Sacred cows make great hamburger

You might think that drug discovery is based on science. But take a closer look and and you'll find religion everywhere in the pharmaceutical company of the early 21st century. A pantheon of neo-deities including Druglikeness, Drugability, Leadlikeness, Scoring Functions and The Rule of Five keeps the lemming parade contented and unworried. Surely we can look forward to Hitlikeness, Fragmentlikeness, Phase2likeness, Crashed & Burned in Developmentlikeness revealing The True Path to their enlightened followers. Huxley saw it almost a century ago and called it Soma.

Of course The Dark Side is also with us. The Demons include Darth hERG, The CYPth, Molecular Complexity, Rotatable Bonds, Polar Surface Area and Albumin (who frequently confuses The Faithful by joining the Gods without telling anyone). All the while, self-appointed high priests claim insight into and control over the inner workings of The Dark Side while noisily peddling parametric panaceas.

To some extent this appeal to Faith is not unexpected. The odds of success in this business are vanishingly small and providing direction for The Great Unwashed becomes tiresome if they are allowed to question the Wisdom of their Leaders. The Second Law is naturally heresy and, despite it's key role in drug action, Entropy is first denied and then demonised once denial has lost its efficacy.

Gotta go. Did we just hear the crackle of the auto da fe being kindled?