Healthy Skepticism Library item: 7409
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: report
Cooper RJ, Schriger DL, Wallace RC, Mikulich VJ, Wilkes MS
Graphics in Pharmaceutical Advertisements: Are They Truthful, Are They Adequately Detailed?
Los Angeles: UCLA School of Medicine 2001 Sep
http://www.ama-assn.org/public/peer/prc_program2001.htm#truthful
Abstract:
Objective: Are pharmaceutical advertisements sophisticated medical communications akin to scientific publications, or hollow slogans akin to popular advertising? If the former, graphs within advertisements should be similar to graphs in scientific manuscripts. This study characterized the quantity and quality of graphs in pharmaceutical advertisements.
Design: All pharmaceutical advertisements in 10 leading US medical journals published in 1999 were reviewed and each data graph was evaluated to characterize its features. Pharmaceutical advertisement graphs were contrasted with graphs in articles of JAMA and Annals of Emergency Medicine.
Results: There were 836 glossy and 455 small-print pages in 484 unique advertisements (of 3190 total advertisements). Forty-nine percent of glossy page area was nonscientific figures/images, 0.4% tables, and 1.6% scientific graphs (74 graphs in 64 advertisements). The remaining 49% was text or blank page. Eight percent of graphs had errors, 5% had visual obfuscation, and 12% used nonstandard graphing conventions. Only 36% of graphs were self-explanatory. No graphs contained advanced features (pairing, symbolic dimensionality, or small multiples). Fifty-eight percent presented data on an outcome relevant to the drug’s indication. When comparing the pharmaceutical advertisement graphs (n=74) with scientific graphs from JAMA (n=64) and Annals of Emergency Medicine (n=128), more simple univariate graphs (96%) were noted in advertisements than in articles published in JAMA (63%) or Annals of Emergency Medicine (53%). Pharmaceutical advertisement graphs had more visual noise (66% vs JAMA 0% or Annals of Emergency Medicine 10%), more numeric distortion (36% vs JAMA 6% or Annals of Emergency Medicine 5%), and more redundancies within the graphs (46% vs JAMA 14% or Annals of Emergency Medicine 16%). The efficiency of data presentation quantified by the data depiction index (area of graph that contains information) was less in the pharmaceutical advertisement graphs; median and interquartile ranges were for pharmaceutical advertisements 0.22 (0.11, 0.43), JAMA 1.1 (0.52, 3.36), and Annals of Emergency Medicine 0.94 (0.54, 1.7).
Conclusions: Graphs in pharmaceutical advertisements were rare and when present were of lower quality than those in journal articles. The pharmaceutical advertisement graphs’ designs frequently resulted in numeric distortion, which is specifically prohibited by US Food and Drug Administration regulations.
1UCLA Emergency Medicine Center, UCLA School of Medicine, 924 Westwood Blvd, #300, Los Angeles, CA 90024, USA, e-mail: richelle@ucla.edu; and 2Department of Medicine, UCLA School of Medicine
Notes:
Paper presented at Fourth International Congress on Peer Review in Biomedical Publication, Barcelona, September 14-16, 2001
