In the fall of last year, I received a very unusual request from two associated editors, David Corey, Ph.D. and Helle Ulrich, Ph.D. for Nucleic Acid Research (NAR), a highly regarded and highly cited scientific journal. They asked if I would be willing to provide a manuscript describing how I established a rigorous scientific environment at Ionis. I was pleased to have two scientists for whom I have a high regard and a journal for which I also have a high regard confirm that Ionis is widely known as an organization that consistently practices and publishes papers that reflect rigorous scientific inquiries, because that certainly was one of my goals when I founded Ionis. I had worked very hard over the decades to achieve that goal. That said, I was also a little intimidated by the task because, in the end, ethical and rigorous scientific practices are simply an extension of the personal ethics and skills of individual scientists. As I reviewed the literature, it became apparent that ethical and rigorous scientific practices had been a focal point of debate, particularly over the last decade or so.
In this issue of NAR, David and Helle publish an editorial (Corey, D.R., Ulrich, H.D. NAR, 2022 advanced online publication) explaining why they focused on this topic and asked me to contribute an article and the perspective I wrote (Crooke, S.T., NAR, 2022 advanced online publication). Though the perspective focuses on scientific pursuits, in the end it is about leadership in the challenging environment of basic and applied biological research and drug discovery and development. Considered in that context, perhaps the perspective has a bit broader value than just the practice of science. Certainly, our journey at Ionis Pharmaceuticals tested all of us, and we experienced many disappointments and failures. I am certain that had the Ionis culture not been so strong and cohesively aligned on this goal, that we would have failed and perhaps the technology might still be considered a pipe-dream. I will be interested in your thoughts about the perspective if you are interested enough to read it.