Cherry Picking

There’s an interesting debate that’s been ongoing about pharmaceutical companies’ approach to data publication. Unusually it’s actually spilled over into the mainstream media (BBC Radio 4 news) and is captured in a head to head article called Is the conflict of interest unacceptable when drug companies conduct trials on their own drugs? (BMJ 2009; 339:b4949 and b4953).

The protagonists of the argument are Ben Goldacre (arguing YES to the proposition) and Vincent Lawton (arguing NO). You can access their viewpoints via the hyperlink in each of their names.

Having heard yet another pharma spokesman be made to sound like a henchman of an evil empire on the radio, I had a closer look at each of their arguments.
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Diffusion of Innovation in Healthcare; the evidence

When I talk with people about the New Pharmaceutical Marketing and how it's based on Diffusion of Innovation, they say "Hey, makes sense. Like it." It explains a lot of the problems that old pharma marketing couldn't tackle and gives us a way to attack many of the new ones.

My suspicion however, is that they may subconsciously think "But is this really totally proven, or is it a marketing fad? I mean, every one else is still doing it the old way."

"Diffusion of Innovation" sounds sexy, but it’s no passing fad. It is based on years of work around the laws of adoption of innovation, on the concepts laid out in Everett Rogers seminal book The Diffusion of Innovations.

While there is new thinking in today’s frameworks, the reality is that the enormous evidence base behind the ideas that we discuss is actually very well established. And, though it’s sometimes overlooked, a vast amount of the work we cite and build upon was conducted in medicine, in healthcare.
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