How are we led astray? or: The R&D Game
You have an idea, formulate a hypothesis and write a grant proposal. Because you have to sell yourself (the timid don’t get funding) you make great predictions. Pharma latches onto it because it sounds promising (“Wow, if that is true, then we get this!”—with a very small ‘if’). The first results are not discouraging and soon get spun into something encouraging. You continue to build the castle in the air: stronger compounds now get roped in for development until the whole thing blows up leaving everybody with egg on their face. Why? Because the right question was never asked. People mistake hypotheses for textbook truths and with pressure from shareholders or short-term grants, further indications are not followed up. Nobody knows what really causes depression. No one, not even a Nobel Prize winner. Nobody has asked the right question and so people have tried to cure a disease which they don’t understand. As someone once said: It is like taking antacids for stomach cancers. Or aspirin for the flu. Only more damaging for some.
Science is about the art of asking the right questions—or should be.
Dangerous game? Sure thing, R&D is a high-risk business. Most of their stuff doesn’t work out, so the little that does has to prop up the entire industry megalith.
And the regulators? It takes high-level experts to understand this stuff. The majority of these will have some industry involvement. They get to review selected reports, not the raw data. The only way around this is to demand openness at source which some journals now start to do: future studies have to be registered with the journal to which they will be submitted for review and all data will have to be made available on line (that is revolutionary and it will make everybody’s lives easier, including that of the researchers shredding their nails during these studies—no more secrets!)
I have a phone appointment with my lawyer in 15 minutes. It made me reflect on my career and the games we all played, in another life. The Nervous Breakdown Manual has been taken offline (censorship?) I’m cross-posting this here because I need to get this off my chest.
Tags: Neither here nor there, Tag Index
Denni