Experimentation by industrial selection

Science and Engineering Ethics, 2003

The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 2009

Mens Sana Monographs, 2008

The current situation in medicine has been described as a crisis of credibility, as the profit motive of industry has taken control of clinical trials and the dissemination of data. Pharmaceutical companies maintain a stranglehold over the content of medical journals in three ways: (1) by ghostwriting articles that bias the results of clinical trials, (2) by the sheer economic power they exert on journals due to the purchase of drug advertisements and journal reprints, and (3) by the threat of legal action against those researchers who seek to correct the misrepresentation of study results. This paper argues that Karl Popper's critical rationalism provides a corrective to the failure of academic freedom in biomedical research.

Over the past three decades, collaborative arrangements between academic biomedical researchers and private industry have grown dramatically, resulting in medical innovations that have benefi ted society greatly. However, a growing chorus of criticism directed at private companies that sponsor and conduct biomedical research casts doubt on the very ethos of science. Academics and anti-business activists have waged a campaign against industry-sponsored clinical trials that denies the fundamentally commercial nature of such research and hinders medical progress. These critics point to a small number of unfortunate and tragic cases in which fi nancial confl icts of interest may have played a role in research-related injuries and deaths in order to unjustifi ably condemn the profi t motive in biomedical research as a whole.

Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics, 2021

When a knowledge system importantly loses integrity, ceasing to provide the kinds of trusted knowledge expected of it, we can label this epistemic corruption. Epistemic corruption often occurs because the system has been co-opted for interests at odds with some of the central goals thought to lie behind it. There is now abundant evidence that the involvement of pharmaceutical companies corrupts medical science. Within the medical community, this is generally assumed to be the result of conflicts of interest. However, some important ways that the industry corrupts are not captured well by standard analyses in terms of conflicts of interest. It is not just that there is a body of medical science perverted by industry largesse. Instead, much of the corruption of medical science via the pharmaceutical industry happens through grafting activities: Pharmaceutical companies do their own research and smoothly integrate it with medical science, taking advantage of the legitimacy of the latter.

PLOS Medicine, 2006

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The American Council on Science and Health gratefully acknowledges the comments and contributions of the following individuals, who reviewed this publication. ACSH accepts unrestricted grants on the condition that it is solely responsible for the conduct of its research and the dissemination of its work to the public. The organization does not perform proprietary research, nor does it accept support from individual corporations for specific research projects. All contributions to ACSH-a publicly funded organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code-are tax deductible.

European journal of internal medicine, 2007