Size of spend by pharmaceutical firms does not necessarily indicate more or better R&D is going on. Factors that could reduce such spending without impacting r

Size of spend by pharmaceutical firms does not necessarily indicate more or better R&D is going on. Factors that could reduce such spending without impacting research output include: * Lower costs (e.g. salaries for early career researchers don't have to be as large to cover their university debt). * More research done in publicly funded universities or other research institutions (including where a pharma firm funds a project). * Better cooperation between companies (e.g. Research Council joint programmes). * Better controls against overspending on dead-ends (cultural or legal). * Different reporting on what, exactly, counts as "R&D" spending (e.g. does everything a researcher does at work count as Research? Does maintenance of research facilities count?) I'm not saying that all of these represent the actual difference. I'm just saying that using spend in a given sector as a proxy for output seems a bit odd.