A Conflicted Campaign To Attack Industry Criticism

The growing effort to isolate ties between industry and academia is playing out in a curious way in the editorial pages of Boston’s big newspapers. Last week, a pair of prominent academic docs lashed out at a Massachusetts bill designed to ban gifts to doctors as a way to lower prescription drug costs. The editorial in The Boston Herald, however, at first failed to note their conflicts (since then, it was updated with one disclosure).

Earlier this week, yet another editorial appeared in The Boston Globe in which one of the same academic docs - Dennis Ausiello, chief of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital - and David Shaywitz, a former research fellow at MassGen and former Merck research scientist - complained that criticism of industry-funded academic research is often unfair and misguided.

Unlike the Herald, the Globe noted that Ausiello is a Pfizer board member, although his other affiliations were left out. Shaywitz, however, was identified only as a management consultant. So we asked him whether he consults for Merck or other drugmakers. He now works for The Boston Consulting Group, and while he declined to identify any clients, he acknowledged that the firm does work for pharma.

We understand that newspapers* are pressed for space these days, and that some folks may have assumed Shaywitz consults for pharma or he wouldn’t have bothered writing what he did in the first place. But given the topic covered, an extra line about the affiliations would have presented a fuller picture of the views with which they infused their editorial. This is why disclosure can be important.

UPDATE: Shaywitz writes us to note that The Boston Consulting Group also works for academic medical centers, although these affiliations weren’t listed either.

* Pharmalot, we would like to remind you, is owned by The Star-Ledger of New Jersey