I spend my workdays getting code reviewed by other developers who are happy to tell me everything I did wrong. The first few times it stings. Then you realize the feedback is making your software better, and the same logic applies to biotech companies getting hammered in public, which Forbes argues this week.

The core argument is straightforward. When a biotech firm gets criticized, whether it's from scientists, journalists, or random people on social media with surprisingly strong opinions about lipid nanoparticles, the instinct is to go quiet. Lock down the PR channels. Issue a carefully worded non-statement. But that silence creates a vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum about as much as the internet does.

What biotech companies should be doing is treating criticism like an open issue on a GitHub repo. Someone found a bug in your reasoning, or at least a gap in how you communicated it. That's an opportunity to explain the science, clarify the mission, and show your work. The companies that do this well end up stronger because they've essentially let the public look at their commit history.

And let's get real about the communication gap here. Biotech is doing things that sound like science fiction to most people. CRISPR gene editing. mRNA platforms that took decades of research before they saved the world. Personalized cell therapies grown in labs. When the average person's frame of reference for biotech is a movie where the science goes wrong and everyone turns into zombies, you have a lot of explaining to do. Criticism, even the unfair kind, tells you exactly where your explanation failed.

The Forbes piece focuses on the PR angle, but there's an engineering truth underneath this that nobody is talking about. In software, we have this concept called security through obscurity, which is the idea that if you hide how your system works, attackers won't find the vulnerabilities. It's universally considered a bad strategy because the vulnerabilities are still there, they're just invisible to you. When biotech companies hide from criticism, they're doing the exact same thing. The misunderstandings about their work are still out there, and ignoring them doesn't patch the bug.

The companies that engage, that break down their science the way a good developer breaks down a complex architecture decision, those are the ones that build trust. Because trust is the actual product here. The molecule is just the delivery mechanism for it.

I think about what the UConn team is doing with CBD-derived bioplastics, which I covered earlier this week. They're open about the limitations of current bio-based polymers and what they're trying to solve. That openness doesn't make their work look weaker, it makes it look credible. You understand the problem they're solving because they told you what the problem is.

Biotech needs more of that energy. Less fortress, more documentation.