This article investigates the influence of science on the quality of industrial innovation by examining the effect of referencing scientific articles on the citation hazard of a patent. Duration models are adopted because negative binomial models, which are widely used to analyze patent citation data, are inappropriate for accommodating the complex underlying stochastic process of patent citations. We find that patents referencing scientific articles have a significantly higher citation hazard than patents that cite non-scientific articles or do not cite any. In addition, we find that the influence of science is not limited to a few complex innovations. The results provide strong supportive evidence that the application of scientific knowledge contributes directly and broadly to the quality of industrial innovation.