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When people talk about the death of corporate research labs, they're largely talking about the death of fundamental research -- places like PARC, Bell Labs, etc. Corporate research to take fundamental discoveries and find better ways of productizing it is alive and well.



At least from the pharmaceutical perspective, there has definitely been a shift away from basic research. Why? Well, in the past, it was drug companies that had the money to actually fund it. It wasn't a big deal to spend $1M on the latest lab equipment. We had university researchers asking for time on our equipment.

From talking to some of the old-timers, universities started to get better and better funding (NIH grants, royalties, etc) and eventually could buy the equipment they needed themselves, no need to rely on drug companies.

So it might be more accurate to say that basic research funding has grown and most of that growth happened on the university side. Pharma companies have either held steady or decreased their spend on basic research (it really depends on the company).


I know these comments are semi-discouraged, but I honestly found your response to be so insightful that I wanted to thank you for sharing your perspective. At least, it fits with what I've seen (GF in PhD program, stepdad has an extremely successful lab at a non-profit institute doing basic science research in immunology), but not seen stated explicitly.




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