The Internet lets people share the problems that are befuddling them. At the same time, the Internet allows for the dissemination of information for other people to solve those problems. And there's nothing stopping those people from connecting, other than the potential mistrust. I think one tantalizing idea is that we're moving towards a world where everyone (including companies) will share their information freely on the Internet. In other words, maybe everything will become open access. Nothing proprietary.
In the TED talk below, Don Tapscott tells the story of a gold prospector has collected a bunch of data on a geological site that he is evaluating. However, the geologists that he works with aren't able to locate the gold and aren't able to make recommendations as to where to start digging. So he thinks: maybe someone else would be able to figure it out. So he does something that is unheard of in business: he decides to publish his data online for everyone to see and held a competition for someone to locate the gold. The result? Someone found the gold, told him where to dig, and he made a bazillion dollars. Could he potentially have gotten scooped? Maybe someone would have sat on his result until the gold prospector gave up and sold his rights to the land, and then swooped in to grab the gold. But I think that's highly unlikely, since each person is competing against EVERYONE else on the Internet. If the malicious person decided to wait, then some other person would probably figure it out and then win his share of the gold in a FAIR manner. In this hypothetical Internet world where people freely share their "trade secrets," people who try to take advantage of other people will not thrive.
I think this is applicable to any field, especially science. If a PI needs something that doesn't exist yet but will likely require expertise outside their field, they currently have two options: hire a guy to work in the lab and develop it, or try to convince another specific PI to collaborate with them. The viability of both options is influenced by factors such as who is in your social network (i.e. having the right connections), investing time to find a person you can trust, and investing time to convince that person that it's a worthwhile pursuit. It's a lot of work and it is highly unlikely that you've found the ideal person for it, especially since you are not the expert and you aren't yet sure what is required to solve the problem. The biggest problem is that the PI is unlikely to disclose any detailed information about the project until he has found the person he wants to work on it. But this is totally backwards. You don't know if a person is going to be able to solve a problem until they've actually looked at the problem. Thus, if someone needs outside help, they can simply release all the relevant information onto the Internet and look for the guy who can solve it. Getting scooped is not an issue because everyone on the Internet already knows exactly what you did and what you contributed. (By the way, I think peer-review is going to get crowdsourced in the future, so it won't matter anymore who is first to publish a result in some paywalled journal). In this system, every professional scientist (or non-scientist, for that matter) could do a little science freelancing on the side, and personally I think it would be fun as hell.
This also applies to companies. Right now, there's little doubt that the current pharmaceutical industry model sucks. What follows is a simplification, but one issue is that each company sits on a wealth of proprietary information but usually has insufficient power to utilize it. Note that these data sets are ASTRONOMICAL- drug libraries, clinical trial data, synthesis methods, preclinical data that shows that X drugs affect Y biological processes, etc. etc. There's no way that the employees of one company are going to use those data sets to their full potential. The companies are waiting for the chance to make money off of it, but because they have insufficient brainpower to tackle massive data sets, many drugs are not directed to their "ideal" patient populations, so many of the drugs fail. Plus, companies use the patent system to actively prevent others using that information, even if they independently discover it. And because the patent system is not perfect, everyone wastes time suing everyone else. Why bother with all the secrets? I think a lot more drugs would be successfully developed if every person in the world could look at pharmaceutical data and make their suggestions as to which drugs are promising for what diseases.
Remember, the goal shouldn't be to beat other people to the right answer. The goal is to find the right answer. Secrets were viable in the past because problems were simpler. Science didn't involve massive amounts of data. A small group of people could solve the problems without letting anyone else know what they're doing. But no more.
Please comment on my naivety.
I used to share your thoughts about pharmaceutical companies. I used to think the goal was advancing health and therefore medicine should not be so expensive and there should be more sharing of information. In theory, this makes complete sense. However, what I - before I dove into the industry - and many other outsiders don't realize is that pharma/biotechs are businesses, just like a retail store or software company. They operate in a world governed by the need for profitability and return on investment. It's true, their products help sick people feel better (broadly speaking), but in a market system that is distinctly apart from the academic community, you would not have research and development without an incentive, i.e., monetary reward. That incentive is protected by patents. There are a lot of issues with the market exclusivity and timing of that in pharma, but setting aside the finer points of intellectual property law, the bottom line is that companies seek profit. Profit comes from a competitive advantage. Competitive advantage comes from knowing and acting on information that others don't have access to. More sick people would be helped/cured if all pharma were combined into one open, data-sharing community, but the question is, would talented and ambitious people work there if there is no payout for their innovation? It's taken 2+ years for me to see the pharma/biotech/med device industries as businesses first, and producers of medical advancements second. It's an uncomfortable reality for me, and I imagine for clinicians- and researchers-in-training, it's even more uncomfortable.
ReplyDeleteAh I wrote a lengthy response but my browser ate it.
DeleteI think there's an assumption that sharing data must equal doing something from the goodness of their hearts. I disagree. I'm saying that companies are going to share data because that's going to be the only way to profit in a world of big data. It makes the whole universe of possible consultants available to them, and then one of them is going to come to that company with the ideal application. Since they already have the drug in their library and the tools to study it, they are best positioned to "find the gold first" even if someone else tries to freeload off of their data.
Plus patents aren't the only system that allows profits:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/thomas_pogge_medicine_for_the_99_percent.html