"Comparison of Schizophrenia Drugs Often Favors Firm Funding Study"

Read the full article by Shankar Vedantam in The Washington Post. (April 12, 2006)

"When psychiatrist John Davis analyzed every publicly available trial funded by the pharmaceutical industry pitting five new antipsychotic drugs against one another, nine in 10 showed that the best drug was the one made by the company funding the study."

Read the study itself in The American Journal of Psychiatry 163:185-194, February 2006.

Knowledge based practice would seem to depend on the ability of experts to properly interpret scientific evidence. This study suggests that it can be quite problematic to do so. In the study physicians read reports of studies in a very respectible peer reviewed journal, and seem usually to have come to the conclusions that most favored the company funding the study.

Clearly, when the scientific evidence is produced by commercial firms, it is to their interest that it be presented in such a way as to further their sales and profits. The ethical line between permissible and impermissible license in do so is thin. The reader apparently can not depend on peer review to protect against articles that leave the wrong impression.