Leemon McHenry

This essay examines the effects of commercialization on education with particular focus on corporatization of academic research. This trend results from a business model of education, which I identify as profit-based inquiry. I contrast profit-based inquiry with Nicholas Maxwell's conception of wisdom-based inquiry and conclude that the business model fails to achieve enduring value and results in a promotional or ideological emphasis rather than one that stresses the importance of critical rationalism. In order to make my case for this failure, I focus attention on the current state of commercialization in research of medicines.

Sergio Sismondo argues that pharmaceutical industry-sponsored research and ghostwriting produce genuine knowledge and science (albeit commercial science) not different from established medical science. In this essay I critically evaluate Sismondo' view and conclude that the commercial medical science that has created the ghostwriting industry is a corruption of science and not merely science done in a new corporate mode. Serious harm to patients has resulted from misrepresented commercial biomedical research.

The advent of evidence-based medicine was a paradigm shift intended to provide a solid scientific foundation for medicine. The validity of this paradigm, however, depends on reliable data from clinical trials, mostly conducted by the pharmaceutical industry and reported in the names of senior academics. The release of previously confidential pharmaceutical industry documents into the public domain has given the medical community valuable insight into the degree to which industry-sponsored clinical trials are manipulated and misrepresented. Until this problem is corrected, evidence-based medicine is an illusion.

Als sich die Denkschulen der anglo-amerikanischen Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts formierten, wurden Whitehead und Russell zu Symbolfiguren der spekulativen Denkrichtung auf der einen und der analytischen Ansätze auf der anderen Seite. Der eine beschäftigte sich mit der Konstruktion einer umfassenden Metaphysik; der andere betonte das Streben nach begrifflicher Klarheit mit den Mitteln präziser logischer und linguistischer Analyse. Die antithetische Beziehung dieser beiden widerstreitenden Parteien ist allerdings weniger offensichtlich, wenn wir die Ziele in den Blick nehmen, die Whitehead und Russell teilten, unmittelbar nachdem sie in ihrem Monumentalwerk Principia Mathematica an den Grundlagen der Mathematik zusammengearbeitet hatten. Beide waren nun mit einem anderen grundlegenden Projekt der Philosophie der Physik befasst. Whitehead und Russell entwickelten, als offensichtlichste Konsequenz aus den revolutionären Fortschritten der modernen Physik, jeder für sich eine Ereignisontologie, doch waren sie unterschiedlicher Ansicht darüber, wie diese Ontologie als metaphysische Grundlage der Physik zu interpretieren sei. Das Ziel meines Essays ist es daher, die Affinitäten und Gegensätze in Whiteheads und Russells Ansichten darüber herauszuarbeiten, wie das ausgedehnte Universum, bestehend aus Materie und „leerem“ Raum, als eine Mannigfaltigkeit von Ereignissen zu denken sei. Ich zeige außerdem, wie viel von Russells Metaphysik von Whiteheads früher Arbeit beeinflusst war. Während Russell selbst diesen Einfluss großzügig anerkannte, wird er von Kommentatoren seiner Philosophie selten zur Kenntnis genommen.

Selective reporting is prevalent in the medical literature, particularly in industry-sponsored research. In this paper, we expose selective reporting that is not evident without access to internal company documents. The published report of study 329 of paroxetine in adolescents sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline claims that “paroxetine is generally well tolerated and effective for major depression in adolescents”. By contrast, documents obtained during litigation reveal that study 329 was negative for efficacy on all 8 protocol specified outcomes and positive for harm.

In this case study from litigation, we show how ghostwriting of clinical trial results can contribute to the manipulation of data to favor the study medication. Study 329 for paroxetine pediatric use was negative for efficacy and positive for harm. Yet the ghostwritten publication from this study concluded that paroxetine provided evidence of efficacy and safety and continues to be influential. Despite the role of named authors in revisions of the manuscript, the sponsor company remained in control of the message.

Traditionally, the three-pronged mission of our colleges and universities has been to provide high-quality education, encourage cutting-edge research, and promote professional and community service. The substitution of business-based policies for sound academic principles, however, has institutionalized a form of professional inequality that threatens all three. The growing distinction between tenured and tenure-track faculty members on the one hand and tenure-ineligible lecturers or part-time adjuncts on the other has produced an academic caste system that is undermining the raison d’être of our institutions of higher learning. This system is capricious, discriminatory, and unjust.

This paper is a deconstruction of a ghostwritten report of a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled efficacy and safety trial of citalopram in depressed children and adolescents conducted in the United States. Court documents revealed that protocol-specified outcome measures showed no statistically significant difference between citalopram and placebo. However, the published article concluded that citalopram was safe and significantly more efficacious than placebo for children and adolescents, with possible adverse effects on patient safety.