Healthy Skepticism Library item: 3121

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Soffer A.
Free medical publications or scientific medical journals.
Chest 1982 Apr; 81:(4):397-8

Abstract:

Three physician-editors resigned from the Medical Journal of Australia over the changes in the journal that would have increased advertising revenue at the expense of editorial freedom. Journals that are wholly dependent on advertising revenue are fundamentally different from journals that publish the results of clinical investigations.

Keywords:
*editorial/Australia/Medical Journal of Australia/editorial freedom/controlled circulation journals/ad revenue/INFLUENCE OF PROMOTION: PUBLICATION/PROMOTION DISGUISED: JOURNAL SUPPLEMENTS, CONTROLLED CIRCULATION JOURNALS AND NEWSLETTERS Periodicals*

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Cases of wilful misrepresentation are a rarity in medical advertising. For every advertisement in which nonexistent doctors are called on to testify or deliberately irrelevant references are bunched up in [fine print], you will find a hundred or more whose greatest offenses are unquestioning enthusiasm and the skill to communicate it.

The best defence the physician can muster against this kind of advertising is a healthy skepticism and a willingness, not always apparent in the past, to do his homework. He must cultivate a flair for spotting the logical loophole, the invalid clinical trial, the unreliable or meaningless testimonial, the unneeded improvement and the unlikely claim. Above all, he must develop greater resistance to the lure of the fashionable and the new.
- Pierre R. Garai (advertising executive) 1963