Main description:

Key Features
* Discusses the various aspects of cheating in publications: spin, protocol changes; failure to publish negative studies, including current data on the publishing industry and its issues, like the menace of predatory journals, poor peer review, coupled with lack of early education in ethics, and its significant impact on rational prescribing.

* Assesses the impact of misconduct and fraud on clinicians and healthcare professionals as they attempt to balance the risk-benefit ratio which is supported by multiple contemporary studies.

* Presents shocking data on bribes to physicians, journal editors and other key opinion leaders, exposing the ultimate root of the problem which lies in the economics of the healthcare system, badly in need of repair.

Contents:

Table of Contents

Introduction: Historical Roots and Recurrence

Chapter 1: Regulations, the Growth of Pharma, and Diagnostic Expansion, 1951-2003: A Wealth Trifecta

Chapter 2: Industry Payments to Physicians: Research and Education or Bribery?

Chapter 3: Direct-to-Consumer Advertising: Origins, Extent, and Consequences

Chapter 4: Publication and Citation Bias, Spin, and Sponsorship: Tilting the Risk-Benefit Ratio

Chapter 5: Fraudulent Authorship: Guests, Ghosts, and Honorary Authors

Chapter 6: Meta-Analyses and Systematic Reviews: Biases and Short-Cuts to Knowledge

Chapter 7: Replication and Reproducibility of Research Results: A Crisis?

Chapter 8: Distorted Outcomes and Retractions: Prevalence and Types

Chapter 9: Journalology, Predatory Journals, Peer Review, Pre-Prints, and Guidelines

Chapter 10: Can Misconduct and Fraud be Fixed?

Chapter 11: An Entrepreneurial Health Care System: Risks and Benefits to Rational Prescribing