Goodwin, Biederman on Counter-Attack in Drug Funding Transparency Scandal

Two prominent doctors accused of failing to be transparent about payments they took from drug companies have gone on the counter-attack. NPR host Dr. Fred Goodwin wrote a letter to the New York Times and an email to Daniel Carlat’s psychiatry blog. And Dr. Joseph Biederman, the Boston psychiatrist who is a focus of a Congressional investigation into his role in promoting Johnson & Johnson’s antipsychotic drugs for children, wrote a letter to the Boston Globe.

Goodwin and Biederman are using markedly different tactics in defending themselves, however. Biederman is not denying the allegations against him — that he took money to research and write about off-label antipsychotic use in children.

Goodwin, by contrast, is challenging the accusations (that he took millions in drug company money that was not properly disclosed to listeners) on a line-by-line, fact-by-fact basis.

Biederman wrote to the Globe that he called his research center “the J&J Center”:

To be transparent about its funding…The center’s goal was to advance science; as a business, J&J sought commercial applications for our work … But any implication that J&J’s interests interfered with the center’s work is wrong. Indeed, I have published research critical of J&J compounds. I never owned J&J stock, and whether the company succeeded financially had no importance to me. What does matter to me is the treatment of children and families experiencing great suffering.

Goodwin, by contrast, is portraying the New York Times’ coverage of him as some sort of conspiracy:

The Times “article is filled with misstatements of fact and nasty innuendo, the latter achieved by the clever sequencing of unrelated facts. Let me first note that I spent nearly an hour on the phone with (Times reporter Gardiner) Harris, and I followed this up with a detailed email; providing easily verifiable factual information. While he did quote a few things I said, all of the important information I provided was left out of the story. Why? It’s clear now that when we talked he already knew what he was going to write and the information I provided simply didn’t fit his narrative. Had he included all of the relevant facts he would not have had a story that would have gotten by any competent editor.”

Goodwin did the same in a note to Carlat:

I was very saddened and disappointed to read Dr. Carlat’s post. While he and I may disagree on certain issues, I had always assumed that he adhered to minimum scholarly standards in his writings, standards that are expected of professionals with academic backgrounds.

While I was taken aback by the polemical over-the-top language from a colleague with whom I worked in a recent American Psychiatric Association symposium, e.g. “outrageous betrayal of the listeners trust,” I was most profoundly dismayed by statements that were simply not true. (And can easily be shown to be false.)

Tellingly, Goodwin does not deny that he was the undisclosed recipient of $1.3 million from drug companies that make psych meds, while he was making a radio show that discussed psychology. Instead, he seems to be arguing to Carlat that he was not responsible for the show he hosted:

I didn’t even know who the guests were until I arrived at the studio and got the script that had been faxed directly to the radio station. Mr. Lichtenstein later acknowledged that he had not determined in advance that one of the guests was affiliated with a center getting funds from a pharmaceutical company. While this was not disclosed, as it should have been, it was an oversight by a vastly overworked producer. But that’s a minor point.

BNET’s take: The bottom line for drug execs, doctors, academics and researchers is that transparency will save you. Be transparent, always, from the beginning, and you will never be in this type of mess. Fail on the transparency standard and you will find yourself writing notes to bloggers and newspapers, desperately hoping that your reputation can be saved.

Image by Flickr user extranoise, CC.