3 ms·

Actually, and this is very surprising, most multi-billion dollar biopharmaceutical companies do not have access to scientific literature. I have several friend

Actually, and this is very surprising, most multi-billion dollar biopharmaceutical companies do not have access to scientific literature. I have several friends that work in big Pharma (Merck, Pfizer, etc). The common scientist working there has zero access to scientific literature. They routinely read abstracts from Pubmed and then guess about the methods/results based on the abstract. Scary, but true. Management at big Pharma has effectively gutted R&D because it is too expensive.

mechanical_fish 15y ago
If true - and you'll forgive me if I haven't yet picked my jaw up off the floor - this is the biggest argument for open publishing that I've seen yet. The situation is way worse than I thought.
- polyfractal 15y ago
  Yeah, I was aghast when I found out about this. Perhaps it is just the departments that my friends work in, but I've seen similar murmurings on the internet. I actually found out because I wanted to build a startup that used biomedical literature and biopharmaceutical companies. I basically axed the idea after talking to my friends. To be fair, the decision to cut R&D in big Pharma is unrelated to the decision to remove literature subscriptions. It is just one of the strings of mismanagement episodes that pharma has performed. If anyone is interested, this thread at SA is pure gold: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3392095 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=339... In particular, these are some quality posts to show the absolute inane nature of big Pharma: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3392095&userid=88303#post391027870 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=339... http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3392095&userid=88303&perpage=40&pagenumber=2#post391839338 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=339... http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3392095&userid=88303&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post396959465 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=339... http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3392095&userid=88303#post390753214 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=339... http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3392095&userid=88303#post390934169 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=339...
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    Is it mismanagement? The medium term outlook of the pharma industry is not that good. This is true for various reasons - a lot of low hanging fruit has been plucked, regulatory requirements are becoming more burdensome, political risk is high, and older (read: out of patent) drugs are increasingly competing with newer drugs. Under these circumstances, it just seems like a good idea to cut back on R&D and focus on exploiting existing revenue streams. I've advocated that a lot of other companies in other industries should do this as well (e.g., MS should scrap Bing, pay dividends, and shareholders can spend the dividends on GOOG if they want a long position in search).
    - polyfractal 15y ago
      It's a complex problem to be sure, and not entirely mismanagement. In some cases it is, like the links I posted. E.g: -Where one successful project is put on hold so the scientist can prove to management the dud is really a dud. -Or another where his project was simultaneously outsourced to India, which failed. But it made management look bad, so they wrote it off his department's expenses. When their formulation worked, it was rejected because it was over-budget per/pill (but only because the India outsourcing was added to their tab), otherwise they would have been fine. Other times it's just the pharma ecosystem - I wrote about this a few weeks ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3376428 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3376428 I think the big problem with exploiting existing revenue streams is that A) most of the blockbusters developed last decade are going off patent very soon, with nothing to replace them and B) you can only develop so many "reformulations" before people realize what is going on. Pharma is going to hit a point in the very near future where their revenue drops by multiple-billions. They are scared silly over this (rightfully so). I see two options: 1) Actually start doing science again, instead of firing scientists and reformulating the same pills over and over. This isn't going to happen and the time to do it was ten years ago. They are way behind the curve now. 2) Embrace the fact they are glorified marketing firms, fire all their scientists and use their accumulated wealth to purchase drugs from small companies, then push them through clinical trials. They also need to stop thinking about blockbuster hits - those days are over. This is basically what you are suggesting. Realistically, Pharma is moving towards option 2. But they are moving towards it so slowly that they are cannibalizing themselves along the way. It is never pleasant to realize your model is obsolete, but the days of Big Pharma and billion dollar blockbusters is (probably) over.

mechanical_fish 15y ago

If true - and you'll forgive me if I haven't yet picked my jaw up off the floor - this is the biggest argument for open publishing that I've seen yet. The situation is way worse than I thought.

polyfractal 15y ago
Yeah, I was aghast when I found out about this. Perhaps it is just the departments that my friends work in, but I've seen similar murmurings on the internet. I actually found out because I wanted to build a startup that used biomedical literature and biopharmaceutical companies. I basically axed the idea after talking to my friends. To be fair, the decision to cut R&D in big Pharma is unrelated to the decision to remove literature subscriptions. It is just one of the strings of mismanagement episodes that pharma has performed. If anyone is interested, this thread at SA is pure gold: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3392095 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=339... In particular, these are some quality posts to show the absolute inane nature of big Pharma: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3392095&userid=88303#post391027870 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=339... http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3392095&userid=88303&perpage=40&pagenumber=2#post391839338 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=339... http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3392095&userid=88303&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post396959465 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=339... http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3392095&userid=88303#post390753214 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=339... http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3392095&userid=88303#post390934169 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=339...
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  Is it mismanagement? The medium term outlook of the pharma industry is not that good. This is true for various reasons - a lot of low hanging fruit has been plucked, regulatory requirements are becoming more burdensome, political risk is high, and older (read: out of patent) drugs are increasingly competing with newer drugs. Under these circumstances, it just seems like a good idea to cut back on R&D and focus on exploiting existing revenue streams. I've advocated that a lot of other companies in other industries should do this as well (e.g., MS should scrap Bing, pay dividends, and shareholders can spend the dividends on GOOG if they want a long position in search).
  - polyfractal 15y ago
    It's a complex problem to be sure, and not entirely mismanagement. In some cases it is, like the links I posted. E.g: -Where one successful project is put on hold so the scientist can prove to management the dud is really a dud. -Or another where his project was simultaneously outsourced to India, which failed. But it made management look bad, so they wrote it off his department's expenses. When their formulation worked, it was rejected because it was over-budget per/pill (but only because the India outsourcing was added to their tab), otherwise they would have been fine. Other times it's just the pharma ecosystem - I wrote about this a few weeks ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3376428 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3376428 I think the big problem with exploiting existing revenue streams is that A) most of the blockbusters developed last decade are going off patent very soon, with nothing to replace them and B) you can only develop so many "reformulations" before people realize what is going on. Pharma is going to hit a point in the very near future where their revenue drops by multiple-billions. They are scared silly over this (rightfully so). I see two options: 1) Actually start doing science again, instead of firing scientists and reformulating the same pills over and over. This isn't going to happen and the time to do it was ten years ago. They are way behind the curve now. 2) Embrace the fact they are glorified marketing firms, fire all their scientists and use their accumulated wealth to purchase drugs from small companies, then push them through clinical trials. They also need to stop thinking about blockbuster hits - those days are over. This is basically what you are suggesting. Realistically, Pharma is moving towards option 2. But they are moving towards it so slowly that they are cannibalizing themselves along the way. It is never pleasant to realize your model is obsolete, but the days of Big Pharma and billion dollar blockbusters is (probably) over.