Now here is a website that
should chill the marrow of all those grad students working hard on their PhDs. Innocentive
is an online company that proposes to solve problems by crowd sourcing. This
apparently includes complex scientific problems involved in drug discovery and
development since the company includes Eli Lilly among its clients. Here is how
it works. Clients (Seekers) can post ‘challenges’ via Innocentive. People
(Solvers) can then respond to the challenge with their ideas. If a successful
solution is provided the Solver gets a prize- whoopee!
Seemingly the client
companies involved seem to think that instead of long term hiring of expensive
scientific staff, they can cherry pick new technologies by offering booby
prizes of a few hundred or a few thousand dollars. So who needs PhDs- maybe Joe
the Plumber can come up with your next research breakthrough!
Outsourcing of research to
China and India is bad enough, but this is worse. In this race to the bottom
the desire to minimize costs is eviscerating the scientific and technological
capabilities of the American pharmaceutical industry. By not investing in
research Big Pharma is on the path of slow motion suicide.
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