Pharma Paid Physicians $6.5B in 2014 – Looking into the Open Payments Dataset

Re:Pharma Paid Physicians $6.5B in 2014 – Looking into the O... by etrautmann on Tuesday January 19, 2016 @11:11AM (#10931608)

The author's implication that the majority of these payments are shady or illegitimate is bizarre. I don't know much about it, but performing research, paying for hospital space, and paying licensing fees to doctors who have invented novel devices all seem like healthy aspects of a medical system working as it should. Perhaps I'm being naive?

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Re:Pharma Paid Physicians $6.5B in 2014 – Looking into the O... by tmshu1 on Tuesday January 19, 2016 @11:41AM (#10931828)

Hey etrautmann! Author here, thanks for reading! I agree with you, most payments do seem to be for legitimate purposes (sorry if it seemed like I implied otherwise). But I believe that some types of payments--e.g. industry paying for research--creates incentives with potential negative effects--e.g. on the quality of research; whether these incentives actually do result in negative effects is another question that others have done research on.

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