Making Money from Honesty, Consumer Reports for Scientific Consumers

What if you didn't have to make anyone happy with your research? What if you ran a small laboratory with about 10 really smart scientists who conduct research according to a well defined philosophy of science? That means no long winded narratives about your awesome pipeline. You are developing a biotechnology company that sells a service. Research! I am not talking about a CRO here. I am talking about a company that has no bias other than to tell the truth. Who needs such a company?

Those who are embarrassed by the scandals taking place at their organization.
Those who have to retract papers when their chosen peers are led astray.
Those who want to invest in a company but are only getting the input of the people trying to get their money.

How do you make money from a company trying to sell unbiased evaluations? Sell your service. Finance auditing services make money. Why couldn't a science auditing company make money? If it is true that one trillion dollars, (274 million dollars a day) was lost in the past decade on research then we have a business model. One of our original American entrepreneurs, Ben Franklin, told us that a penny saved is a penny earned. We could have earned a whole lot of pennies from that past decade. Of course that money wasn't really lost. It was earned by people who would love to see us continue down the path we are on. David Sinclair is an example. What about those who lost money, such as Roche did with Sinclair? Would they do anything different if they could?

Unlike computer science, engineering or physics, the life sciences do not always have clearly defined tests that lead to predictable outcomes. Medical science is at best soft. At its worst it is a bunch of misleading sciency nonsense that looks for the suckers who are born every minute. The old logic is that the nonsense is snuffed out by wise investors or a team of high powered scientists and lawyers working on the due diligence for a new partnership. That hasn't worked. The product/service of our business model must focus here. Why can't those who are suppose to catch the nonsense do so? How can we succeed where they fail? We will replace faith based methods such as peer review and return to empiricism. The scientific method will be a guiding light.

No matter how good you are in businessman, you can't be an honest success selling broken mouse traps. You can be a dishonest success but those are the guys who profited from the $Trillion dollar loss of others peoples money in the past decade. We are working against them. They have been winning. As of late however we are starting to see new weapons against the Cargo Cults of research. Original online creations like Retraction Watch are pulling the curtain back on the secretive world of research Wizards of Oz. There is a changing attitude towards science. It is fallible. However there is a possibility that Retraction Watch will run it's course and become boring without a greater cause. Abnormal Science blog will start to appear as repetitive because science will always have a dishonest population. The good must also be pointed out as well as the bad, just as it is in the automobile consumer reports. Pointing out that the Honda Accord has bad breaks, for example, is considered useful among car buyers. That doesn't mean that the Honda Accord isn't a nice car, it is. The same may go for a particular field of research or a drug candidate. There may be a highly effective antibody drug available for partnership but it comes with manufacturing issues such as low expression. These are issues that management, investors and future scientists and engineers of the project should know about prior to joining the effort.

Instead of forming an antibody company or an RNAi company, start a research company. Before putting anything on the market, develop the product/service. Like any biotech company, that means spending time establishing the company structure, mission, and financials. Methods must be put in place so that evidence or data isn't accepted without sound basis. Personal relationships must be healthy. Checks and balances can trump supervisors and annual reviews. Ultimately, there must be tests. That means a separate group will offer up several cases each year that should come up as nonsense (a negative control). A positive control will also be required. Each group must specialize in the ways of Cargo Cults.

Human beings have been trying to distinguish shit from shinola. since the dawn of time. We are all consumers of science whether we know it or not. We need better stewards of the information that is out there. Can those stewards be a for-profit organization?