It was summer. I had just finished my undergraduate degree, and was waiting to take up a doctoral studentship. My Part II research project supervisor had offered me the opportunity to work in her lab for 3 months – she’d get some funding for me – to finish the work I’d started and write the paper. Who in my position would have turned down that opportunity?

The work went well, and we got some nice photomicrographs. We wrote the experiment up. I started my doctoral research.

Some time between my seeing the last draft manuscript of Grant et al. and its submission to a journal, I received a note from my supervisor saying that the Head of Department – quite a famous scientist, close to retirement – had insisted on putting his name on the paper. He would go last on the author list, as senior author. My erstwhile boss said she needed to go first for the sake of her career, and I was to be relegated to second author – a supporting actor at best; at worst a non-entity. This was my first real experience of academic research.

A few years later, coming to the end of a postdoctoral contract, I announced to my boss that I had secured a position in a small biotech company. I was literally screamed at for ‘betraying’ my training and the pursuit of science.

I know others who have had similar experiences.

Yes, academia is cut-throat. There’s a lot of competition for resources and positions, and younger people (and, disproportionately, women), get trampled in the name of Science.

But at least it’s honest bastardry, with pure motives, all for the sake of Science, yes? Senior researchers don’t screw over young researchers, or simply make shit up, for base reasons such as prestige or power, or – Heaven forbid – money, right?

It’s not all bad, for sure. When I interviewed for an academic research position while in the biotech company, the head of the lab asked if I were mad, wanting to leave industry. The 6 years I then spent in his lab were the best of my research career. And one of the most famous cell biologists still alive – Martin Raff – was utterly shocked when I related the authorship fiasco to him.

Nonetheless, I finally left research for good, and went into the private sector. Now I work mainly with pharmaceutical and device companies, and I’m able to compare notes on the two very different worlds.

For the last 18 months or so I’ve been working very closely with people with different roles (medical affairs, marketing, access, etc.) of one particular company. We’ve been preparing for the launch of a new indication for their product, following a phase 3 clinical trial that was terminated early because of overwhelming benefit. The product itself was developed in the company, from scratch, in a programme focused on meeting a particular medical need.

And you have never met such dedicated, driven, hard-working and caring people. For sure, they are well-paid, but I am not convinced that the money can ever make up for the hours they have put in and the stress they have endured.

No. They are determined to see this project through because they believe in the benefits of this drug (extended lifespan, improved quality of that lifespan) for real people in the real world. (And I would not be as personally invested in this project if I wasn’t impressed by the data as well).

People in academic science can be just as avaricious or venal as people in any human endeavour. They are human, after all. The idea, pervasive as it is, that research in academia is somehow more noble or pure than working in the private sector is as outdated as blood-letting.

Yes, pharma has its bad apples. Reps do bad things and unsupportable claims are made. But any transgressions are quickly revealed in the clinic – probably far more quickly than academic research misconduct is noticed, let alone rectified. And of course, the industry is regulated to the nines to try to prevent misconduct – which is far more than can be said for herbalists and the like (or indeed, academic research).

It’s not just a case of pharma being no worse than academia – there are definite positives to pharma.

Pharma-funded clinical and pre-clinical research tends to be published as open access, at least for a period. This also applies to neutral or negative results (check the latest New England Journal of Medicine for examples). Large congresses for scientific exchange depend on pharma sponsorship to operate. The amount of money invested in research and development by industry is double that disbursed via government.

And finally, and rather obviously, we owe our functional longevity to scientific advances being made available to healthcare professionals … by people working in pharma companies.

There are of course legitimate questions to be asked and answered about the drivers of misconduct. And yes, many pharma products seem ridiculously expensive. But this isn’t necessarily a reflection of greed, as is commonly assumed.

Drug development is hideously expensive. I recommend you check out Derek Lowe’s excellent In the Pipeline blog for some hard figures, but to get a single new drug to market costs in the region of US$2 billion. That’s just under half of the entire public R&D spend in the UK … across all disciplines. When you consider that the patent system provides in-market exclusivity for only about 15 years, it’s no wonder that pharma companies charge so much. If they didn’t, you wouldn’t have new medicines.

So let’s be clear. Working in pharma is by no means a betrayal of some academic fantasy of ‘purity’. Pharma is full of good people, doing good work – and having an effect on people’s lives that the majority of academics can only dream of.

Isn’t it about time we all recognised this?