E-drug: Re: Educ. for "common practices" by sponsors of j.articles?
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Thank you Peter (Mansfield) for your excursion into sociology and
psychology when discussing why company staff would attempt to defend as
ethical the practice of naming prominent researchers as the authors of
articles actually written by ghost writers. It's always refreshing to have
things put in a new perspective.
In the end of your message dated 30/5/99 you pose a question to us
all - whether companies' unethical behaviour arises from lack of
understanding or because staff know what they are doing is harmful - because
the answer is important for the choice of strategies to change the
behaviour.
In my view, the main problem is the lack of congruency between what
is said in the higher echelons in the companies and what is actually done by
"the staff". This could of course result from lack of knowledge and/or
deliberate action but quite often I think that the problem is compounded -
perhaps even created - by a mismatch between corporate strategy and
incitament structure within the company. It doesn�t matter if the corporate
strategy is beneficial to the society and accepted by the staff as long as
"the best seller" is the one that receives bonuses and is promoted.
I have several times asked pharmaceutical companies not so much about
what they think and what they are doing, but asked them to go public with
their internal system for feedback to (including bonuses) and follow-up of
their sales representatives' performance. If more of us do the same,
perhaps we can look forward to the day when at least one company boasts
about their bonus system based on how well their representative actually
have helped the health care ...
Regards,
Mikael Hoffmann, MD
Drug and Therapeutics Committee of �sterg�tland County, Sweden
[Note from moderator: I think this is a very accurate observation,
definitely in line with my experience. Thanks. Kirsten Myhr]
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