If biomedical research is to truly serve patients, it must abandon the incentives that have steered it astray: chasing high-impact publications instead of medical progress. The issue is not the brilliance of scientists — it is the system. Today, careers, funding, and prestige depend on Nature, Cell and Science papers, not on whether research improves diagnosis, treatment, or outcomes.
A future research system must judge universities, institutes, and teams solely by patient benefit. Grant funding should reward those who have already delivered meaningful, patient-relevant advances — a simple, evidence-based approach supported by the long-known “Matthew effect”: past success predicts future success. Publication lists, organ silos, and prestige metrics must disappear from evaluation.
Such a shift would unlock enormous untapped potential without spending a single euro more. Researchers would finally do what they trained for: help patients, not fill journals. And innovation would accelerate naturally, even within the limited number of academic positions available.
This episode outlines how to redirect biomedical research toward real-world impact — and how these changes connect to the Big Data revolution ahead.
More information at https://haraldschmidt.online
Contact: harald.schmidt@mac.com
