Whenever I’m studying a given topic, I like to buy maybe 6 or 7 books on it to skim-read from someplace where that’s afforable like HPB or Thriftbooks. Gives you a good overview of field and also each of the books fills in the holes of the other books.

Recently did this on the topic of “cancer”. All recent books published in the last 15 years by Big 5 Publishers.

Every single book had intense criticism for the NIH. It seems they do a lot of good, but their singular focus on only funding “hypothesis based research” has driven and then kept extremely promising ideas on the sidelines for 25 years.

Very sad to read at times, and made me really appreciate how scientific progress comes in amazing bursts that are short lived but that everyone depends on for decades to come.

EDIT: Kind of astonished by the downvotes. This book goes into more detail: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0374135606/

Also something else I forgot to add is how the death rate from cancer really hasn’t budged in 20 years by being generously massaged via something known as “average death rate”. Adjustments are made to have the US population conform to a model, against which the amount of deaths per year are calculated. While intended to smooth variance YoY, this model helps to a great extent the system currently operating.