 'push' is to share the abstract and index from the paper out in the open.

The finished product won't be great, it probably won't even be good. It'll be read by maybe 2-3 friends and maybe someone will enjoy a paragraph or two, but I am at peace with this. The purpose of this paper is not to win a Nobel prize or even be published in any reputable journal (probably only on my blog and a forum), but instead it is the first paper in a large sequence that will one day be much better. I know this topic and this paper will not 'teach' me the art of scientific writing or 'choose' my career, but it will make it a bit easier to write the next one. Maybe after 4-5 papers I'll know how to format a reference, maybe after 10, I can start asking for a way to follow up on the topics such as interning in an adjacent project, and maybe after 20 I'll be invited to collaborate on a paper by those much more qualified than me. But we all start somewhere, and I start today with this:

Copy and Paste: exploiting vaccine templates

Template Vaccination and the likelihood of narrow-use countermeasure exploitation in Biosecurity by malicious actors.

Keywords: Global Catastrophic Biorisk, Narrow scope countermeasures, broad scope, template vaccination, malicious actor biological threats, bioweaponry

Abstract:

The potential for template vaccines to be purposefully exploited by malicious threat actors as a premise in biosecurity is a vital consideration in how effective they may be as a broad scope countermeasure to biological threats and extinction risks from malicious, accidental or natural risks from biological agents. 

Index:

Introduction

• What are GCBRs and biological risks
• Threat profile of malicious, accidental, natural and engineered biological agents
• Narrow vs Broad scope countermeasures

Template Vaccination

• Biological mechanism
• Current market
• Potential benefits

Cat and mouse defence

• Biosecurity threat actors
• Past exploitation
• Potential in template vaccination
• Copy and Paste
• Process of exploitation (overview due to information hazard concerns)
• Mitigation

Expert opinion

Conclusion