Monday, January 2, 2012

Trend of the Year 2012: Living in truth- from science to society

2012 will be the year when some of the previous visionary advances become reality through better execution, and others are revealed to be empty hope and fall by the wayside. The contextual cumulative combinatorics and integration of existing methodologies and knowledge from disparate domains will lead to major advances in scientific understanding, diagnostics, and pharmaceutical drug development. The work necessary for such advances will be precise and tedious, but the results will be spectacular.

Discovery-based non-hypothesis driven science carried out in well established laboratories, primarily in developed countries, will lead to real advances, as opposed to the mass of more hypothesis-driven science (and clinical trials) of dubious reproducibility carried out by career-driven less established researchers, primarily in ( and from) developing nations. The issue of ethics and not cutting corners will become as prominent in biomedical sciences and pharma industry as it has been in the last few years in business and finance.

All in all, a solid year ahead.


Alexander B. Niculescu, MD, PhD