science

According to internal documents, the pharmaceutical company Wyeth "paid ghostwriters to produce medical journal articles favorable to its female hormone replacement therapy Prempro." As early as 1997, Wyeth paid the "medical writing firm" DesignWrite to publish favorable journal articles about Prempro under academics' names. "Company executives came up with ideas" for the articles, "titled them, drafted outlines, paid writers to draft the manuscripts, recruited academic authors and identified publications to run the articles -- all without disclosing the companies' roles to journal editors or readers." Wyeth previously claimed that authors had "played significant roles" in journal articles. The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology published one ghostwritten article in May 2003, a year after Wyeth's Prempro was linked to breast cancer (which recent findings confirmed). The ghostwritten article, published under the name of Australian professor John Eden, claimed there was "no definitive evidence" linking hormone therapy to cancer. Just before the federal study linking Prempro to cancer was published, a Wyeth executive asked DesignWrite "to increase the number of positive journal articles" on Premarin, another Wyeth hormone replacement drug.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers has strongly condemned a new lawsuit by the Apotex pharmaceutical company against Dr. Nancy Olivieri. As a liver specialist at the University of Toronto, Olivieri first came under attack from Apotex in 1996 when she notified her patients that she had detected toxic side effects while conducting an Apotex-sponsored study of the company's drug, deferiphone. Claiming that Olivieri's actions violated their nondisclosure agreement, the company threatened her with legal action, and she was fired from her hospital (a recipient of hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in research funding from Apotex). After years of lawsuits, Apotex and Olivieri reached a legal settlement in 2004 in which the company agreed to pay $800,000 to Olivieri, while both sides were to refrain from further public "disparagement" of each other. Now Apotex is suing again, claiming that Olivieri has disparaged the company simply by participating at conferences on the relationship between universities and the pharmaceutical industry (even if she doesn't mention Apotex by name). Its legal filing also claims that she has engaged in disparagement when other people have written about her in newspaper stories and on Wikipedia. "This would appear to be a baldfaced attempt to muzzle a critic of the pharmaceutical industry," comments medical ethicist Howard Brody, author of the book Hooked: Ethics, the Medical Profession, and the Pharmaceutical Industry.

Doctors Frederick Goodwin and Joseph Biederman are counterattacking in an effort to defend their reputations following disclosures that they took millions of dollars from pharmaceutical companies while promoting the drug companies' products. Biederman, whose industry-funded research contributed to a 40-fold increase in the use of antipsychotic medicines in children, has written a letter to the Boston Globe insisting that he was "transparent" about his funding and that his sole concern has been "the treatment of children and families experiencing great suffering." Goodwin, who talked up psychiatric drugs on his PBS program, has blasted the New York Times and psychiatrist Daniel Carlat for their reports on his failure to disclose $1.3 million in pharma payments. Carlat in turn has replied that Goodwin should "stop blaming everybody else for this mess. ... This entire fiasco could have been averted if you had chosen to inform NPR listeners of your financial conflicts of interests at the beginning of shows focusing on pharmaceuticals."

As scientific warnings about the potential risks of climate change intensify, governments realize they need to at least be seen as responsive to global warming concerns. But, behind the scenes, many of the world's richest countries are dragging their feet. Some are promoting unproven measures designed to insulate the coal and energy industries from change. Others want to use the global warming crisis as an opportunity to promote nuclear power. Most are balking at committing to substantial cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, despite having signaled their intention to do just that a year ago. To help explain the issues and uncover the behind-the scenes lobbying, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) is launching the Climate Change portal within the SourceWatch wiki.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conferences -- huge events, attracting some 10,000 people -- aim to create a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires at the end of 2012. Official conference documents are often hard to find and often full of mind-numbing jargon. As a result, it's hard for journalists to track what's going on and harder still for citizens to know what their governments are doing. Between now and the COP15 December 2009 meeting in Copenhagen, CMD staff and citizen editors will build SourceWatch articles on climate change issues, profile the players in the UNFCCC negotiations and unmask corporate and government greenwashing.

One current priority is a series of profiles on the policies and performances of the key richest countries. If you would like to lend a hand, just register on SourceWatch and check out this page on our Climate Change portal. Thanks for your participation!

CNN has announced that it will cut its entire science, technology, and environment news staff, a move that Christy George of the Society of Environmental Journalists called "disheartening." Other networks have also been slashing science and environmental jobs, including NBC Universal's The Weather Channel; the Gannett media chain, which slashed roughly 1,800 jobs this week at newspapers around the country; and Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine, which recently eliminated its bureau in Cape Canaveral, Florida, where NASA launches its rockets and shuttles. "The energy and environment beat, in particular, will likely continue to gain importance and relevance as the 21st century unfolds," writes Curtis Brainard. "Yet one can't help but feel dismayed by CNN's decision or that this industry, at least for the time being, is sadly deteriorating."

Biopure, a company that makes blood substitutes, is suing scientist Charles Natanson for defamation after he published a critical review in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Nature magazine has condemned the lawsuit. It "could have an enormous chilling effect on scientific inquiry," says Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Steve Nissen, whose controversial analyses of safety risks from the diabetes drug Avandia and the painkiller Vioxx resulted in billions of dollars in lost industry sales. Some people are saying "a plague on both houses," noting that Natanson has come under criticism for "failing to disclose a conflict of interest in a medical-journal article he wrote" that was critical of blood substitutes.

Science reporting "is more and more the direct product of PR shops," according to Charles Petit, a veteran science reporter who runs MIT’s online Knight Science Journalism Tracker. Petit says information spoon-fed to reporters through news releases has "become a powerful subversive tool eroding the chance that reporters will craft their own stories." Cristine Russell reports that "institutional news offices from universities, government research agencies, and corporations are putting out large press packages that provide well-written press releases, graphics, and even video in a form that can be used directly by news outlets that are hungry for stories but lack the resources, time, and/or experience to do more thorough reporting. ... Institutional publicity operations are becoming more sophisticated at the same time that newsrooms are decimating the ranks of fulltime specialty science staff." Petit cited examples of clever press releases that have been recycled into news stories, such as a recent University of Utah press release titled “Living fossils have hot sex," which made its way into stories by Reuters, New Scientist, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

A three-year, $7 million neuromarketing study done in Oxford, England has found that cigarette health warning labels actually make smokers want to smoke more, not less. Neuromarketing research studies how the brain reacts to various types of marketing stimuli. Researchers studied 2,000 people from five different countries using sophisticated brain-testing technology, like electroencephalography and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to gain a better understanding of consumer behavior. A surprising finding involved the health warning labels placed on cigarette packs. Researchers asked subjects if the warning labels worked to help them reduce smoking, and most said "yes." But when they repeated the same question while flashing images of the labels to the subjects while they underwent an MRI, they found that the images activated "craving spots" in the brain, indicating that the health warnings actually encourage smokers to smoke more.

A cardinal rule amongst statisticians is to avoid comparing apples with oranges. But it seems that Danish statistician and climate change skeptic Bjorn Lomborg has no such reservations. In an opinion column, Lomborg rails against those who argue that sea levels will rise more than projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). "Most models, however, find results within the IPCC range of a sea-level increase of 18 to 59 centimeters this century. ... Studies claiming one meter or more, however, obviously make for better headlines," Lomborg writes. However, the IPCC report explicitly states (pdf - see page 23) that its estimate excludes "future rapid dynamical changes in ice flow," and assumes that the Greenland ice cap and Antarctica will melt at the rate observed from 1993 to 2003 -- important caveats Lomborg fails to mention. Assessments that include increased melting rates and other non-linear responses to higher temperatures do predict sea-level increases of one meter or more.

The same month that Martin Philbert was named the chair of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel considering the safety of bisphenol A, a defender of the chemical made a $5 million grant to Philbert's research center. "Philbert did not disclose the donation, which is nearly 25 times larger than the $210,000 annual budget of the University of Michigan Risk Science Center, where he is founder and co-director," reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The donor, Charles Gelman, was once called "the second worst polluter in Michigan by the state's Department of Natural Resources." Gelman, a retired manufacturer of medical devices, is an "anti-regulation activist" who supports JunkScience.com, the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Philbert said the donation would not impact his work. Bisphenol A is present in many household products, including aluminum cans, baby bottles and water bottles. Most studies on bisphenol A have linked the chemical to cancer, heart disease and reproductive failures in lab animals; "those that didn't find harm overwhelmingly were paid for by the chemical industry." Philbert's panel is expected to announce its findings soon.