Free Republic

Gadfly or Watchdog? by: Bethany Stotts, July 15, 2008 Some controversies never die. As Accuracy in Academia recently reported, Dr. Alan Schatzberg and around thirty medical researchers are now under investigation by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) for financial conflicts of interest. In Dr. Schatzberg’s case, the conflicts reach as far back as 1998, when he co-founded the company that purchased a patent for mifepristone from Stanford University, his then (and current) employer. To this day Dr. Schatzberg continues as the principal investigator on Stanford’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to study the anti-depressant effects of mifepristone, an abortion drug....

Academic Morning After Profits by: Bethany Stotts, July 02, 2008 This June the New York Times broke the story that two Harvard Professors, Dr. Joseph Biederman and Dr. Timothy Wilens, had only belatedly reported their considerable external financing from drug makers to their University. The evidence, revealed during a congressional investigation, may also cast suspicion on the dramatic increase in prescribed antipsychotics. As AIA has documented, some groups remain skeptical of the expansive definitions surrounding Attention Deficit Disorder diagnoses. Others are concerned by the rapid expansion of the use of psychotropic drugs among children. The investigation of the Harvard doctors,...