Balancing Biases

How cognitive prejudices can influence research decisions, and how the pitfalls of human nature can be avoided.

Written byJef Akst

| 7 min read

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ART VALERO / CORBIS

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Merck & Co. was at the height of an epic pharmaceuticals boom. Annual sales doubled and profits tripled, most notably driven by sales of a congestive heart failure treatment that hit the billion-dollar mark just three years after its 1985 introduction. In 1993, Fortune magazine named Merck America’s “most admired” company—for the seventh year in a row. Despite the company’s unparalleled success, Merck was not immune to the common cognitive biases that can subtly influence everyday research decisions.

Merck employees, for example, were overly confident that they had the best way of bringing new products to market. “They believed so strongly in themselves and in their hunches about these drugs that they could get themselves to just totally ...

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Meet the Author

Jef Akst
Jef (an unusual nickname for Jennifer) got her master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses. After four years of diving off the Gulf Coast of Tampa and performing behavioral experiments at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, she left research to pursue a career in science writing. As The Scientist's managing editor, Jef edited features and oversaw the production of the TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. In 2022, her feature on uterus transplantation earned first place in the trade category of the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
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