Continued from my previous post…
Myth 2: Industrial research environments are exclusively focused on generation of wealth. Any attempts to spend resources on longer-term scientific investments, fundamental research, altruistic projects, or efforts to publish scientific findings will be strongly discouraged.
I remember sitting down with a colleague who was in the midst of this decision and he perhaps best described his primary concern: “I am not sure I want to work for the man”. For a vast majority of scientists and engineers we often entered our respective fields because we thought we had the ability to contribute to a body of knowledge that would ultimately result in an improvement for humanity. The thought of working for a massive multi-national, which is often portrayed by the media as being concerned with the latest earnings per share, price-to-earnings ratio, and return on investment far above any good they may be doing, is repulsive. First, let me stress that the media representation of many corporations is just that – their representations. Inside the research divisions of many corporations, and particularly for Merck, which I have experienced first hand, it is utterly ridiculous to suggest that the motivations of the researchers are strictly financial. This is not to suggest that efficiency, cost-cutting where possible and adding financial value to products and services being developed is not a priority. But, it is often times not the primary driver. The primary driver is to deliver products and services with high added value – value that will self-justify the price paid. It’s true that corporations are producing profits, but the profits are not the end goal, they are more often the result of providing incredible value to society. Of course, the very optimistic view point I am expressing is hardly true for all corporations. Therefore, when debunking this myth I always state the stipulation that it’s extremely critical to research the corporations you’re considering joining. Each has its own approach, each has its own atmosphere, and each emphasizes different aspects of the business to drive and motivate their scientists and engineers. Ultimately, the best advice I can provide to any young researcher considering transitioning to industrial research is to interview with a minimum of three enterprises. Use those interviews to see for yourself the environment and people that would ultimately become your colleagues.
Myth 3 to follow shortly….
You say “The primary driver is to deliver products and services with high added value – value that will self-justify the price paid. It’s true that corporations are producing profits, but the profits are not the end goal, they are more often the result of providing incredible value to society”.....Really? I believe that there are people within each company that would love to produce compounds/products that benefit society. However, how do “me-too” drugs and the squelching of generics in non-competative markets work toward this end. It is these practices that help extend the belief that corporations are only in it for the money.
Craig,
Thanks for taking the time to respond to my post. You opened up a fairly complex issue that almost deserves to be included in the supplementary I’m working on for this blog post. But, let me respond briefly by citing two facts regarding the “me-too” drugs. First, as I stated from the beginning, I am not arguing that all corporate research centers are equally capable and of high-caliber, which can be measured by a variety of metrics. Similar to how now all peer-review papers are of similar impact (e.g., there’s a lot of junk that gets published, and I would even argue there are many more “me-too” papers that get published than drugs!). But, with that said, if you concentrate on the higher quality research centers, such as Merck, the “me-too” phenomena is minimal. Last year alone Merck released four vaccines, one of which, Gardasil (HPV vaccine), represents the first profound game-changing therapy in that clinical field. Simply take a look at the clinical classes that Merck is operating in and the therapies it offers and it would be hard to argue that we’re not bringing novel medicines to address unmet medical needs. Also, this is not only true for Merck, but also some of the other large pharmaceutical companies (Wyeth, Novartis, in particular), and biotechnology companies (e.g., Genentech). If you study the history of biotechnology you will find that Genentech was a pioneer in recombinant DNA technology, and the resulting therapies primarily focused in oncology have revolutionized treatment methodologies. Lastly, I would suggest that what many times society loses sight of is that the window of drug development is not finite. If you look in the recent edition of Business Week, there was an excellent article questioning the effectiveness of statins to lower LDL cholesterol and whether this translates to reduced risk for coronary events. Were the drug companies wrong to introduce this medical breakthrough nearly 20 years ago? I don’t think so, because we went with the best data available the time. Just as in all scientific disciplines where experiments are continuously refined and performed to test existing hypotheses, the same is true in pharmaceutical development. There will be revisions. Drugs once thought to be exceptionally therapeutic may in fact not be linked to the cause-effect relationship we thought we understood. This is part of the process.
More to follow…. and as I said, I’ll try to write this in a properly formatted blog with more thought and structure.
Cheers,
Manny