Biotech Values

[biocqr]

Academic bias & biotech failures

Interesting blog post by a partner in a biotech venture fund...

snip...

The unspoken rule is that at least 50% of the studies published even in top tier academic journals – Science, Nature, Cell, PNAS, etc… – can’t be repeated with the same conclusions by an industrial lab. In particular, key animal models often don’t reproduce. This 50% failure rate isn’t a data free assertion: it’s backed up by dozens of experienced R&D professionals who’ve participated in the (re)testing of academic findings. This is a huge problem for translational research and one that won’t go away until we address it head on.

Reality is we live in a tournament model world of academic research: winners get the spoils, losers get nothing. Publish or peril. Grants are really competitive, and careers are on the line. Only positive findings are typically published, not negative ones. This pressure creates a huge conflict of interest for academics, and a strong bias to write papers that support the hypotheses included in grant applications and prior publications. To think there is only objectivity in academic research, and pervasive bias in industry research, is complete nonsense.

http://lifescivc.com/2011/03/academic-bias-biotech-failures/