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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 523

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: Journal Article

Scheifele DW.
Clinical trials and tribulations: a personal view of interacting with pharmaceutical manufacturers.
Clin Invest Med 1997 Jun; 20:(3):188-92


Abstract:

As grants from agencies shrink, universities and academic researchers are pursuing work on clinical trials funded by pharmaceutical manufacturers. The author, an investigator with a nonprofit research cooperative, offers insight and advice on industry-sponsored trials. He finds that the “doorways” to industry research are hidden, as are industry priorities. Researchers with limited experience have trouble “breaking in” and, when they do work on industry-sponsored trials, are usually given the less interesting work at first. Difficulties encountered during industry-sponsored trials include lack of researcher input, unreasonable enrolment requirements, delays by the sponsor and quashing of publication of unfavourable results. On the positive side, a good experience can include stimulating research, with the researcher playing a substantial role in all phases, an adequate budget, rapid turnaround and publication of the results. To succeed in this environment, trialists should have established expertise, technical and managerial abilities, appropriate resources and strong personal attributes; a national or international reputation is an asset. Researchers can benefit from universities’ industry liaison offices and from strong oversight by institutional review boards.

Keywords:
*analysis Canada drug company sponsored research SPONSORSHIP: RESEARCH

 

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Cases of wilful misrepresentation are a rarity in medical advertising. For every advertisement in which nonexistent doctors are called on to testify or deliberately irrelevant references are bunched up in [fine print], you will find a hundred or more whose greatest offenses are unquestioning enthusiasm and the skill to communicate it.

The best defence the physician can muster against this kind of advertising is a healthy skepticism and a willingness, not always apparent in the past, to do his homework. He must cultivate a flair for spotting the logical loophole, the invalid clinical trial, the unreliable or meaningless testimonial, the unneeded improvement and the unlikely claim. Above all, he must develop greater resistance to the lure of the fashionable and the new.
- Pierre R. Garai (advertising executive) 1963