Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

I like this passage from the LA Times profile of Dr. Lynch:

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A few years ago, a huge amount of effort was spent researching the then-thought marvelous qualities of a humble molecule called nitric oxide. This molecule, better-known in the broader world as the key element in laughing gas, was celebrated as a vital actor in human memory and cognition.

Science Magazine, as if honoring a rock star or president, put the thing on its cover and declared it Molecule of the Year.

By the end of the next year, nitric oxide had fallen off the end of the Earth. Little of what had been claimed on its behalf turned out to be true. This was but one example in a long, sad tradition of a science, as if gripped by mass hysteria, going off the deep end and pretending it knew how to swim.

There was no guarantee, neuroscientist Gary Lynch liked to say, that something was important just because you happened to study it.
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