It's an industry cliché: Drug development involves lots of risk and, of course, huge potential rewards. Yet as Forbes' sharp scribe Matthew Herper points out, developers of the failed IV form of bapineuzumab for Alzheimer's disease might have taken an unwise gamble on large and expensive Phase III trials of the experimental drug after weak signs of efficacy in earlier studies. And he writes that the closely watched program that Pfizer ($PFE) and Johnson & Johnson ($JNJ) killed on Monday is only one case of a much larger problem in the pharma industry, where companies hungry for big profits appear blinded to signs that their experimental compounds aren't working. Rather than confirm their hopes in small mid-stage studies, pharma groups roll the dice with massive late-stage trials. Article