[qnsi]

Medical industry is corruption prone.

Another example: Industry sponsored conferences. Doctors are invited to a 3 day 4 star hotel stay to attend a conference. Technically, talks that are paid shilling are specially marked as sponsored talks.

But are the other doctors, who are getting paid to speak there 100% independent?

Will you be a 100% independent doctor after getting free presents?

Maybe you will. But industry probably found its profitable if they spent millions on these kinds of conferences.

Also lie repeated multiple times makes you believe in, there are psychological studies. So when you spend hour listening how drug X is gold, you might start believing its gold

[sarchertech]

My wife’s a doctor and the “free presents” she’s gotten from conferences are laughable. A 128mb flash drive and a canvas bag are about the best things I’ve seen.

She’s also never gotten a free hotel stay at a conference unless her group was paying for it.

She tells me there are strict (very small) limits on gifts from drug companies.

[rscho]

True... but she's not a famous tenured professor, is she?

[Enginerrrd]

>Will you be a 100% independent doctor after getting free presents?

>Maybe you will. But industry probably found its profitable if they spent millions on these kinds of conferences.

So... theoretically the industry putting on the conference is also pushing the state of the art pharmaceutically and believe that they have an improvement on the existing standard of care. I don't think it's got anything to do with the presents as much as the message.

[pessimizer]

Nah. Speakers fees are a way to launder direct contributions. There was at least one famous case where the "conference" was done in one of the speakers' living rooms. Imagine getting a speaking fee for speaking extemporaneously in a Florida hotel room with two pharma reps and one other doctor five minutes before you all leave for golf.

[obscur]

Seems very unlikely to me that it would not be a combination. We have both rational and irrational parts, conscious and unconscious parts.

I'd venture one does not have to look far in the anthropology literature to find good evidence that gifts just like other favors serves a function in building reciprocal relationships. Since it is likely so fundamental, I have a hard time believing it would not have any effect on the independence of the doctor.

[drewcoo]

> Medical industry is corruption prone.

Corruption is incentivized in any for-profit industry.

[ipaddr]

And non-for-profit industries

[waterhouse]

This essay about an American Psychiatric Association conference, with the pictures of all the ads plastered everywhere, was kind of fascinating: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/05/22/the-apa-meeting-a-phot...