Derek Lowe on open office designs:
Here’s a useful rule: whenever someone tries to tell you that you don’t understand about this new generation, because they’re so totally different, which makes them act so totally differently than anyone older - you’re being sold something. Marketers absolutely love to pretend that this is how the world works, as do many varieties of consultant, because it gives them a chance to sell their hot, happening expertise that you don’t have, you see, because you’re behind the times.
Derek Lowe points our attention to a Financial Times article about Pfizer and AstraZeneca:
The prevailing wisdom in the Anglo-Saxon world over the past 35 years has been that boards should simply respond to what they perceive their shareholders’ wishes to be. But this is incorrect.
Directors have wider responsibilities on which they should reflect before making any recommendation about a company’s future. Legally, their duties under the Companies Act are not simply to snap to attention when shareholders whistle.
If you follow me on Twitter, you probably know that my stream is generally sparse except for early morning weekend reading. I’m a big fan of Zite and it’s still going strong. Here’s what I enjoyed this weekend.
A New Life
Life in Puritan New England was so hard that children who were abducted by Native Americans often refused to come back.
The Weirdest Things You Never Knew About the Making Of Flash Gordon
Derek Lowe on YCombinator’s change of heart for funding biotech:
There’s a lot of criticism being thrown back and forth here, with people coming down hard on the Ycombinator stuff (naive, underfunded, etc.), and the folks there saying that they’re being singled out mostly because they’re not members of the club. Problem is, none of these complaints (from either side) are unfounded. I myself am not quite so sure about all these dramatic cost savings - all the work I’ve been in on has been, sooner or later, hideously expensive.
Derek Lowe:
So take a look at the stories you’re reading on the drug: if they mention this issue, good. If they just talk about what a promising drug for breast cancer palbociclib is, then that reporter (and that news outlet) is not providing the full story.
This is why I don’t waste time reading news stories about “promising results” for any technology. The problem isn’t specific to pharmaceuticals, it’s specific to news outlets.
I really identify with this passage by Shara Yurkiewicz:
A good friend of mine espouses the philosophy, “Life is an ocean.” When we’re sailing across its surface, we tend to overlook its depth. Instead, we focus on eddies that propel us in a particular direction. The small surface changes are often what we feel most.
Turns Out™ the tomato and hot pepper are pretty closely related but by a fortuitous circumstance, we get two distinct fruit. Look for genetically enhanced hot peppers in the near future.
By way of ScienceMag
From the MIT Technology Review:
Every five minutes, it searches twitter for several hundred set phrases that tend to correspond to any of the usual tired arguments about how global warming isn’t happening or humans aren’t responsible for it.
I don’t understand the point.
Arguing with people that clearly do not believe in science will produce no viable fruit. A better approach may be to search for Tweets that are asking for information about various theories or data sets and provide links.
Derek Lowe once again provides a well thought perspective on the FDA letter. He narrows in on some of the specific details:
Moreover, the FDA wants to judge not the analytic validity of the tests, whether the tests accurately read the genetic code as the firms promise (already regulated under the CLIA) but the clinical validity, whether particular identified alleles are causal for conditions or disease.
Remember, Derek works in the pharmaceutical industry as a scientist.
From In The Pipeline:
This doesn’t mean that each patient benefits a little but rather that 82 will receive no prognostic benefit. The fact that no other cholesterol lowering drug has shown a benefit in terms of mortality supports the hypothesis that the benefits of statins are independent of their effects on cholesterol.
Derek’s comment hits at the heart of quick, media friendly health recommendations:
You’d think that there would be nothing more well worked-out than the role of different kinds of diets in heart disease, but the closer you look, the messier the situation is.
