>In the case of consumer goods, where adapting to
>customer feedback is a large part of the process,
>private applied research is probably a lot more
>flexible. But consumer feedback is not an issue in
>drug development - it's simply a matter of finding
>"the best drug".
If only it were. It takes time to do that, and results are often ambiguous. But when you have MegaPharmaCorp flying docs to conferences in Aruba in February, salespeople lining up at the door (do they still call them detail men? detail persons?), patients reciting ads they've seen on TV ("ask your doctor about..."), standards can get cloudy. And if the authors of medical journal articles are secretly funded by MegaPharmaCorp, things get even cloudier.
Doug