Healthy Skepticism Library item: 16967

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Publication type: Journal Article

Dyer C
Aubrey Blumsohn: Academic who took on industry
BMJ 2009 Dec 15; 339:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/short/339/dec15_1/b5293

Abstract:

“Scientists since Galileo have realised you can’t be a scientist without data,” observes Aubrey Blumsohn. It seems a statement of the obvious, but he welcomes the General Medical Council’s recognition in the case of Richard Eastell, the former colleague whom he reported to the GMC, that “data” mean raw data, not summary data produced by a drug company’s in-house statistician.1 2

That recognition, he believes, vindicates the stand he took when he fought US based Procter and Gamble (P&G) Pharmaceuticals, which refused him access to the raw data for research Professor Eastell and he were leading on the company’s osteoporosis drug risedronate between 2002 and 2005. His determination eventually forced the company to release the data in 2006, but it cost him his job as senior lecturer in metabolic bone medicine at Sheffield University and led him to abandon his career as a clinical researcher.

The GMC cleared Eastell, director of . . .