Once again it’s just a little (three billion dollars ) off the top for Glaxo as it settles yet another illegal marketing case with the federal government.

Three billion is no biggie for big pharma, and the tons of other pending cases against Glaxo (all of which it will settle for large sums) are also no biggie. Your med school colleagues will continue getting lucrative sales gigs for Glaxo while they’re researching Glaxo drugs, etc. All will again be well as soon as this latest thing settles down.

And yet the head of a federal panel that will be issuing health guidelines for the rest of us has been unable to resist drug company money. She

has been a member of speaker bureaus for two drug companies, Daiichi Sankyo and Novartis. Some universities prohibit faculty involvement with speaker bureaus to avoid claims of marketing.

“The fact is you get pursued by the companies,” Dr. Oparil said. “On some occasions, I’ve said yes to them.”

The girl can’t help it.

In recent years, psychologists have reported a raft of findings on race biases, brain imaging and even extrasensory perception that have not stood up to scrutiny.

… In a survey of more than 2,000 American psychologists scheduled to be published this year, Leslie John of Harvard Business School and two colleagues found that 70 percent had acknowledged, anonymously, to cutting some corners in reporting data. About a third said they had reported an unexpected finding as predicted from the start, and about 1 percent admitted to falsifying data.

The ruler of this universe seems to be ex-Harvard psychology professor Marc Hauser (scroll down), and his long slow downfall is certainly instructive; but really where is the American Psychological Association? UD gathers the APA is the official organization here… UD fears the APA has, at the very least, co-dependency and enabling issues.

A far more healthy research model is the open rollicking naughtiness of the American Psychiatric Association, with its Schatzbergs and Nemeroffs and Biedermans and all. The first APA is getting all weepy and neurotic; the second hums happily along.

[The University of] Texas [is] guaranteed an average $15 million a year for 20 years for letting ESPN build a channel around its sports.

… “I think we could ultimately end up with two conferences: one called ESPN and one called Fox,” Louisiana State University Chancellor Michael Martin joked at an Oct. 24 meeting of the Knight Commission.

Sports, and college football, matters to broadcasters because it draws a large audience to live programming, where viewers can’t skip advertisements with digital video recorders, according to a report by Barclays Capital analyst Anthony DiCelemente. That helps ESPN generate the highest earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of any Disney unit, at about $3.67 billion.

… Other schools’ anger at Texas is misplaced, said Mike Leach, a former Texas Tech University football coach. “Anyone upset with Texas is mostly rooted in jealousy,” he said. “These guys would walk on glass to make the same deal.”

Mike knows anger.

… ‘reasonable force’ to execute the judgment.”

UD‘s strange legal education continues. Righthaven, the copyright troll that last year sued her, now faces, Bloomberg Business Week reports, the police at the door. They won’t pay any of the many large judgments (more are on the way) assessed against them for their losses in court.

Strange to think that the frighteningly legitimate thing that came bristling up to UD‘s door with a summons last summer turns out to have been what looks more and more like a high-risk, inept conspiracy about to declare bankruptcy. I suppose it’s a measure of UD‘s naivety that this never occurred to her; that she fixed only on the threatening, baffling language of a complaint against her, and not on the possibility that behind the formal machinery and dread-inducing rhetoric lay seven swaggering cocksmen with a can’t miss scheme. Six, seven.

At the moment, Righthaven seems to be down to one guy. His cock must be steamrolled flat.

What did he do? Whip it out?

She’s on the left.

She’s Yoshi.

Some video game.

… $3.5 million annually.”

Iowa’s football coach has the highest salary in the state!

But the nitwits there are pissed off that even with all that money he can’t figure out a way to make a sports team win all its games.

Solution? PAY HIM MORE.

Simon Stern and Trudo Lemmens, law professors at the University of Toronto, propose using the RICO Act to make university ghost and guest writers “think twice before allowing their names to be used.” They talk about the fraud on prescribers (of the drugs the articles promote), article readers, and patients.

What they don’t include is the fraud against their academic institutions. Every year, as they point out, professors submit annual reports to their deans, describing their research productivity. Pharma-fraudsters get monetary bonuses that should go to professors who write their own articles. This unfairness harms morale and collegiality; it also cheapens the institution by associating it with bogus, corporate-generated, research.

Universities, Lemmens and Stern write, “are reluctant to punish prestigious doctors who otherwise reflect credit on the institution and often help impress donors.”

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

One thing that’s constantly amazed UD as she has written this blog is the way corporations pretty much do everything for faculty – not just write their articles. Chandru Rajam, recently a (not terribly well-received; too busy to teach… but who cares… just a visiting professor… only fucks up GW students for two semesters) colleague of UD‘s in the business school, has an outsourced grading business that will relieve UD of all grading responsibilities. She never needs to see a student paper! Add ghost-writing companies, corporate-provided PowerPoints (all you have to do is read them out loud! exam questions included!), etc. etc., and it’s clear that postmodern university professors who are willing to pay don’t have to do anything.

On top of this, UD lives in Washington – the richest metropolitan region in the country. While spending her money to make other people do everything for her, she has an immense variety of spas from which to choose.

A Dutchman named Diederik Stapel
Was asked why his life took a topple.
“You could say, if you want,
That my work’s vol met stront.
(In English, that’s all full of crapel.”).”

**************************************
UD thanks Jeremy for updates on this story.

Halloween mayhem down the street from UD‘s office.

The British are expressing some ambivalence about embracing the benefits of all-American, for-profit, Click-Thru U.

Silly buggers. Read Eric Cantor’s latest speech! Get on board!

Satto Tonegawa’s suicide (for an earlier post, go here) has been confirmed. These deaths, of a freshman and a sophomore, are immensely sad; they also raise suicide contagion fears.

… comforts me.

[UD thanks James.]

Good news. People are beginning to pay attention to Click-Thru U.

One example:

“[A]n online M.B.A. has virtually no measurable value with respect to [the] job search and career management,” says [Roy] Cohen, author of The Wall Street Professional’s Survival Guide.

Seems most online university stuff has much lower admissions standards than actual universities. Plus there’s this “stigma,” explains one observer, attached to online education.

Know why? Because it’s really crappy. Read this UD category – Click-Thru U. – for more information.