Clinical failure rates over the decades: yikes | Hacker News

Hacker News debated whether high clinical trial failure rates are wasteful or an unavoidable cost of pursuing harder drug targets.

Some commenters argued that better tools, data, and target discovery can leave failure rates roughly flat even as scientific ambitions rise.

Others noted that many candidates look promising in preclinical work but still fail in trials, and that startups, investors, workers, and patients tolerate failure differently.

The core question is whether the industry can cut waste without becoming so conservative that it misses rare breakthroughs.