[POWERfan]

>This press release is equivalent to "Scientists Cures Diabetes in Mice" - a breakthrough that happens about a half dozen times a year but has still yet to make it from the lab to the FDA.

Chip manufacturers like Intel and IBM have regularly made good on promises of exponential progress for at least a half century. Comparing them to press release-pushing biomedical researchers is tantamount to a slur.

[avz]

Nitpick:

> Comparing them [chip manufacturers] to press release-pushing biomedical researchers is tantamount to a slur.

No, it isn't. Slower progress in biomedical research isn't a result of biomedical researchers exhibiting any of the qualities whose unwarranted attribution normally constitutes slur. It is the result of much greater complexity, lower predictability, higher safety requirements and weaker human understanding of biological systems compared to semiconductors.

[vegabook]

The point is that most semiconductor predictions come true, whereas biomed predictions are much less reliable. Unfortunately, that is a reflection on the latter's practitioners as they are aware of their poor odds yet still publish.

[mikeyouse]

I think this is unfair. Scientists often have a narrow-scope breakthrough in an extremely technical area and when they're asked to dumb it down for a wider audience, the tech press / university PR team runs wild. Something like curing diabetes is going to taken hundreds or thousands of small incremental improvements and breakthroughs so when they say "Could lead to a cure!!" they're usually correct but the nuance is often missed.

[vegabook]

There is no excuse for publishing anything that does not stand up to replicability and a significantly high enough threshold chance that published prediction will be realised. Hence the OP is correct in pointing out the unfairness of equating comparatively reliable semiconductor process improvement predictions with the relative dartboard that is biotech.

If third parties ("PR") hijack the truth, it is up to the researcher publicly to denounce them.

If, as I suspect, such denunciation is bad for a researcher's funding, then we have a problem in research, if indeed, in such circumstances, it can even be called research (as opposed to, say, "marketing").

Clearly biotech is a younger field than semiconductors, and it should be given a wide berth to make mistakes without prejudice, but that does not exonerate it from explicitly communicating the expected uncertainty of its results.

[Crito]

The issue is less the progress of biomedical researchers, moreso the discrepancy between the headlines and the actual results.

Most of the blame lies with the scientific press, but the researchers don't seem to mind it all that much either. Misleading or overly-optimistic press releases written by university personal are also the source of much of it.

[joshuapants]

> Misleading or overly-optimistic press releases written by university personal are also the source of much of it.

Whatever it takes to get those sweet, sweet grant dollars

[ceequof]

Color me astonished that a brand new account named POWERfan is vigorously defending IBM in a online discussion forum.