{"id":34598,"date":"2015-08-14T20:35:56","date_gmt":"2015-08-14T20:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/80000hours.org\/?post_type=career_profile&#038;p=34598"},"modified":"2024-12-03T09:47:00","modified_gmt":"2024-12-03T09:47:00","slug":"biomedical-research","status":"publish","type":"career_profile","link":"https:\/\/80000hours.org\/career-reviews\/biomedical-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Biomedical research"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":34599,"parent":0,"menu_order":3,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"[fn 1] Our interview with Prof. Townsend is not published. [\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 2] \"(A) \u2013 (C) are generally associated with academia, while (D) \u2013 (F) are generally associated with industry.\"  [GiveWell Blog - The Path to Biomedical Progress](http:\/\/blog.givewell.org\/2015\/02\/27\/the-path-to-biomedical-progress\/) [\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 3] For example MIT's admission page: \"Our core curriculum allows students from a wide range of scientific backgrounds to succeed. Students who have majored in chemistry, physics, or mathematics have all done extremely well in our program.\" [MIT Department of Biology: Prospective Students.](https:\/\/biology.mit.edu\/graduate\/prospective-students\/)  <br \/>\r\n\r\nAlso Harvard's admission page: \"To qualify for admission, applicants must demonstrate strong enthusiasm and ability for the vigorous pursuit of scientific knowledge. Minimal requirements include a bachelor's degree and undergraduate preparation in the sciences.\" [Harvard Division of Medical Sciences: Admissions](http:\/\/dms.hms.harvard.edu\/program\/admissions.html)  <br \/>\r\n\r\n[UCL's CoMPLEX](http:\/\/www.ucl.ac.uk\/complex) is a centre for interdisciplinary research in the medical and life sciences, which accepts students with backgrounds in mathematics, physics, computer science and engineering.  [\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 4] \r\n* [Bhaven N. Sampat APPENDIX D. THE IMPACT OF PUBLICLY FUNDED BIOMEDICAL AND HEALTH RESEARCH: A REVIEW. National Academies (US) Committee on Measuring Economic and Other Returns on Federal Research Investments.\r\nWashington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2011.](http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/books\/NBK83123\/)\r\n* [GiveWell Blog - Returns to Life Sciences Funding](http:\/\/blog.givewell.org\/2014\/01\/15\/returns-to-life-sciences-funding\/)\r\n* [Exceptional Returns: The Economic Value of America's Investment in Medical Research](https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20130909173503\/http:\/\/www.laskerfoundation.org\/media\/pdf\/exceptional.pdf)\r\n* [Murphy, Kevin M. and Topel, Robert H. (2006). 'The Value of Health and Longevity', Journal of Political Economy 114(5), 871\u2013904.](https:\/\/ucema.edu.ar\/u\/je49\/capital_humano\/Murphy_Topel_JPE.pdf)\r\n* [Murphy, Kevin M., and Robert H. Topel, eds. Measuring the gains from medical research: an economic approach. University of Chicago Press, 2010.](http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Measuring-Gains-Medical-Research-Economic\/dp\/0226551784) [\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 5] \"Increases in life expectancy in just the decades of the 1970's and 1980's were worth $57 trillion to Americans \u2013 a figure six times larger than the entire output of tangible good and services last year. The gains associated with the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease alone totaled $31 trillion.\" [Exceptional Returns: The Economic Value of America's Investment in Medical Research](https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20130909173503\/http:\/\/www.laskerfoundation.org\/media\/pdf\/exceptional.pdf) [\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 6] \"Murphy and Topel estimate that the total economic value to Americans of reductions in mortality from cardiovascular disease averaged $1.5 trillion annually in the 1970-1990 period. So if just one-third of the gain came from medical research, the return on the investment averaged $500 billion\r\na year. That's on the order of 20 times as large as average annual spending on medical research \u2013 by any benchmark an astonishing return for the investment.\" [Exceptional Returns: The Economic Value of America's Investment in Medical Research](https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20130909173503\/http:\/\/www.laskerfoundation.org\/media\/pdf\/exceptional.pdf) [\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 7] [Estimates of Funding for Various Research, Condition, and Disease Categories](https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20140404164524\/https:\/\/report.nih.gov\/categorical_spending.aspx) [\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 8] One complication is that top researchers are also better at attracting grant money than average researchers. This means that an individual lab leader would be willing to forego large amounts of grant money for a top researcher for at least two reasons: \r\n\r\n1. A top researcher would lead to more and better research than the grant money.\r\n2. A top researcher would attract more grants for the lab in the future. \r\n\r\nBut because individual lab leaders are competing with other labs for a fixed amount of grant money, this means that the extra money a lab gets as a result of having a top researcher is money that would have gone to other labs instead. This is a cost that lab leaders are likely not taking into consideration, and so the amount of grant money they'd be willing to forego for a top researcher is likely an overestimate of their true value. [\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 9] [Shockley, William. \"On the statistics of individual variations of productivity in research laboratories.\" *Proceedings of the IRE* 45.3 (1957): 279-290.](http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20150904201134\/http:\/\/www.gwern.net\/docs\/1957-shockley.pdf) [\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 10] For example, [Dr Ewer said](https:\/\/80000hours.org\/2013\/11\/interview-with-malaria-vaccine-researcher-katie-ewer\/): \"Unless you have an absolute obsession with your subject, it's very hard to persevere and not become demoralized.\"  [\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 11] For example, [Prof. Todd said](https:\/\/80000hours.org\/2013\/11\/interview-with-a-cambridge-professor-of-medical-genetics-on-research-careers\/): \"The MD and programming\/statistics combo is lethal. Top of the world. There's major demand.\" \"All the kids need to learn to program and understand statistics. The data sets are getting bigger and bigger, and better. You need to learn to move data around. You need to avoid being fooled by randomness.\" [\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 12] \"...you want to go to the best labs in your general area \u2013 neuroscience, immunology, cancer, cell biology. You just need to go where the best science is \u2013 the most Nature papers, the most Cell papers.\" [Interview with leading HIV vaccine researcher \u2013 Prof. Sir Andrew McMichael](http:\/\/80000hours.org\/blog\/306-interview-with-leading-hiv-vaccine-researcher-prof-sir-andrew-mcmichael)\r\n\"\"Get into a really really good lab (in a major centre). (e.g. LMB in Cambridge) Then work on a really difficult important problem for 10 years. Try to get long-term funding.\" \"To get the first step, you'll need to initially focus on publishing in a couple of top journals. There's a lot of hard work and luck involved; always be asking the question, if I get the answer to my big question, how many people in the world will care?\" [Interview with a Cambridge Professor of Medical Genetics on research careers - Prof. Todd](https:\/\/80000hours.org\/2013\/11\/interview-with-a-cambridge-professor-of-medical-genetics-on-research-careers\/) [\/fn]\r\n\r\n[fn 13] [One study of 64 eminent scientists](http:\/\/infoproc.blogspot.com\/2008\/07\/annals-of-psychometry-iqs-of-eminent.html) found that their median IQ scores were above 150. See also [Lubinski, David, et al. \"Top 1 in 10,000: a 10-year follow-up of the profoundly gifted.\" Journal of applied Psychology 86.4 (2001): 718.](https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/smpy\/files\/2013\/02\/Top1in10000.pdf) [\/fn]\r\n"},"categories":[381,1194,1197,691],"class_list":["post-34598","career_profile","type-career_profile","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biomedical-research","category-biorisk-strategy-policy","category-catastrophic-pandemics","category-scientific-research"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Biomedical research - Career review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Interested in understanding how the human body works? 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