Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14002

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, Brownlee S.
Naming names: is there an (unbiased) doctor in the house?
BMJ 2008 Jul 23; 337:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/337/jul23_3/a930

Abstract:

Ho hum, another medical scandal in the news. Earlier this month US Senator Chuck Grassley announced his intention to investigate Alan Schatzberg, chairman of the psychiatry department at Stanford University and the incoming president of the American Psychiatric Association, about his multimillion dollar interest in Corcept Therapeutics, a company that is seeking to market a drug that Dr Schatzberg is researching with federal funding, and the extent to which he disclosed and was required to disclose that interest to Stanford.1 In June the New York Times broke a front page story about the alleged failure of three top research psychiatrists at Harvard, each of them a proponent of drug treatment for psychiatric conditions in children, to report that since 2000 they had collectively received more than $4.2m (£2.1m; 2.6m) from various drug companies.2

After ignoring the growing controversy over conflict of interest for years, journalists now seem only too happy