Peer Reviewers Made $1 Billion in 3 Years: Dr. Fugh-Berman Featured in MedPage Today on Medical Journal Financial Conflicts
Posted in Advocacy News | Tagged drug marketing, pharmedout, program director, Publications
More than half of peer reviewers for four top medical journals received payments from drug and medical device manufacturers, totaling $1.06 billion, from 2020 to 2022, according to an analysis of the Open Payments database.
This October, MedPage Today released a special report with some disturbing news: most peer reviewers for top medical journals are profiting off of payments from drug and medical device manufacturers. In the article, Dr. Fugh-Berman, Program Co-Director of the Health and the Public Interest program, weighs in on these financial conflicts:
Just because something’s common, it shouldn’t be normalized, and in this case, this really should be vilified rather than normalized,” Fugh-Berman said. “It’s really important for peer reviewers to be objective. It’s really important for medical journal editors to be objective. And they can’t be when they have conflicts of interest with industry.