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Now that PharmFree has reduced conflict of interest…

… to some extent at most American medical schools, UD says they should turn their attention to corporate ghostwriting of articles and books for university researchers.

AMSA’s simple expediency of publishing COI rankings for each school has shamed many institutions into taking more seriously not merely specific practices like free drug samples and the constant trolling of campus by pharma sales people, but also disclosure in general, as in how much pharma money this or that professor pockets.

The widespread scandal involving professors claiming publications in the scientific literature which have in fact been written, in whole or in part, by ghostwriting firms paid by pharmaceutical companies, is much talked about. But professional organizations and editorial boards – both almost completely dependent on revenue from drug firms – will never do anything about it. Universities don’t care. Only independent groups like AMSA can get anywhere on this one.

*******************************

We can expect resistance to all of these changes. UD anticipates a new organization emerging called PharmFee.

Margaret Soltan, March 9, 2012 4:46AM
Posted in: conflict of interest, hoax

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2 Responses to “Now that PharmFree has reduced conflict of interest…”

  1. adam Says:
    March 9th, 2012 at 5:02AM

    PharmFree or PharmFee
    What’s the difference to you and me?
    It’s not very much
    ‘Till you’re in a clutch
    And you ask if this pillule is going go kill you.

  2. Mike S. Says:
    March 9th, 2012 at 6:25PM

    It will be interesting to see what happens to the medical journals’ business model given that academic publishing in the sciences is about to undergo cataclysmic change. Just last week Elsevier was taking heat over its opposition to open access. Meanwhile PloS and ArXiv have spent the better part of a decade laying the groundwork for putting the pay-walled/for-profit crowd out of business. Maybe across the board changes in (scientific) academic publishing will force the medical journals to make fundamental changes, or maybe not.

    As for this: “… taking more seriously not merely specific practices like free drug samples and the constant trolling of campus by pharma sales people…”
    If there are fewer sales reps on campus, it may be partially driven by recent pharma sales force layoffs and thus not only due to AMSA opposition.

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