Joel Lexchin

TL;DR: Investigating whether funding of drug studies by the pharmaceutical industry is associated with outcomes that are favourable to the funder and whether the methods of trials funded by pharmaceutical companies differ from the methods in trials with other sources of support found systematic bias favours products which are made by the company funding the research.

TL;DR: The analyses suggest the existence of an industry bias that cannot be explained by standard 'Risk of bias' assessments.

TL;DR: Findings of a systematic review looking at the relationship between exposure to promotional material from pharmaceutical companies and the quality, quantity, and cost of prescribing fail to find evidence of improvements in prescribing after exposure, and find some evidence of an association with higher prescribing frequency, higher costs, or lower prescribing quality.

TL;DR: Kefauver's indictment against a marketing-driven industry created a representation of the pharmaceutical industry far different than the one offered by the industry itself, and the outcome of the struggle over the image of the industry is crucial because of its potential to influence the regulatory environment in which the industry operates.

TL;DR: Despite three decades of research, no published estimate of the cost of developing a drug can be considered a gold standard and studies on this topic should be subjected to reasonable audit and disclosure of the drugs which authors purport to provide development cost estimates for.