Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17630

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: Electronic Source

Edwards J
Inside Pfizer's Ghostwriting Shop: Friendly Drug Studies for Just $1,000
BNet 2010 Apr 16
http://industry.bnet.com/pharma/10007740/inside-pfizers-ghostwriting-shop-friendly-drug-studies-for-just-1000/

Notes:

For full text and graphics see http://industry.bnet.com/pharma/10007740/inside-pfizers-ghostwriting-shop-friendly-drug-studies-for-just-1000

Full text:

How much does it cost to hire a respected academic to slap his name on a friendly drug-study report? At Parke-Davis, later acquired by Pfizer (PFE), managers paid academics $1,000 per paper, according to a document released in litigation over the company’s Neurontin anticonvulsant. That seems pretty cheap, but of course the supposed author isn’t doing a whole lot for the money.

Most companies have sworn off the practice of writing “research” papers for doctors and then paying them to add their names as authors even when they had little involvement or the results were trivial. Merck (MRK), Forest Labs (FRX), and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) have all been caught doing it.