McHenry Leemon
Lecturer in Philosophy, California State University, Northridge, USA.
Mens Sana Monogr. 2008 Jan;6(1):146-56. doi: 10.4103/0973-1229.37086.
The current situation in medicine has been described as a crisis of credibility, as the profit motive of industry has taken control of clinical trials and the dissemination of data. Pharmaceutical companies maintain a stranglehold over the content of medical journals in three ways: (1) by ghostwriting articles that bias the results of clinical trials, (2) by the sheer economic power they exert on journals due to the purchase of drug advertisements and journal reprints, and (3) by the threat of legal action against those researchers who seek to correct the misrepresentation of study results. This paper argues that Karl Popper's critical rationalism provides a corrective to the failure of academic freedom in biomedical research.
医学领域的当前状况被描述为一场信任危机，因为行业的逐利动机已经掌控了临床试验和数据传播。制药公司通过三种方式对医学期刊的内容保持着严格控制：（1）通过代笔撰写文章来歪曲临床试验结果；（2）凭借购买药品广告和期刊重印本对期刊施加的巨大经济影响力；（3）对那些试图纠正研究结果不实陈述的研究人员采取法律行动的威胁。本文认为，卡尔·波普尔的批判理性主义为生物医学研究中学术自由的失败提供了一种纠正。
