>Companies need to make money off of those investments so the compounds that do succeeded might become insanely expensive. The entire process is pretty backward

>Companies need to make money off of those investments so the compounds that do succeeded might become insanely expensive. The entire process is pretty backwards and I know people who are biochemists in this field who get paid really shitty despite their important work. A lot of money goes to equipment, but a lot also goes to management and cronies in the shops that can fund this stuff. science staff being underpaid relative to the value they provide is the norm. everyone knows the scientists are there for the love of it. the equipment is pricey, sure. million dollar machines, yada yada yada. but the marketing budget is far higher than the r&d budget. it isn't even close. and yeah, it's a mess. from my experience on the inside, companies are willfully deceptive at all phases of the research and clinical trial process. failures are swept under the rug as much as humanly possible. especially if those failures endanger a real person. if a person gets hurt in a trial, i guarantee you that there was knowledge of the risk that was drastically downplayed. drug companies test tens of thousands of candidate drugs before moving to trials. in the last round of testing before trying to move to clinical trials, the drugs are typically very similar variants of each other. problems are found in most. the one candidate where problems aren't found, likely by luck, is the one that advances. survivorship bias is intentionally played up as evidence of validity. then, of course, the "black swan" negative event happens. stock price plummets. cue statements regarding how much they care about trial patients, and the problem couldnt have been foreseen, etc etc. but they knew all along that it would happen. it was happening to mice with the drug's sibling candidates which didn't make it to the clinic.