2005 Medicine Nobel: a strong argument against peer review for patents
Relevant to legal academic arguments for peer review in patents, the 2005 Nobel Prize in Medicine went to Barry J. Marshall and Robin Warren, who argued, against prevailing wisdom, that bacteria, not stress, was the main cause of painful ulcers of the stomach and intestine.
''This was very much against prevailing knowledge and dogma because it was thought that peptic ulcer disease was the result of stress and lifestyle,'' Staffan Normark, a member of the Nobel Assembly at Stockholm's Karolinska institute, said at a news conference announcing the winners.
The work was referred to as a "pioneering discovery." One notes that truly pioneering will not be recognized by peers, because it is against conventional wisdom. The Australians' proposal of a microbial cause instead was "very controversial and unexpected," said Goran Hansson, who chairs the Nobel committee that awards the medicine or physiology prize. "They had to spend the first few years convincing the rest of the world." "The idea of stress and things like that (causing ulcers) was just so entrenched nobody could really believe that it was bacteria," Marshall said. "It had to come from some weird place like Perth, Western Australia, because I think nobody else would have even considered it."
No applicant should have to convince the patent office that peers are wrong, provided the applicant has met the statutory requirements. What is obvious to peers can be dead wrong, as was the case with the peers' disbelief in H. pylori.
Recall also that last year's prize was shared by Richard Axel, inventor of the Axel patent of Columbia University, which has achieved some visibility in patent litigation.
''This was very much against prevailing knowledge and dogma because it was thought that peptic ulcer disease was the result of stress and lifestyle,'' Staffan Normark, a member of the Nobel Assembly at Stockholm's Karolinska institute, said at a news conference announcing the winners.
The work was referred to as a "pioneering discovery." One notes that truly pioneering will not be recognized by peers, because it is against conventional wisdom. The Australians' proposal of a microbial cause instead was "very controversial and unexpected," said Goran Hansson, who chairs the Nobel committee that awards the medicine or physiology prize. "They had to spend the first few years convincing the rest of the world." "The idea of stress and things like that (causing ulcers) was just so entrenched nobody could really believe that it was bacteria," Marshall said. "It had to come from some weird place like Perth, Western Australia, because I think nobody else would have even considered it."
No applicant should have to convince the patent office that peers are wrong, provided the applicant has met the statutory requirements. What is obvious to peers can be dead wrong, as was the case with the peers' disbelief in H. pylori.
Recall also that last year's prize was shared by Richard Axel, inventor of the Axel patent of Columbia University, which has achieved some visibility in patent litigation.
posted by Lawrence B. Ebert at 5:19 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home