Kwam ik net tegen op BadScience:
Walgelijk.
Zoals BadScience constateert:
Verdere berichtgeving in NYTimes, en een blog dat wel aardige dingen uit het artikel plukt.A commercial medical writing company is employed by a drug company to produce a programme of academic papers that can be rolled out in academic journals to build a brand message. After copywriters produce the articles, in collaboration with the drug company, to their specifications, the ghostwriting company finds some academics who are willing to put their names to them, perhaps after a few modest changes.
The latest documents come from a court case brought against Wyeth by around 14,000 patients who developed breast cancer while taking their hormone replacement therapy, Prempro. The open access journal PLoS Medicine, acting with the New York Times, argued successfully in court that 1500 documents from the case which detailed the ghostwriting should be placed in the public domain, because they represent important information on a potential threat to public health. Now, PLoS has published the first academic analysis of these documents, which is free to access online.
The PLoS documents show DesignWrite sold Wyeth more than 50 peer reviewed journal articles for HRT, and a similar number of conference posters, slide kits, symposia, and journal supplements. The analysis in PLoS (by an academic who appeared against the company in court) shows how these publications variously promoted unproven and unlicensed benefits of Wyeth’s HRT drug, undermined its competitors, and downplayed its harms.
Walgelijk.
Worst of all is the complicity of the academics, and in very large numbers. There is no possible way they could persuade themselves that what they were doing was correct. “Research shows high clinician reliance on journal articles for credible product information,” said DesignWrite, in their initial pitch. They’re right, and that’s for a reason: when you read an academic paper, you trust it was written by the person whose name is on it.
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