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Science For Hire

Scientists take money for papers ghostwritten by drug companies.

Doctors named as authors may not have seen raw data.

Scientists are accepting large sums of money from drug companies to put their names to articles endorsing new medicines that they have not written--a growing practice that some fear is putting scientific integrity in jeopardy. Ghostwriting has become widespread in such areas of medicine as cardiology and psychiatry, where drugs play a major role in treatment. Senior doctors, inevitably very busy, have become willing to "author" papers written for them by ghostwriters paid by drug companies. Originally, ghostwriting was confined to medical journal supplements sponsored by the industry, but it can now be found in all the major journals in relevant fields. In some cases, it is alleged, the scientists named as authors will not have seen the raw data they are writing about - just tables compiled by company employees. The doctors, who may also give a talk based on the paper to an audience of other doctors at a drug company-sponsored symposium, receive substantial sums of money. Fuller Torrey, executive director of the Stanley Foundation Research Programs in Bethesda, Maryland, found in a survey that British psychiatrists were being paid around $2,000 (£1,400) a time for symposium talks, plus airfares and hotel accommodation, while Americans got about $3,000. Some payments ran as high as $5,000 or $10,000. "Some of us believe that the present system is approaching a high-class form of professional prostitution," he said.

Robin Murray, head of the division of psychological medicine at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, is one of those who has become increasingly concerned. "It is clear that we have a situation where, when an audience is listening to a well-known British psychiatrist, you recognize the stage where the audience is uncertain as to whether the psychiatrist really believes this or is saying it because they them selves or their department is getting some financial reward," he said. "I can think of a well-known British psychiatrist I met and I said, "How are you?" He said, "What day is it? I'm just working out what drug I'm supporting today." Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, wrote a year ago that when she ran a paper on antidepressant drug treatment, the authors' financial ties to the manufacturers--which the journal requires all contributors to declare--were so extensive that she had to run them on the website. She decided to commission an editorial about it and spoke to research psychiatrists, but "we found very few who did not have financial ties to drug companies that make antidepressants." She wrote: "Researchers serve as consultants to companies whose products they are studying, join advisory boards and speakers' bureaus, enter into patent and royalty arrangements, agree to be the listed authors of articles ghostwritten by interested companies, promote drugs and devices at company-sponsored symposiums, and allow themselves to be plied with expensive gifts and trips to luxurious settings. Many also have equity interest in the companies."

In September 2001, her journal joined the Lancet and 11 others in denouncing the drug companies for imposing restrictions on the data to which scientists are given access in the clinical trials they fund. Some of the journals propose to demand a signed declaration that the papers scientists submit are their own. The success of Prozac, the antidepressant which became a cult "happy" drug in the 1990s, substantially raised the stakes in psychiatry. Its promotion coincided with the decline of state funding for research, leaving scientists in all areas of medicine dependent on pharmaceutical companies to fund or commission their work. That in turn gave the industry unprecedented control over data and ended with research papers increasingly being drafted by company employees or commercial agencies. The responsibility of scientists for the content of their papers takes on serious significance in the context of court cases in the US, where relatives of people who killed themselves and murdered others while on SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) - the class of drug to which Prozac belongs - claimed the drugs were responsible. According to David Healy, a north Wales-based psychopharmacologist who has given evidence for the families, the companies have relied on articles apparently authored by scientists who may in fact have not seen the raw data.

Dr Healy, who had unprecedented access to the data that the companies keep in their archives, said: "It may well be that 50% of the articles on drugs in the major journals across all areas of medicine are not written in a way that the average person in the street expects them to be authored." He cites the case brought last year against the former SmithKline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKline) by relatives of Donald Schell. The court found that the company's best-selling antidepressant, an SSRI called Seroxat, had caused Schell to murder his wife, daughter and granddaughter and commit suicide. The company's defense was based on scientific papers which analyzed the results of trials comparing Seroxat with a placebo and found there was no increased risk of suicide for depressed people on Seroxat. But the raw data probably does not support that, argues Dr Healy. Some of the placebo suicides took place while patients were withdrawing from an older drug. When the figures are readjusted without these, he says, they show there is substantially increased risk of suicide on Seroxat. This raises the question of whether the eminent scientists whose names were on the papers ever saw the raw data from the trials--or saw only tables compiled by company employees, he says. David Dunner, a professor at the University of Washington, who co-authored one of the papers in 1995, admits he did not see the raw data. "I don't know who saw it. I did not," he said. "My role in the paper was that the data were presented to us and we analyzed it and wrote it up and wrote references." His co-author Stuart Montgomery, then of St Mary's hospital medical school in London, declined to answer calls and emails from the Guardian. The third name on the paper is that of Geoff Dunbar, a company employee. The World Health Organization has expressed concern about the ties between industry and researchers. Jonathan Quick, director of essential drugs and medicines policy, wrote in the latest WHO Bulletin: "If clinical trials become a commercial venture in which self-interest overrules public interest and desire overrules science, then the social contract which allows research on human subjects in return for medical advances is broken."

Dr. Tim O'Shea (www.thedoctorwithin.com) shares with us how we are the most conditioned, programmed beings the world has ever known. Not only are our thoughts and attitudes continually being shaped and molded; our very awareness of the whole design seems like it is being subtly and inexorably erased. The doors of perception are carefully and precisely regulated. Those who manipulate the unseen mechanisms of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. It is believed that vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind. Most issues of conventional wisdom are scientifically implanted in the public consciousness by a thousand media clips per day. If everybody believes something, it's probably wrong. We call that Conventional Wisdom. In America, conventional wisdom that has mass acceptance is usually contrived: somebody paid for it. There are numerous illusions that have cost billions and billions to conjure up. Did you ever wonder why you never see the President speaking publicly unless he is reading? Or, why most people in this country think generally the same about many issues?

If you trace modern public influence back to the early part of the last century, Edward L. Bernays took the principles of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, and applied them to the emerging science of mass persuasion. Instead of using these principles to uncover hidden themes in the human unconscious, these same ideas were used to mask agendas and to create illusions that deceive and misrepresent, for marketing purposes. Bernays dominated the PR industry until the 1940s, and was a significant force for another 40 years after that. During all that time, Bernays took on hundreds of diverse assignments to create a public perception about some idea or product. As a neophyte with the Committee on Public Information, one of Bernays' first assignments was to help sell the First World War to the American public with the idea to "Make the World Safe for Democracy." A few years later, Bernays set up a stunt to popularize the notion of women smoking cigarettes. In organizing the 1929 Easter Parade in New York City, Bernays showed himself as a force to be reckoned with. He organized the Torches of Liberty Brigade in which suffragettes marched in the parade smoking cigarettes as a mark of women's liberation. Such publicity followed from that one event that, from then on, women have felt secure about destroying their own lungs in public, the same way that men have always done. Not one to turn down a challenge, he set up the advertising format along with the AMA that lasted for nearly 50 years proving that cigarettes are beneficial to health.

Just look at ads in issues of Life or Time from the 40s and 50s. Bernays' job was to reframe an issue; to create a desired image that would put a particular product or concept in a desirable light. Bernays described the public as a "herd that needed to be led." In addition, this herd-like thinking makes people "susceptible to leadership." Bernays never deviated from his fundamental axiom to "control the masses without their knowing it." The best PR happens with the people unaware that they are being manipulated. These early mass persuaders postured themselves as performing a moral service for humanity in general--democracy was too good for people; they needed to be told what to think, because they were incapable of rational thought by themselves. Once the possibilities of applying Freudian psychology to mass media were glimpsed, Bernays soon had more corporate clients than he could handle. Global corporations fell all over themselves courting the new image makers. There were dozens of goods and services and ideas to be sold to a susceptible public. Over the years, these players have had the money to make their images happen. Though world-famous within the PR industry, the companies have names we don't know, and for good reason. For decades they have created the opinions that most of us were raised with, on virtually any issue, which has the remotest commercial value, including:

Bernays learned early on that the most effective way to create credibility for a product or an image was by independent third-party endorsement. For example, if General Motors were to come out and say that global warming is a hoax thought up by some liberal tree-huggers, people would suspect GM's motives, since GM's fortune is made by selling automobiles. If, however, some independent research institute with a very credible sounding name like the Global Climate Coalition comes out with a scientific report that says global warming is really a fiction, people begin to get confused and to have doubts about the original issue. So that's exactly what Bernays did. With a policy inspired by genius, he set up more institutes and foundations than Rockefeller and Carnegie combined. Quietly financed by the industries whose products were being evaluated, these "independent" research agencies would churn out "scientific" studies and press materials that could create any image their handlers wanted. Such front groups are given high-sounding names like:

Sound pretty legit, don't they? These organizations and hundreds of others like them are front groups whose sole mission is to advance the image of the global corporations who fund them, like those listed above. This is accomplished, in part, by an endless stream of "press releases" announcing "breakthrough" research to every radio station and newspaper in the country. Many of these canned reports read like straight news, and indeed are purposely molded in the news format. This saves journalists the trouble of researching the subjects on their own, especially on topics about which they know very little. Entire sections of the release or in the case of video news releases, the whole thing can be just lifted intact, with no editing, given the byline of the reporter or newspaper or TV station--and voilá! Instant news--copy and paste. Written by corporate PR firms. This happens every single day, since the 1920s when the idea of the news release was first invented by Ivy Lee. Sometimes as many as half the stories appearing in an issue of the Wall St. Journal are based solely on such PR press releases. These types of stories are mixed right in with legitimately researched stories. Unless you have done the research yourself, you won't be able to tell the difference. As 1920s spin pioneers like Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays gained more experience, they began to formulate rules and guidelines for creating public opinion. They learned quickly that mob psychology must focus on emotion, not facts. Since the mob is incapable of rational thought, motivation must be based not on logic but on presentation. Here are some of the axioms of the new science of PR:

Words are very carefully chosen for their emotional impact. Here's an example. A front group called the International Food Information Council handles the public's natural aversion to genetically modified foods. Trigger words are repeated all through the text. Now in the case of GM foods, the public is instinctively afraid of these experimental new creations, which have suddenly popped up on our grocery shelves, and which are said to have DNA alterations. The IFIC wants to reassure the public of the safety of GM foods, so it avoids words like:

It's basic Freudian/Tony Robbins word association. The fact that GM foods are not hybrids that have been subjected to the slow and careful scientific methods of real crossbreeding doesn't really matter. This is pseudoscience, not science. Form is everything and substance just a passing myth. Who do you think funds the Internatinoal Food Information Council? Take a wild guess. Right--Monsanto, DuPont, Frito-Lay, Coco cola, Nutrasweet--those in a position to make fortunes from GM foods. As the science of mass control evolved, PR firms developed further guidelines for effective copy. Here are some of the gems:

Keep this list. Start watching for these techniques. Not hard to find--look at today's paper or tonight's news. See what they're doing; these guys are good!

Science For Hire

PR firms have become very sophisticated in the preparation of news releases. They have learned how to attach the names of famous scientists to research that those scientists have not even looked at. This is a common occurrence. In this way, the editors of newspapers and TV news shows are often not even aware that an individual release is a total PR fabrication. At least they have "deniability," right? Leaded gas appeared in 1922; General Motors discovered that adding lead to gasoline gave cars more horsepower. When there was some concern about safety, GM paid the Bureau of Mines to do some fake "testing" and publish spurious research that "proved" that inhalation of lead was harmless. Enter Charles Kettering. Founder of the world famous Sloan-Kettering Memorial Institute for medical research, Charles Kettering also happened to be an executive with General Motors. By some strange coincidence, we soon had the Sloan-Kettering Institute issuing reports stating that lead occurs naturally in the body and that the body has a way of eliminating low-level exposure. Through its association with The Industrial Hygiene Foundation and PR giant Hill & Knowlton, Sloane-Kettering opposed all anti-lead research for years. Without organized scientific opposition, for the next 60 years, more and more gasoline became leaded, until by the 1970s, 90% of our gasoline was leaded. Finally, it became too obvious to hide that lead was a major carcinogen, and leaded gas was phased-out in the late 1980s. However, during those 60 years, it is estimated that some 30 million tons of lead were released, in vapor form, onto American streets and highways. 30 million tons! That is PR my friends.

Junk Science

In 1993, Peter Huber wrote a new book and coined a new term. The book was Galileo's Revenge and the term was junk science. Huber's shallow thesis was that real science supports technology, industry, and progress. Anything else was suddenly junk science. Not surprisingly, Huber's book was generally dismissed not only because it was so poorly written, but because it failed to realize one fact: true scientific research begins with no conclusions. Real scientists are seeking the truth because they do not yet know what the truth is. True scientific method goes like this:

Boston University scientist Dr. David Ozonoff explains that ideas in science are themselves like "living organisms," that must be nourished, supported, and cultivated with resources for making them grow and flourish. Great ideas that do not get this financial support because the commercial angles are not immediately obvious--these ideas wither and die. Another way you can often distinguish real science from phony is that real science points out flaws in its own research. Phony science pretends there were no flaws. Contrast this with modern PR and its constant pretensions to sound science. Corporate sponsored research, whether it is in the area of drugs, GM foods or chemistry, begins with predetermined conclusions. It is the job of the scientists then to prove that these conclusions are true, because of the economic upside that proof will bring to the industries paying for that research. This insidious approach to science has shifted the entire focus of research in America during the past 50 years, as any true scientist is likely to admit. There is an increasing amount of corporate sponsorship of university research. This has nothing to do with the pursuit of knowledge. Scientists lament that research has become just another commodity, something bought and sold. The vast majority of corporate PR today opposes any research that seeks to protect public health or the environment. Most of the time when we see the phrase junk science, it is in a context of defending something that may threaten either the environment or our health. This makes sense when one realizes that money changes hands only by selling the illusion of health and the illusion of environmental protection. True public health and real preservation of the earth's environment have very low market value. Industry's self-proclaimed debunkers of junk science are usually non-scientists themselves. Here again they can do this because the issue is not science, but the creation of images.

The Language of Attack

When PR firms attack legitimate environmental groups and alternative medicine people, they again use special words that will carry an emotional punch:

The next time you are reading a newspaper article about an environmental or health issue, note how the author shows bias by using the above terms. This is the result of very specialized training. Another standard PR tactic is to use the rhetoric of the environmentalists themselves to defend a dangerous and untested product that poses an actual threat to the environment. This we see constantly in the PR smokescreen that surrounds genetically modified foods. They talk about how GM foods are necessary to grow more food and to end into focus once you realize that most GM foods have been created by the sellers of herbicides and pesticides so that those plants can withstand greater amounts of herbicides and pesticides.

The sole purpose of news is to keep the public in a state of fear and uncertainty so that they will watch again tomorrow and be subjected to the same advertising. Oversimplification is the mark of mass media mastery--simplicity. The invisible hand. Like Edward Bernays said, the people must be controlled without them knowing it. Hopefully, you will start reading newspaper and magazine articles a little differently, and perhaps start watching TV new shows with a slightly different attitude than you had before. Always ask, what are they selling here, and who's selling it? Even better, cease to subject your brain to mass media altogether. That's right, no more TV news, no more Time magazine or Newsweek. You can actually do it. Just think what you can do with the extra time alone. What would you lose from your life if you stopped watching TV and stopped reading newspapers altogether? Would your life really suffer any financial, moral, intellectual or academic loss from such a decision? Do you really need to have your family continually absorbing the illiterate, amoral, phony, uncultivated, desperately brainless values of the people featured in the average nightly TV program? Are these fake, programmed robots "normal?" Do you need to have your life values constantly spoon-fed to you? Are those shows really amusing, or just a necessary distraction to keep you from looking at reality, or trying to figure things out for yourself by doing a little independent reading? Name one example of how your life is improved by watching TV news and reading the evening paper. What measurable gain is there for you?

There's no question that as a nation, we're getting dumber year by year. Notice the blatant grammar mistakes so ubiquitous in today's advertising and billboards. Literacy is marginal in most American secondary schools. SAT scales are arbitrarily shifted lower and lower to disguise how dumb kids are getting year by year. At least 10% have documented learning disabilities, which are reinforced and rewarded by special treatment and special drugs. Observe the intellectual level of the average movie, which these days may only last one or two weeks in the theatres, especially if it has insufficient explosions, chase scenes, silicone, fake martial arts, and cretinesque dialogue. Consider the low mental qualifications of the falsely animated corporate simians they hire as DJs--they're only allowed to have 50 thoughts, which they just repeat at random. Most articles in the glossy magazines sound like they were all written by the same person, who just graduated from junior college, yet, has all the correct opinions on social issues, no original ideas, and a shallow, smug, homogenized corporate omniscience, which enables him to assure us that everything is going to be fine. All this is great news for the PR industry--makes their job that much easier. Not only are very few paying attention to the process of conditioning; fewer are capable of understanding it even if somebody explained it to them. Turning on the TV, or uncritically absorbing mass publications every day--these activities allow access to our minds by "just anyone"--anyone who has an agenda, anyone with the resources to create a public image via popular media. Just because we read something or see something on TV doesn't mean it's true or worth knowing. So the idea here is, the mind is worth guarding, worth limiting access to it. There are many important issues that are crucial to our physical, mental and spiritual well-being. If everybody knows something, that image has been bought and paid for. Real knowledge takes a little effort, a little excavation down at least one level below what "everybody knows."