Eroom's law

Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking

by Michael Bhaskar  · 2 Nov 2021

Pasteur-style breakthroughs. The drugs don't work; at least, not like they used to. The discovery of drugs appears to obey a rule christened Eroom's Law. In a nutshell, the number of drugs approved for every billion dollars’ worth of research and development (R&D) halves every nine years. This pattern

…

$4 billion.18 In the 1960s, by contrast, costs per drug developed were around $5 million.19 Timelines, at least pre-Covid, are likewise extended. Eroom's Law shows that it takes more and more effort and money to develop new drugs. Achieving a pharmaceutical breakthrough is on a trend of increasing difficulty

…

. Eroom is not a person. Eroom's Law simply reverses the name Moore, as in Moore's Law (the idea that the number of transistors on a chip will double every two years

…

in the 1960s.26 Science, technology and economics all on the face of it imply that drug discovery should be speeding up and getting cheaper. Eroom's Law bucks the pattern that began with Pasteur. It suggests a steepening challenge that connects to the slowdown in life expectancy improvements. Every year it takes

…

. But it's inconceivable that they alone could have the equivalent impact, despite having much better conditions, bigger teams, more knowledge and insanely improved tools. Eroom's Law is far from the only example. We face a world where the remaining problems – and the new ones – are of a higher order. At a

…

) Furthermore, that direction of travel is down a more specialised, narrower road. It should be no surprise then, that despite all our advances we have Eroom's Law, or cannot easily build new forms of transport, or change our society. We have seen that, compared with previous eras, the scientific progress we do

…

each of the above cases, curating and processing the deluge. It is making a tangible dent in the breakthrough problem. The authors of the original Eroom's Law paper now believe the era of stagnation may be coming to an end thanks to the prevalence and new-found effectiveness of machine learning in

…

of reality. With AI, this nullifies the burden of knowledge effect. Fully personalised and remote medicine are available at marginal cost, at a stroke eliminating Eroom's Law and indeed most ailments: the greatest shift in medical capacity since Pasteur. Naturally this also means finding cures for cancer and dementia. Pandemic response is

…

of Things, The Collaborative Commons, and The Eclipse of Capitalism, New York: Palgrave Ringel, Michael S., Scannell, Jack, Baedeker, Mathias, and Schulze, Ulrik (2020), ‘Breaking Eroom's Law’, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Vol. 19, pp. 833–4 Ritchie, Stuart (2020), Science Fictions: Exposing Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science, London: Bodley Head

…

290 Douthat, Ross 14, 106 drag 65 Drake equation 306 Drezner, Daniel 214 drones, delivery 71, 72 Drucker, Peter 189 drugs 55–7, 124, 235 Eroom's Law 55, 57, 61, 92–3, 119, 161, 234, 245, 338 and machine learning 234 research and development 55–7, 61, 92–4, 119, 161, 172

…

see also Industrial Enlightenment; neo-Enlightenment Eno, Brian 295 entrepreneurship, decline 96 epigenetics 164 epigraphy 236–7 epistemic polarisation 210 Epstein, David 334 Eratosthenes 5 Eroom's Law 55, 57, 61, 92–3, 119, 161, 234, 245, 338 ethical issues 256–7 Euclid 3, 304 ‘Eureka’ moments 2–5, 35, 36–7, 129

New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future

by James Bridle  · 18 Jun 2018  · 301pp  · 85,263 words

isolation. And this reductionist approach would hold if it did in practice keep pace with our experiences; in reality, it is proving to be insufficient. Eroom’s law in pharmaceutical research and development. a.Overall trend in research and development efficiency (inflation adjusted). b.Rate of decline over 10-year periods. c.Adjusting

Growth: A Reckoning

by Daniel Susskind  · 16 Apr 2024  · 358pp  · 109,930 words

disease treatment, a given amount of progress appeared to require ever more R&D. In the world of drug discovery, this trend is known as ‘Eroom’s Law’ (‘Moore’s Law’ spelled backwards): just as the number of transistors on a chip has been rising exponentially, the number of drugs discovered per billion

Smart Money: How High-Stakes Financial Innovation Is Reshaping Our WorldÑFor the Better

by Andrew Palmer  · 13 Apr 2015  · 280pp  · 79,029 words

law, a rule of thumb that states that computer chips double in power every eighteen months or so. The pharmaceutical industry suffers from the reverse. Eroom’s law is the ironic name for a troubling trend: the number of new drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for every billion dollars

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters  · 15 Sep 2014  · 185pp  · 43,609 words

as it used to. Despite dramatic advances over the past two centuries, in recent decades biotechnology hasn’t met the expectations of investors—or patients. Eroom’s law—that’s Moore’s law backward—observes that the number of new drugs approved per billion dollars spent on R&D has halved every nine

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma

by Mustafa Suleyman  · 4 Sep 2023  · 444pp  · 117,770 words

.org/​blog-tag/​drug-trials/​failed-drug-trials. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT AI techniques can search through Michael S. Ringel et al., “Breaking Eroom’s Law,” Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, April 16, 2020, www.nature.com/​articles/​d41573-020-00059-3. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT In 2020 an AI

Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation

by Byrne Hobart and Tobias Huber  · 29 Oct 2024  · 292pp  · 106,826 words

, for example, is becoming slower and more expensive over time. The cost of developing novel drugs doubles every nine years, an observation referred to as Eroom’s law. 99 In essence, the forces that govern scientific progress invert the dynamics that gave rise to Moore’s law in the semiconductor industry. 100 What