Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15095
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
Matheson A.
Corporate Science and the Husbandry of Scientific and Medical Knowledge by the Pharmaceutical Industry
BioSocieties 2008; 3:355–382
http://www.admatheson.com/AM%20BioSocieties%20paper%20Dec%2008.pdf
Abstract:
This article analyses the role of the pharmaceutical and medical device industries (‘pharma’) in
the construction of scientific and medical knowledge. Pharma’s activities are part of the broader
dispositif of institutions, enterprises, regulations and constituencies within which medical-scientific
knowledge is generated, but pharma’s contributions exhibit a specific character reflecting commercial
pressures. As drug development proceeds, research and marketing activities coalesce
around ‘product canons’ that integrate scientific truth-claims and commercial positioning, generating
knowledge with implicit commercial functionality. From this platform, pharma stamps consensus-
building ‘narratives’ into medical-scientific discourse, in which ‘problems’ arise and are
‘solved’ by drugs. Concurrently, pharma modulates the structure of discourse and the social networks
through which discourse proceeds. Implicit within these activities is a meta-science whose
goal is to understand and technologize the operation of science to an external end. This mode
of knowledge production can be viewed as a normative transformation of Kuhnian normal science,
characterized by the attachment (and at times subordination) of paradigmatic tenets to
extrinsic goals; exaggerated control of belief, research and consensus formation; and a capacity
for infringement of traditional norms of scientific truthfulness. An International Standard of Integrity
in Science would strengthen pharma’s contributions to medical and scientific knowledge.
Keywords:
Foucault, Kuhn, Marketing, Medicine, Pharmaceutical Industry, Science Studies
