Industry executives should think back to an earlier precedent: the move in cancer trials pushed by Genentech more than a decade ago to make mid-stage trials mirror approval studies, with control groups and patients who are randomly assigned either to get the drug or not.
But because of the Academies Bill's timetable, "we have the spectacle of ministers who have already told us they will accept no amendment, period, and the sight of whips new and old cracking their knuckles off-stage and perfecting basilisk-like stares in the mirror" to prevent MPs voting for any changes, he said.
People didn't believe at first that William Herschel could see the things he was claiming to pick out in the sky, but then his speculum mirror technology was so in advance of anything that had been produced at that stage.