Why don't we have better psychiatric drugs? After a few years in the pharmaceutical industry, I think I finally understand why.
Four years ago, I left full-time academic employment to take full-time research employment at a pharmaceutical company. I wrote a commentary about it for Medscape soon thereafter titled "How Academia Left Me." Now it's time for the completion of the cycle.
At that time, I wrote that many colleagues kept asking me, "Why did you leave academia?" In fact, I hadn't, I replied. I kept doing everything I had always done: teaching, writing academic scientific articles, and even doing patient consultations at the academic hospital (much less frequently, of course). I just wasn't being paid for it anymore. Most people don't realize that the majority of academic work isn't reimbursed. You're only paid for patient care primarily, and for research if you obtain grants. So I was still "in" academia; I just wasn't being compensated.
And, as I explained at the time, I hadn't left academia; rather, academia left me. In other words, my values and goals hadn't changed. I just realized I couldn't achieve them anymore purely in academia.
So, I left.
Then for the past 4 years, on top of my continued unpaid academic work, I was employed full-time at the early research branch at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
