I agree. This book would be an easy read for anyone who is not really invested in scientific research or the advancement of medicine. But for people like most of us here on this forum, the book is emotionally devastating. I could only read a few pages at a time, then had to set it down for a while before picking it up again.
In my case, it meant that I lost about 2 decades worth of my life that was dedicated to academic medical research. The content and statements in this book can easily be verified. The deeper you dig into it, the more durably true it is. And as an insider to academic research in several disciplines, I can add that it is not only the main topic of the book (cancer research), but all fields of medical research that have this terrible problem caused by perverse incentives. The author, from the outside as a journalist, couldn’t have known the full extent of the problem.
There has been a strong reaction against it within the academic/medical research community, but I chalk that up to “I think thou doest protest too much”, and the perverse incentives involved. If every taxpayer read and understood this book, I am confident that the NIH would be de-funded immediately following the next round of federal elections.
Fortunately in my case, I lost all confidence in the gold-standard peer-review process for academic research about two decades ago, so I did not end up wasting all four decades of my scientific career, only the first two.