"Big pharma" is changing and devoting fewer resources to scientists, for various reasons. Drugs companies have woken up to the idea of licensing agreements, where they can pay smaller biotechnology companies to develop potential treatments at a fraction of the cost.
I think it’s more apt to say: Big Pharma has recognized that it makes economic sense to offload some of the cost of research failures to bagholder biotech investors, who have a nearly unlimited appetite for chasing the promise of newfangled technologies.
“The efficient-market hypothesis may be the foremost piece of B.S. ever promulgated in any area of human knowledge!”