Department of History, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.
School of Population Health and Environmental Sciences, King's College London, London, UK.
Glob Public Health. 2020 Aug;15(8):1103-1118. doi: 10.1080/17441692.2020.1744678. Epub 2020 Mar 31.
For the past several decades, global health research and policy have raised the alarm about the growing threat of counterfeit and low-quality drugs (henceforth 'fakes'). These high-profile and regularly-repeated claims about 'fake drugs' pepper scholarly publications, grey literature, and popular writing. We reviewed much of this work and found that it shares two characteristics that sit awkwardly alongside one another. First, it asserts that fake drugs constitute an urgent threat to lives. Second, it reports trouble with 'gaps' in the evidence on which their claims are based; that data is weaker and less conclusive than anticipated. Given the ubiquity of and urgency with these claims are made, we found this juxtaposition perplexing. To understand this juxtaposition better, we undertook a close reading of the strategies authors employed to negotiate and overcome data and evidence 'gaps' and asked questions about the cultures of scholarly publishing in global health research. We argue that a scholarly commitment to studying fakes despite--rather than because of-the evidence functions to support the continuation of similar research. It also works against asking different questions-for instance regarding the lack of easy access to pharmacological data that might make it possible to know fakes differently.
在过去几十年中，全球卫生研究和政策不断发出警报，称假冒和低质量药物（以下简称“假药”）的威胁日益严重。这些关于“假药”的高调且经常重复的说法充斥着学术出版物、灰色文献和通俗作品。我们对其中的大部分内容进行了审查，发现它们有两个特点，这两个特点相互不协调。首先，它断言假药对生命构成了紧迫威胁。其次，它报告了其依据的证据存在“差距”的问题；数据比预期的更弱，结论性更差。鉴于这些说法的普遍性和紧迫性，我们发现这种并置令人费解。为了更好地理解这种并置，我们仔细阅读了作者用来协商和克服数据和证据“差距”的策略，并对全球卫生研究中的学术出版文化提出了质疑。我们认为，尽管有证据表明，学术界致力于研究假药，这有助于支持类似研究的继续。它也不利于提出不同的问题，例如缺乏易于获取的药理学数据，这可能会使我们能够以不同的方式了解假药。
