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by cage433 2985 days ago
Nope - that's not true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_research#Privately_(in...

Private R&D is around 60% - however a large part of that is making minor changes to existing molecules in order to obtain fresh patents.The bigger, riskier research is done by the NIH and other publicly funded bodies. See

https://marianamazzucato.com/entrepreneurial-state/

Also - the quality of privately funded research is much worse, with non-reporting of negative results, data dredging and other dodgy activities being routine - see

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Pharma

2 comments

Intriguing. I've often speculated about how private sector research compared with public research, especially in the context of the reproducibility crisis since I assumed that a lot of pharma companies knew that some research couldn't be replicated behind closed doors. I wonder what the quality of proprietary / unreleased studies is- do the links you provide take that into account?
It compares badly. Unfortunately too much private research is allowed to be kept secret - but what is known indicates it's of poorer quality - judged by the kind of metrics the Cochrane Institute use.

Goldacre's book (he also has a blog) is well worth reading - describing _many_ ways in which drug companies can cheat.

Your source is all medical research. Not biotech specifically.