Nemeroff and Schatzberg’s “Textbook” Pushed Paxil
Carlat Psychiatry Blog
by Daniel Carlat
December 3, 2010To sum up, in 1999, Nemeroff and Schatzberg published a textbook called "Recognition and Treatment of Psychiatric Disorders: A Psychopharmacology Handbook for Primary Care." It was funded by SmithKline Beecham with a $120,000 "unrestricted educational grant." Documents posted on the internet hint strongly that the book was ghostwritten by a PR firm hired by the drug company. And an analysis of the book’s content shows that it was crafted to encourage primary care doctors to prescribe Paxil preferentially over its competitors…
Bernard Carroll said…
Retraction? Won’t ever happen. These people do not possess the necessary psychic equipment for a retraction or an apology.Meanwhile, where does the figure $120,000 come from? Was it paid directly to Nemeroff? How much did the ‘authors’ skim from the $120,000? That would be over and above the $18,000 they collected in royalties.Anonymous said…
The $120,000 is the figure for the grant provided by SKB.
To provide funds for an initial print run of the book [more than likely the 10,000 that SKB picked up, by their own admission] would probably have run around $50-60K ten years ago. $18K, from what I understand, went to Schatzberg and Nemeroff. The remainder was STI’s fee for their services, most likely the writers whose names have been all over the news, plus any account managers responsible for the project. Just needed to clear that up, as some misinterpretations have been flying around about that figure being related to book sales, etc.
"Such editorial assistants can provide help with such tasks as tracking down references and the like, but certainly do not have the clinical expertise or experience to put such a volume together.” Nemeroff called accusations of ghostwriting "blatantly false and inaccurate.”
Well, apparently editorial assistants get paid well for their work. I post this as a way of leading to my lingering thought about this most recent revelation in the ongoing story of Dr. Nemeroff [and Dr. Schatzberg]. This comment immediately above appears to be blatantly false and inaccurate – a lie. In all the fuss of claims and counterclaims around such matters, what gets lost is the simplest of things. This statement is a lie – a consciously false statement. It’s made in the defense of a charge that the book was ghost-written under the supervision of a Pharmaceutical Company [GlaxoSmithKline]. That is beyond doubt. Dr. Carlat’s reading of the book suggests that the book "shows that it was crafted to encourage primary care doctors to prescribe Paxil preferentially over its competitors." Nemeroff’s lie is about authorship of a book that tells a lie.
More than that, in the ten years since that book was published, he stepped down from the editorship of a journal for failing to report Conflicts of Interest. He resigned as chairman of a department of psychiatry for failing to report drug company income. He went to a new university with the promise he was reformed. And here he is lying again, when he has an absolutely perfect way out, "It was in the past. I’m reborn."
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