Top all-time · #455
Derek Lowe
Personal blog · pipeline.corante.comsciencehealth
Derek Lowe's personal blog at pipeline.corante.com covers science and health. Since 2007, 127 different Hacker News readers have linked it 265 times, most often “Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Sometimes recommended · 9 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Derek Lowe's 'Things I Won't Work With' series for its amusement and his Pipeline posts on drug costs and patents as evidence.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride18 people · 19 mentions · first linked 2010-02-24
- Sand Won't Save You This Time: the story of chlorine trifluoride10 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2009-03-25
- Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2010-02-24
- /5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2011-08-31
- Things I Won't Work With: Hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2011-11-11
- Where Drugs Come From: The Numbers 3 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2010-11-07
- Eight Toxic Foods: A Little Chemical Education3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-06-22
- /archives/2012/08/17/the_myriad_gene_patent_case_trickier_than_you_might_think.php3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-08-23
- Things I Won't Work With: Azidoazide Azides, More Or Less.3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-01-09
- Drug discovery failure rates: The news is not good2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-01-10
What Hacker News says?
There have been a lot of discussion about problems with patents (especially "patent thickets") in drug development also, see Derek Lowe's posts http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/patents_and_ip/ and especially http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/01/20/freedom_to_o...
Comment linking /archives/2011/01/20/freedom_to_operate.php
on “Enough Is Enough”Submitted Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride as a story · 257 points
HN discussionAn other neat one is "sand won't save you this time", from the delightful "Ignition!" via the Things I Won't Work With series (well worth reading in and of itself, even for non-chemists): http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_sa...
Comment linking /archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time.php
on “The 500-mile email (2002)”Submitted Tramadol Is Not a Natural Product After All as a story · 217 points
HN discussionI remember reading an academic article that showed how the real cost was almost always 1/20 of that This is the Light and Warburton study. The short answer is that it's kind of like a freshman saying "I could build Facebook overnight" by wgetting Facebook's CSS/JS. But for anyone in engineering who knows what FB's backend infrastructure is like, they know it would be nontrivial to clone FB. The best response to Ligh…
Comment linking /archives/2011/03/08/that_43_million_rd_figure.php
on “Why the Fuck?”Submitted Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride as a story · 202 points
HN discussionThere is a problem with patent thickets in pharmaceuticals and biotech interfering with innovation, see Carlson's book Biology Is Technology for a good discussion of the problems there. A better alternative for pharmaceuticals may be for whoever puts it through trials to get a patent or license since that is by far the most expensive part for drugs. To an extent that is what has been happening with biotech startups…
Comment linking /
on “The Patent Pledge”Submitted Things I Won't Work With: Peroxide Peroxides as a story · 128 points
HN discussionI agree that most fundamental (chemistry, biology) research is done in academia. But fundamental research doesn't deliver new drugs, it only supports discovery. About 24% of new drugs are discovered in academia.[1] The remainder come from industry. I think offloading all discovery to academia, plus the "D" part of R&D would be something academia would struggle with. [1] http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/11/0…
Comment linking /archives/2010/11/04/where_drugs_come_from_the_numbers.php
on “The FDA buries evidence of fraud in medical trials. My students and I dug it up”Submitted The PhD Problem: "Talk of a ‘higher education bubble’ may not be idle chatter” as a story · 96 points
HN discussionThis is exactly what happened to a biotech's stock back in 2009. http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/04/30/dendreons_st... Basically the company was about to release the findings from a key clinical trial. The stock price would either soar or it would flop. Tuesday 12pm * stock price is $25 Tuesday 12pm - 12:27pm * massive wave of selling starts the price of the stock dropping Tuesday 12:27pm - exchange halts…
Comment linking /archives/2009/04/30/dendreons_stock_what_the_hey.php
on “Someone got the natural gas report 400 ms early”Submitted Things I Won't Work With: Chlorine Azide as a story · 92 points
HN discussionThe chemistry PhD job market is generally considered oversupplied, particularly with the pharmaceutical industry in general retrenchment (see, e.g., < http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/01/07/the_phd_prob... , and yes I do realize the age of that link, but nothing much has changed since then).
Comment linking /archives/2011/01/07/the_phd_problem.php>
on “The Unemployable Programmer”Submitted Lab Mice Are Being Kept Too Cold, Apparently as a story · 83 points
HN discussionAnother worrying development: Pfizer buying Astra-Zeneca. It's not to streamline drug development, the deal is a tax dodge in its entirety. Some lovely commentary down the hallway, in the Pipeline: http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2014/04/28/pfizer_and_a... Scientists worry about the cuts to NIH funding, but the cuts to pharmaceutical research are ten times more worrying - who is going to develop the compounds t…
Comment linking /archives/2014/04/28/pfizer_and_astrazeneca_what_the_hell.php
on “Antibiotic resistance now 'global threat', WHO warns”Submitted Things I Won’t Work With: Peroxide Peroxides (2014) as a story · 82 points
HN discussionIf you enjoy that sort of thing, check out "Things I Won't Work With" by Derek Lowe: http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with... The FOOF entry is always amusing.
Comment linking /archives/things_i_wont_work_with/
on “Heirloom Chemistry Set”Submitted The Most Unconscionable Drug Price Hike I Have Yet Seen as a story · 54 points
HN discussionBefore you get too wrapped up in the idea of "other valid fields for patents", you might check out some of those other fields. There is actually quite a bit of evidence against patents in many other fields as well, though the only link I have handy is to Derek Lowe's discussions related to pharma - http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/patents_and_ip/
Comment linking /archives/patents_and_ip/
on “On Patents”Submitted A Huntington's Breakthrough? as a story · 52 points
HN discussionhttp://blog.elphel.com/ image processing http://hydraraptor.blogspot.com/ 3d printers http://pipeline.corante.com/ pharmaceutical development http://howtospotapsychopath.com/ all sorts of stuff
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What unknown technical blogs or sites do you read?”Submitted Tecfidera's Price as a story · 49 points
HN discussionDerek Lowe wrote a good post about the RWA last Thursday, http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/01/19/the_research...
Comment linking /archives/2012/01/19/the_research_works_act_one_two_against_and_one_for.php
on “Fields medalist Tim Gowers: Elsevier — my part in its downfall”Submitted Alzheimer's: The News Is Not Getting Better as a story · 49 points
HN discussionOrganometallic reagents like dimethyl mercury have their own entry in the same series of blog posts as the OP, cf. http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/10/23/things_i_won...
Comment linking /archives/2009/10/23/things_i_wont_work_with_straight_dimethyl_zinc.php
on “Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride”Submitted Picosecond Protein Watching as a story · 47 points
HN discussionI loved this quote from http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/11/11/things_i_won... Synthesizing polynitro compounds is no chocolate fondue party, either: if you picture a bunch of guys wheeling around drums of fuming nitric acid while singing the Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore, you're not that far off the mark. You really have to beat the crap out of a molecule to get that many nitro groups on it, which means p…
Comment linking /archives/2011/11/11/things_i_wont_work_with_hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane.php
on “Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride”Submitted Expensive Placebos Work Better as a story · 46 points
HN discussionhttp://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with... The other articles in that category are mostly equally exciting.
Comment linking /archives/things_i_wont_work_with/
on “Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride”Submitted Results of a Controlled Trial of Resveratrol in Humans as a story · 46 points
HN discussion
