Dangerous trends in studies performed by pharmaceutical companies. In their post-release studies they don't focus on risk assessment but more or the less on finding new marketing messages
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According to the whistleblower, the results of these studies were often dubious. “We occasionally resorted to ‘playing’ with the data that had originally failed to show the expected result,” he says. “This was done by altering the statistical method until any statistical significance was found.” He adds that the company sometimes omitted negative results and played down harmful side effects. After all, post-marketing studies don’t face the scrutiny that pre-approval studies do.
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A former pharmaceutical company employee blows the whistle on drug promotion disguised as science in an editorial published today. Read more