Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13860

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

Lenzer J.
Review launched after Harvard psychiatrist failed to disclose industry funding.
BMJ 2008 Jun 14; 336:(7657):1327
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/336/7657/1327-a?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Review+launched+after+Harvard+psychiatrist+failed+to+disclose+industry&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

Abstract:

Findings that a leading Harvard professor of psychiatry failed to report substantial payments that he received from drug companies has caused Harvard Medical School, one of its affiliated hospitals, and the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to come under fire.

An investigation by the US senator Charles Grassley showed that the psychiatrist, Joseph Biederman, and two of his colleagues, Thomas Spencer and Timothy Wilens, had altogether received more than $4.2m (£2.1m; 2.7m) from drug companies since 2000.

The financial disclosure forms filed by the three doctors, according to Mr Grassley, “were a mess” and made it seem that they had received only “a couple of hundred thousand dollars” in the past seven years (http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?dbname=2008_record&page=S5029&position=all).

Mr Grassley said that the failure of the researchers to report their full income could place Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital “in jeopardy of violating NIH regulations on conflicts of interest.” Such violations . . .