of how she was invited to visit a biotech company and render an opinion on the relative value of their various research and clinical development programs. However, it turns out that the company really wasn’t terribly interested in her opinion. She was brought in by senior management solely to rubber stamp the existing programs for the benefit of the Board of Directors. Simply confirm that all is wonderful here, and you can go on your way with check in hand. Opinions that are bought and paid for remind me of the movie business, where ads for the worst films you’ve never seen are peppered with quotes from people you’ve never heard of, extolling the many virtues of what most viewers would describe as a pile of visual rubbish.
The examples above indicate that the appearance of getting good advice is often perceived to be more valuable than the advice itself. This same type of thinking is what led to many of the problems seen on Wall Street in recent years, where facts were not supposed to intrude upon the carefully crafted images of major financial companies. What came to be valued was the “sizzle,” not the steak. This façade was not good in the long run for energy traders like Enron, mortgage traders like Countrywide Financial, or those engaged in a scientific enterprise like biotech. And if you think biotech investors don’t respond to “sizzle,” read Alex Prud’homme’s expose The Cell Game: Sam Waksal’s Fast Money and False Promises—and the Fate of ImClone’s Cancer Drug.
Scientific advisors occasionally do get discarded, even if they provide good advice. Why? Maintaining a Scientific Advisory Board is not an insignificant expense for a small biotech company. Airfare, hotel, meals, and taxis can add up in a hurry, and planning and coordinating the visits can significantly eat into staff time. A friend of mine related recently how he terminated his company’s Scientific Advisory Board after five years of service. He decided to repurpose the money and hire consultants to resolve specific questions on select programs. It’s not that the Advisory Board’s advice was faulty; he simply found this a better use of the company’s limited financial resources.
Sometimes, though, as Erica Jong stated, “advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.” I was once hired to render an opinion on the merits of a small biotech’s research program. Unfortunately, their lead (and only) drug candidate had been selected on the basis of a single publication from which the company had grossly misinterpreted the data. Although they had a strong patent position and a reliable manufacturing process, it was clear that their “drug” had virtually no chance of working. Trust me when I say that this is not the kind of message one relishes sharing with a company’s CEO over breakfast. After relaying this distressing information, I advised the company to abandon the program and find something better to work on (which, under the circumstances, could have been almost anything). Their CEO, however, had no intention of doing so because, as he put it, “our investors gave us $12 million to take this drug into the clinic, and that is what we are going to do.” Not surprisingly, they shut their doors not long thereafter. I always wondered, though: is that really what their investors would have wanted them to do? If they had known that the “lead” drug had no chance of working, would they have signed off on a complete change in direction?
So my advice for those of you who seek guidance is as follows: Find someone whose counsel you trust, and when they give you advice, take it. Why hire an expert if you’re not going to take advantage of their expertise? Keep in mind that if the advice you solicited was free, you may very well get exactly what you paid for. Finally, if you really aren’t interested in getting advice, don’t ask for it. This will be less frustrating, in the end, for everyone concerned.
