I didn't create an account...

I'm not really surprised about this as money follows profitability and SSRIs alone are among the biggest money making medications in the US.

It would be interesting to know not just who made the money from the speaking engagements, but what they said.

Seems to me, the pool of possible explanations could be different if the speakers were primarily clinicians relying largely on case histories vs primarily academic types reporting on large sample controlled trials.

Anyway, this does not surprise me. Both the pharmaceutical companies and the physicians involved are skirting the laws/professional guidelines with these *speaker* programs. I also blame the physicians who accept the invitations, because everyone there knows it is a farce, imo.

I was a "naked PhD" with interests in the population biology and community ecology of parasitic disease, not a DVM or an MD but I regularly attended national Parasitology conferences that included talks and seminars that were funded by pharmaceutical companies.

Allied industries do conduct research in order to determine safety and efficacy of their products, and this research is published and it does influence educational content and clinical practice. No doubt the pharmaceutical companies work with internal incentives that pose conflicts of interest between science and profits.

IMO the misuse of studies and scientific presentations as marketing is another case of good intentions sometimes/often going wrong. It's a rather expected natural outcome of both American health industries being imbedded in a free-market system and of human nature.

The media has no shortage of clinicians interested in the personal satisfaction, celebrity, and money that accompanies being a mouthpiece for the med-ertainment industry. Medical treatment break-through stories on the morning shows get air-time because they get pushed by publicists, especially if they are a 'program' available as a book or CD.

It's somewhat surprising there is not a reality show called "America's Next TV MD".

really not that, but pitches for specific drugs.

The studies presented are often flawed and the way they are presented is clearly biased. And everyone knows that.

The TV MD's are another story. While some present some decent information, others are shills.

And then there are the myriad of websites that patients scour looking for something, anything, that will give them relief. The general public can't properly evaluate the material and many just believe it because they read it on the internet.

they are pumping out stories and making commentary as if they actually have Noble Prize worthy comprehension of medical research and practice.

Dr. Gupta, Dr. Oz,, Dr Nancy Snyderman, Dr (PhD) Phil, Dr (PhD) John Gray...which are NOT selling books based on their celebrity?

And that is celebrity gained by being attractive, articulate, readers of assignments actually chosen and researched by others.

Stories making it to the networks are pushed by producers interested in creating a well-attended market that provides an opportunity to "sell soap." It's exhausting to find those stories and staff are willing to listen to the pitch of a publicist to get the job done.

I could get on a soap box...I probably shouldn't.

In regard to other things

As minor academic, I had an opportunity to volunteer as an editor for a couple small scientific journals {Yes, I am aware that my drain bramage hides that well }. As most actively publishing academics get invited to do, I also did scientific peer review of manuscripts...consequently I can say...

I've never seen a manuscript that on examination was free of flaws in the eyes of someone. It's pretty much a given. And the reality is that the flaws that go forward are easier to see in retrospect.

Flaws are one of the things that give purpose to the relentless turn of the research wheel that grinds away at that grist.



Still, I don't disagree at all that our system of researched information sharing creates conflicts of interest between science, education, and profits.

We need medical school and veterinary school faculty to know what's current, where their fields are making progress. Faculty members read journals, treatises, and attend professional conferences. I did those things and always felt good about being able to bring to my classes information that wasn't yet in the textbooks. It's risky relative to accidentally doing the marketing work of the drug companies.

Medical students are intellectual sponges with extraordinary capacity for acquiring and with lightening speed making matching associations in information. As impressive as those skills are they aren't very high level problem solving. After graduation, their practice will be mostly snap judgments, nothing that approaches diagnosis with an I-R-A-C type strategy used in the law. IMO (while leaving room for impressive variations) as a class they seem potentially quite vulnerable to the effects of information that influences commercial decisions.

Academics aren't free from contributing to those vulnerabilities.

Most people have no idea how powerful the transmission of information into a clinical class can be, whether it's about proposed and still uncertain mechanisms of Serotonin in depression, or commentary that a particular medication, or class of medications looks promising for treatment of problem X.

Those messages reach literally thousands of soon to be diagnosing and prescribing students.

They are every bit as powerful and (for the pharmaceutical companies) cost effective as the overt marketing represented by a gift pen or coffee cup with a drug company logo. (if you ever want to be astounded at "truck", make a trip into the industrial displays at a meeting of the American Microbiological Society. An attendee can weigh a person down with bags full of trinkets worth scores of dollars.