Don't other teams have to be able to DUPLICATE the tests and get the same results for a scientific CLAIM to be believed?

I wonder if Pfeizer's experience was the same as Oxford University and Astra-Zeneca.

There was an interesting explanation of the latter's project, on the News this evening. They claimed about 70% efficacy for their vaccine, then discovered that giving a half-dose followed by a full dose, raised that to about 90%, though have not yet worked out why.

Their speed of development though is not just the single-mindedness I described above. That most certainly helped, with the research and regulatory biologists concentrating on it; but it emerged that Oxford has been working on Corona-genus virii and vaccine research for a long time.

This is a common virus genus, so although they could not have predicted SARS-Covid-19 they did predict that a Corona-virus epidemic or pandemic would be highly likely at some time in the future. We've had them previously, in various forms. So they studied the micro-organism's general biology - its methods, strengths and weaknesses.

This gave them a big head start when the Chinese scientists released the details of the Covid strain.  The specific strain and its illness are is new but the basic physiology was already known.

Their vaccine also has two production advantages. It is relatively simple to make in large quantities, and can be kept in fairly ordinary refrigerators, not in ultra-deep freeze. The developers are licencing it non-profit, to several other countries already, including India which (I was surprised to learn) has the world's largest vaccine factory. 

'
So did Pfeizer also have that head-start by having been studying the virus genera for some time anyway?  

'''
I think all the fuss about Chinese animal markets, and now Danish mink farms, have misled many people seem to think a zootic virus is something new to humans. Not so, although the Chinese trade with poor hygiene control is to be regretted. (I wonder if the farmed mink were originally infected by a human!) Smallpox is now thought to have crossed from gerbils to humans, in Asia, back in Mediaeval times.  Bubonic Plague, also known as the Black Death, was carried by rats but transmitted to humans initially by fleas and lice, then between humans by the same parasites. Smallpox is considered eradicated. Bubonic Plague is still about though thankfully very rare now. Both of those diseases are potentially fatal, the latter very rapidly, too.  Weil's Disease is carried by rats but not normally infectious between humans: infection is by ingesting or otherwise absorbing water contaminated by carrier-rats' urine.