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by ramanujan
4891 days ago
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I remember reading an academic article that showed how the
real cost was almost always 1/20 of that
This is the Light and Warburton study. The short answer is
that it's kind of like a freshman saying "I could build Facebook overnight" by wgetting Facebook's CSS/JS. But for anyone in engineering who knows what FB's backend infrastructure is like, they know it would be nontrivial to clone FB.The best response to Light and Warburton is that if it really took only $43 million to ship a drug, then they should raise the capital and start a drug company. It would be by far the most capital-efficient and successful drug company of the last 50 years. If they have really figured out how to cut all the fat, they would be hailed throughout the industry. But I hope to persuade you that when someone outside the industry is off by two orders of magnitude ($43M vs. $4B), it is likely that they are the ones who have missed something important. I encourage you to read Derek Lowe's more detailed critique here: http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/03/07/the_costs_of... http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/03/08/that_43_mill... |
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