Study 329. GSK paid a PR company to ghostwrite a misleading paper, with the intent of concealing the fact that a) paroxetine is no more effective than placebo in the treatment of adolescent depression and b) paroxetine significantly increases the risk of suicide in adolescents.

GSK knew that their drug was worse than useless, they knew that children would die as a result, but they deliberately withheld damning data and misled clinicians. For this (and many, many other acts of deceit) they were fined a total of $3bn by the Department of Justice.

The paper has never been retracted and paroxetine is still widely prescribed to adolescents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Study_329

"Why is youth suicide skyrocking since we starting giving them all anti-depressants that have a suicide as a side effect?"

"Sounds like they need more anti-depressants"

I understand why you are getting downvoted. Yet I think you make a valid and important point. Sure marketing and sales are putting a lot of pressure on, in that case RandD. But then RandD is, at some point, deciding to publish or find what is wanted. And, at least in my experience, good marketing people would rather not have falsified results and even if it is just for PR reasons.

Just blaming someone else, like marketing and sales, is quite often juat a lazy excuse to not have to look at oneself. Goes zhe other way round, so. Marketing saying "we didn't force them to find value X" might be literally true as marketing almost certainly didn't use these words. But pressure cam be applied in more than one way, it doesn't have to be explicit.

One good example is the series Chernobyl. Pressure from above to deliver certain things, ignoring truth until it's too late and then looking for someone to blame. Plant management did it with the reactor control crew and the political higher ups indirectly with plant management. So yes, all of them have to blamed. Not simply a communist problem as this thread about pharma R and D shows, right?

Well said. In fairness to the downvotes, I was bey tongue-in-cheek.

Whether for reasons of communist 5-year plans, capitalist pharmaceutical industries or even just the personal desires of an academic to prove a pet theory, publish or whatnot.. incentives and pressure to cheat exist. That's one reason why replication is so important.