[yunyu]

What are legitimate sources in your definition? Should physicians be expected to spend all their free time reading every single study in every medical journal or conference, even for niche areas that they don't usually encounter? Should the average diabetic/arthritic patient need to obsessively pore over academic reports to stay informed about their condition? Should advertisers be banned from sponsoring journals or conferences? This is an extremely ill informed line of reasoning.

[michaelt]

Doctors should learn about new drugs the traditional way - physically attractive drug company reps taking them out for expensive dinners and gifting them branded golf equipment.

[yunyu]

My favorite form of definitely-not-advertising :)

[wat10000]

I don’t know what counts as legitimate sources. I’ll let the professionals figure that one out.

> Should advertisers be banned from sponsoring journals or conferences?

It baffles me that you apparently think this is some kind of zinger. Yes!

[ghaff]

Journals less commonly but pretty much every conference out there of any scope is sponsored by companies. In fact, absent sponsors, very few conferences would exist other than small volunteer-run ones.

[yunyu]

Got it. So you want attention to be controlled by the whims of academic/government/publishing bureaucrats or black-box ranking algorithms who are the arbitrators of legitimacy. I can't say I agree with that opinion, but different strokes for different folks.