Interesting article from Scientific American (which I viewed as a sacred text when I was you): how-drug-company-money-undermining-science. Sort of an investigative journalism take on the ideas of conflict and research. Easy to get excited about, but hardly news nor possibly the most pressing problem. Lots of the activity of academic research in medicine is problematic. Sure, for-profit interests funding 'independent' researchers on one hand and directly paying them on the other has literally changed the face of medical practice. But the institutions themselves are bound up tightly, as well. For every dollar that gets paid for research anywhere from $0.25 to $1.50 go to 'overhead,' meaning the institution itself. And as companies often pay higher overhead rates, there is plenty of graft to go around. As this article suggests (but avoids investigating) the way in which money is dolled out by the government, the 'public' funding of research is hardly different. The folks who control the 'advisory' boards are able to continue to feed funding to favored colleagues and projects. Really innovation from unknown investigators is highly unlikely to be funded. So the vast majority of research amounts to simply reproducing the existing paradigm. This is despite hundreds of billions of dollars spend in cancer, for instance, that have produces few real, substantial changes at the clinical level.
The culture of medical research isn't bad or good, it merely is unreasonable when evaluated against its stated aims. And no one is in charge of it, there is no single 'source' nor accountable person, group, nor entity. Change will come from the margins, as it always does. That's why I like it out there. Lonely, but almost unfettered.
