Big Pharma Bribes to Psychiatrists: How Much Difference If They’re Disclosed?

     The medical journal BMJOpen recently published a study that revealed that $645,135 of Big Pharma payments to authors publishing in the American Journal of Psychiatry and the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry were undisclosed between 2020 and 2022. Most of these were research payments to these authors and the study voices concern about the conflict of interest suggested by this amount of “silent” money and its influence on the credibility of the research.

     That’s a valid concern, of course. Why would these doctors, mostly psychiatrists, not want to disclose these payments if the subsequent research was valid? Withholding reporting a substantial payment like that becomes suspicious because only 14 percent of all such payments to these authors were undisclosed.

     The ten authors receiving the highest amount of undisclosed payments had worked in 12 randomized control trials, 11 of which were for new psychotropic drugs. Big Pharma rakes in tens of billions of dollars every year from psychotropic drugs.

     However, that $645,135 is a drop in the bucket compared to the fully disclosed $4,539,207 paid to these authors by Big Pharma during the three year period of the study.

     $895,000 of that four and a half million was in “general” payments and $3,644,100 was in research payments. The American Journal of Psychiatry authors received about twice as much money as the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry authors did.

     The fact that some of these authors disclosed their four and a half million dollars in payments is legally praiseworthy, of course, but does that lessen the conflict of interest possible from that much Big Pharma money, disclosed or undisclosed?

     Bribery is persuading another to act in one’s favor — illegally or dishonestly – because of a gift of money or other inducement. Not only have these authors received enormous amounts of money, they have also fattened up their resumes by putting their names on Big Pharma trials for new psychotropic drugs and then publishing their results in these two psychiatric journals.

     And their “improved” research reputation can then make them even more eligible for further bribes, no?