With the expense of testing being so huge, it seems like there would be huge economic incentive to be able to fail fast.
I wonder what percentage of pharma researchers are bold (and unmonitored) enough to test their creations on themselves - based on the chemists I've met, it almost certainly must be nonzero...
And then to do a one off test of a compound that inhibits a virus you have to expose yourself to the virus.
I don't particularly doubt your speculation that there are cowboys, but I'm not sure what they would expect to learn by administering these complex compounds to themselves.
In either case, I've definitely considered injecting myself with optogenetics expressing virus to skip a few decades of R&D.
When it comes to proper testing, drug companies tend to stick to the rules lest they incur the wrath of the FDA. The FDA won’t think it’s bold when employees start testing on themselves.
Plus, R&D folks gets to hear all the stories of side effects in lab animals like necrosis of the testicles and such. Tends to give cowboys 2nd thought to self-testing.