After Climategate is was obvious that big Science in general needed to be reformed. The article in question mentions “greed” and “commercial considerations” of the drug companies – but western science funding changed from funding interesting projects to requiring a link between the grant money and some oblicatory issue or problem that needed to be addressed – hence any time you could link your work to the energy crisis, economics or climate catastrophe the money would flow. This needs to change – now.
Removing federal money from the equation likely would allow the market to do its job and we likely would see meaningful reform enacted pretty quickly. With regards to the FDA, obviously that will be a more difficult nut to crack. Perhaps the FDA is like NASA in that a culture of risk avoidance has smothered and overwhelmed opportunities for meaningful progress.
After Climategate is was obvious that big Science in general needed to be reformed. The article in question mentions “greed” and “commercial considerations” of the drug companies – but western science funding changed from funding interesting projects to requiring a link between the grant money and some oblicatory issue or problem that needed to be addressed – hence any time you could link your work to the energy crisis, economics or climate catastrophe the money would flow. This needs to change – now.
Removing federal money from the equation likely would allow the market to do its job and we likely would see meaningful reform enacted pretty quickly. With regards to the FDA, obviously that will be a more difficult nut to crack. Perhaps the FDA is like NASA in that a culture of risk avoidance has smothered and overwhelmed opportunities for meaningful progress.