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from the are-you-a-net-gain-or-a-net-drain? dept.
Many jobs have spillover effects on the rest of society. For instance, the value of new treatments discovered by biomedical researchers is far greater than what they or their employers get paid, so they have positive spillovers. Other jobs have negative spillovers, such as those that generate pollution.
A forthcoming paper, by economists at UPenn and Yale,1 reports a survey of the economic literature on these spillover benefits for the 11 highest-earning professions.
There's very little literature, so all these estimates are very, very uncertain, and should be not be taken literally. But it's interesting reading.
Here are the bottom lines – see more detail on the estimates below. (Note that we already discussed an older version of this paper, but the estimates have been updated since then.)
(Emphasis in original retained.)
At the top, researchers who generate +$950,440 in positive externalities; at the bottom, financiers who generate -$104,000 in negative externalities. In a glaring omission, telephone sanitisers were not listed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @08:13PM (5 children)
Well, ~90% of drugs fail to get approval going through clinical trials.
If you think you can hack the statistics to get a better approval rate, then you should pursue a very lucrative career in the drug industry (or as an investor). The industry is either more ethical than you think, incompetent in their ability to hack statistics, or the current standard is working. The effectiveness of treatments is never really known until they are used for large groups of patients, but demonstrated effectiveness in Phase III trials increases the likelihood that treatments will be effective for other patients.
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/06/02/are-things-getting-any-better-in-the-clinic [sciencemag.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @09:10PM (4 children)
I do in fact think that, and no I don't want to help to scam people about their health. Also, the 90% rejection rate is something that is chosen by choosing alpha = 0.05, or 0.01 or whatever it is these days along with other criteria. It will fluctuate from year to year but overall you will see that rate maintained unless there is political pressure to change it.
As the submitters get better at "hacking" the criteria you will see that alpha gets more stringent, and they start looking harder at methodological issues, side effects, etc to maintain the 90% rejection rate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @09:38PM (3 children)
Fine, then use your power for good: analyze clinical trial data, predict what will be effective, then make money investing. The excess money can be donated to effective altruism charities.
The rejection rate is not chosen by the FDA. The FDA would love to have a 100% approval rate as long as the drugs demonstrated effectiveness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @10:12PM (2 children)
No, they really wouldn't. It isn't that 90% is special, it is that deviations from the usual lead to questions being asked of the administrators: "Are you saying the last guy sucked at his job because people under him approved too many/few new treatments?" Then you make political adversaries. Btw, I didn't come up with this idea on my own, I was told it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @10:30PM (1 child)
Well, I'll tell you differently: there is not a vast conspiracy at the FDA that is keeping good therapies off the market. There has also been a lot of political pressure to eliminate the requirement to show efficacy.
You might not believe me, but how about an appeal to simple logic: Do you honestly believe that drug companies with billions of dollars on the line would sit on their hands and let the FDA arbitrarily deny them approvals?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @10:50PM
I didn't describe a conspiracy. I described an incentive system that encourages a certain outcome. I also don't think drug companies are sitting on their hands, or that the denials are arbitrary (although you surely agree that, eg, alpha = 0.05 in 2 trials involves two arbitrary numbers). So your most recent post has nothing to do with my claims.