Bad News for Evidenced-Based Medicine
Bruce Booth, a venture capitalist explains the perils of investing in companies whose products are based on scientific discoveries published in academic journals.
The unspoken rule is that at least 50% of the studies published even in top tier academic journals – Science, Nature, Cell, PNAS, etc… – can’t be repeated with the same conclusions by an industrial lab. In particular, key animal models often don’t reproduce. This 50% failure rate isn’t a data free assertion: it’s backed up by dozens of experienced R&D professionals who’ve participated in the (re)testing of academic findings. This is a huge problem for translational research and one that won’t go away until we address it head on.
Competition for grants and careers that depend on published research often tempt academic researchers to manipulate their experiments. The data from these experiments are often sold to Biotech companies who try to commercialize the discovery made in academic laboratories. The biotech’s industrial scientists find they cannot reproduce the experiments and get the same results.
I believe this is consistent with all the previous news.
It’s amazing how millions of dollars are wasted through efforts to commercialize bogus research. Awhile back I was friends with a drug researcher who worked with animal models. She said if you have to use sophisticated statistics to show an effect, then your effect isn’t strong enough to bring a drug to market. If there’s a reproducible effect, you should be able to prove it using simple math.
i agree with Joe and Buster. All of the evidence on EMRs looks bleak.
Add this seems to reaffirm the previous bad news.
I wonder of biotech firms might begin demanding certain research standards before investing. It would seem like a sensible thing to do prior to purchasing research.
Alex, first of all I wneatd to say thank you for the timely reply. I also wneatd to inform you that the VBA contacted Wounded Warrior regarding my case yesterday and stated that an advance decision on my entry into VocRehab was granted and placed in my file. The wording of ?advance? in the statement is what threw The Wounded Warrior Foundation and I off track. Apparently this is a somewhat normal method to deliver a ruling on VocRehab eligibility, by awarding VocRehab services and referrals to VocRehab before the claim is finished. As government red-tape would have it, I am not allowed to use the VocRehab services until my claim is officially finished. To sum matters up, different departments of the VBA work on different matters and some finish before others. Regarding the ?Letter of Presumption? for federal employment, you and others are 100% correct that no such letter exists and a Veteran cannot claim points toward federal employment until the claim is finished. Unfortunately, I was duped into believing so by a federal employment recruiter who is not a Veteran himself. In closing, I wneatd to say thanks to you and everyone else that has looked into this matter for me and have a great week.
A pharmacologist from the research field told me that the FDA doesn’t liked transformed data. Companies that submit this kind of data are going to be flagged, and probably denied permission to proceed.