The lean startup model seems like it works, even outside of tech. Even yes, in medicine that can kill as a failure mode. Drug development, for example, consists of trying a bunch of plausible things. (And worked until the effective, simple chemical space was exhausted.)
Besides, it's rather disingenuous to act as though development falls on a binary between "overfunded waterfall-style development" and the current mess at many shops.
What I haven't seen is "the current mess at many shops", and I'd be interested to hear about your experiences. I've only ever experienced failure by overplanning personally, and the stark divide between progress in things that can be cheaply iterated on and things that are expensive, preplanned disasters seems important to me.
This leads me to naturally think that if I wanted to make progress in e.g. medicine I should start by finding out how to make it cheap and iterable, rather than come up with comprehensive, well-funded plans.
They make it very clear that the drug has already been tested extensively and also do fairly extensive testing on you to make sure your vitals are within the "normal" range.
I got a very clear impression that they're not throwing pills at the wall to see which one sticks.
I'm also working at a startup that's had three names and just as many products, funded by a VC who's just going to start another one with most of the same people whether this one works or not.
It doesn't matter one bit if this startup fails. The drug was pretty clearly indicated to work by the time a person swallowed a pill.
Different worlds.