Doping Doctors: The Influence of the Marketing Departments of Pharmaceutical Companies on Physician and Researcher Behavior in Japan

Recently, two Japanese clinical studies of antihypertensive drugs, supported by pharmaceutical companies and published in the Lancet by groups of Japanese investigators, were later withdrawn (Editors of the Lancet, 2009, 2013a). Four other studies of one of these drugs (Editors of the Lancet, 2013b; Uzu et al., 2008; Muramatsu et al., 2012; Narumi, Hakano, and Shindo, 2011), all funded by the Swiss company Novartis that supported one of the studies, but conducted by different Japanese research groups, were later found to be tainted by misconduct unacceptable by scientific standards (Review Committee for the Recent Cases of Clinical Study on an Antihypertensive Drug, 2013). In this article, we discuss deeply-rooted ties between clinical investigators and pharmaceutical companies that underlie these recently surfaced examples of impropriety in patient-oriented research in Japan, which have been banned in most major U.S. medical centers for some time (Conflict of Interest Policies at Academic Medical Centers, 2014). Typically, companies finance many clinical studies, then pick their preferred research data, and advertise the less-thanscientific conclusions through popular professors.