Tag: conflicts of interest

We do not belong to the scientology movement, but this false accusation triggered an email correspondence that exposed the problematic happenings usually behind closed academic curtains.

In our Science News podcast, Peter Simons reports on false positives in brain imaging, unpublished and missing trials, conflicts of interest and more.

A new questionnaire funded by AbbVie conflates antidepressant side effects with bipolar disorder and doesn’t actually meet the criteria for being considered “screening.”

An interview with Professor Sami Timimi, Psychiatrist Peter Gordon and campaigner Stevie Lewis, who talk about the potential for conflicts of interest with the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists participation in a Government-led review of Prescribed Drug Dependence.

From Medium: "This is where evidence based medicine is supposed to shine, by demanding randomized trials to prove that certain procedures/drugs either work or don’t....

From HealthNewsReview.org: While researchers are usually required to disclose their conflicts of interest in medical journals, media outlets do not often require journalists to disclose...

From The Chronicle of Higher Education: A number of studies have shown the significant problems that arise from financial conflicts in research. Disclosure of researchers'...

Review of a new mixed depression guideline reveals financial bias of guideline developers and lack of evidence supporting recommendations for prescribing of antipsychotics.

In this piece for STAT, Meghana Keshavan profiles Dr. Vinay Prasad, a physician who has become an influential voice in the medical community through his...

In this opinion piece for The Chronicle Herald, Dr. A.J. discusses the subjective nature of psychiatric diagnosis and the DSM. Citing research by Paula Kaplan,...

When the neuroleptics-are-necessary-to-treat-schizophrenia myth falls, psychiatry is finished. And that is why the Goff et al paper was produced: a desperate attempt to maintain its position by a profession that is truly on the ropes. For psychiatry this is a death-struggle.

Questionable research practices and poor reproducibility in electrical brain stimulation (EBS) studies.

A meta-analysis looks at the effects of researcher background on study findings for trials comparing pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy for depression.

Martha Rosenberg, for AlterNet: “Pharma may be becoming one of the public's most reviled sectors but the U.S. government is in the process of...

Most doctors still affect surprise at the idea SSRIs might come with withdrawal problems. Regulators knew very clearly since 2002 about the problems, but have decided to leave any communication of these issues in company hands.

All the fuss about Study 329 centers on its 8-week acute phase. But this study had a 24-week Continuation Phase that has never been published. Until Now.

Pharmalot’s Ed Silverman reports on a Senate bill aimed at loosening requirements around the reporting of financial conflicts of interest between companies and physicians....

When we set out to restore GSK’s misreported Study 329 of paroxetine for adolescent depression under the RIAT initiative, we had no idea of the magnitude of the task we were undertaking. After almost a year, we were relieved to finally complete a draft and submit it to the BMJ, who had earlier indicated an interest in publishing our restoration. But that was the beginning of another year of peer review that we believed went beyond enhancing our paper and became rather an interrogation of our honesty and integrity. Frankly, we were offended that our work was subject to such checks when papers submitted by pharmaceutical companies with fraud convictions are not.

The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has come under intense scrutiny for delayed corrections and controversial editorials and articles. “The Journal and its...

“A STAT examination of hundreds of social media accounts maintained by health-care professionals finds that while they often tweet medical advice, they almost never disclose potential conflicts of...

“Robert Califf's ties to Big Pharma run deep and the Obama nominee for the FDA just sailed through the U.S. Senate.” Article →

“About 30 percent of senators and 20 percent of representatives held assets in biomedical and health-care companies, or in specialty funds set up to invest...

Legislation is being advanced that would speed up the FDA’s approval process for new drugs and medical devices, according to a report by the Pacific Standard. Pharmaceutical and medical device companies have been lobbying heavily to reduce regulations and are winning over bipartisan support by attaching these measures to increased mental health funding.

The UK Times reports that pharmaceutical companies are actively lobbying to limit the release of clinical trial data to the public. Rather than limiting results and data to medical journals, new transparency initiatives are pushing for making the information publically available. The push for transparency comes in the wake of the reanalysis of the Study 329 data on paroxetine (marketed as Seroxat and Paxil), which found that the industry study had misconstrued its results.

Access to data is more important than access to information about conflicts of interest. It is only when there is access to the data that we can see if interests are conflicting and take that into account. Problems don’t get solved unless someone is motivated for some reason. We need the bias that pharmaceutical companies bring to bear in their defense of a product, along with the bias of those who might have been injured by a treatment. Both of these biases can distort the picture but it’s when people with differing points of view agree on what is right in front of their noses that we can begin to have some confidence about what we have.