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+--- Thread: Article Clinical failure rates over the decades: Yikes (/thread-20947.html)
Clinical failure rates over the decades: Yikes - C C - Jul 26, 2026
Clinical failure rates over the decades: Yikes
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/clinical-failure-rates-over-decades-yikes
EXCERPTS: I’m fond of saying that the most important single statistic about the drug industry is the clinical failure rate [...] Here we go: in the 1960s, the clinical failure rate was 90%. In the 1970s, 81%. In the 1980s, it was 80%, and in the 1990s it was 88%. In the 2000s, 91% of all clinical candidates failed, and in the 2010s, it was 91% as well.
[...] But let’s think about that 91% failure rate for a moment. When I bring this up in presentations, I invite the audience to consider what the auto industry would look like of 91% of new car designs proved unable to roll out of the factory, or if 91% of new airliner models were unable to leave the ground - and if you only found that out after spending all the R&D money to build them at full size and trying to fly them.
No cutting-edge restaurant could survive if 91% of its innovative dishes proved inedible or outright poisonous. What other industries operate under these bizarre conditions? (MORE - details)