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In grad school now, connected to the hip with a biochemist pharmaceutical researcher
I'm doing some onsite education at his work, a fairly large pharmaceutical powerhouse.
Anyways, one night we go out for a bite to eat, and out of no where, he starts spilling the beans on why I should reconsider my professional direction since "my future will be dictated on publishing ability."
Drops other things too
>the head of the independent review board (IRB) of the medication Pradaxa was also iemployed in operations with the very pharmaceutical company that now sells and profits from this drug
>medications about to enter generic, close to having exclusive intellectual patent rights, need us to change the formulary ever so slightly to change 1-2 mechanisms, whether onset or duration or something, to extend patent rights and allow sale price to remain high
>that I'll have to learn really quick to hunt for my p values, if I can't prove statistical significance, I might as well manipulate the data to get significance. We lose funding if we don't produce results"
I'm not sure how other fields operate in this realm of ethics, but going into big pharma with hopes of doing research, should I believe my mentor completely?
(Srs)
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Are you looking to stay in academia?
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>>9171527
I'd like to contribute and get published myself, it'd be nice (but not to spearhead designing research, or navigating through IRBs)
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>>9171536
Every department has slightly differences in pressure and this still varies wildly from University to university. But the problem as a whole across universities is a publish or perish attitude. It makes sense however. You write grants to get money then use that money to generate research which the funders use as some form of advertising or to show they know how to pick worth while researchers or for supporting documentation for patents. My advisor got pretty wrapped up with his brain child and BASF and did some rather questionable things and still is but that's not why I stayed out of academia, I just want to work and discover, I don't want to write gay ass proposals or papers all the time, I just want to tell the superiors "X and Y worked, z didn't, see you next week for the next update"
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>>9171545
I think I'm more inclined to head towards a direction similar to you then, I guess I'll have to experience first hand and watch how the wheels turn in this process.
I guess I forgot to add that apparently everything is "connected and in sync."
Granted I'm just hearing this from 1 guy, but pharmaceuticals donate a few million to medical schools every year, the professors of these schools advocate for the drugs provided by the pharmaceutical company subsidizing them, the FDA has employees that also work in pharmaceuticals and these people weasel into IRB and possibly number manipulate.
It all seems like a big conspiracy, but if anyone can vouche please do.
And thx for vouching on the state of academia
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>>9171576
It's a shitty state that academia is in. The funding climate is also awful. That's what stopped me. It's sad because I love the shit out of universities as an idea.
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>tfw just started grad school
>trying to pick between two guys, one who works on antimalarials and one who works on rare earth nanoparticles in bacteria
I know both of them are funded, but I know the former dude is consistently funded every year and he's a safe pick. But I dunno, I feel like people want me to stay in academia for the PhD (working on my masters atm), and yet I feel like industry might be better for me.
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