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About Me
Alison Bass is a Pulitzer Prize nominee and author of Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial, which won the NASW Science in Society Award. She was a longtime medical and science writer for The Boston Globe and has also written for The Miami Herald, Psychology Today and MIT's Technology Review, among other publications. A series she wrote for The Boston Globe on psychiatry was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and she has received many other journalism awards. In 2007, she won a prestigious Alicia Patterson Fellowship to write Side Effects. Bass teaches journalism at Mount Holyoke College and Brandeis University.
Category Archives: ghostwriting
Martin Keller, principal investigator of Paxil study 329, retires from Brown University
Share I just learned that Dr. Martin Keller, principal investigator of the controversial Paxil study 329, has retired from his position as a professor of psychiatry at Brown University — see here. As Pharmalot notes, Keller quietly retired June 30 in … Continue reading
Calls for action against authors of controversial Paxil study are getting louder
Share In the wake of GlaxoSmithKline’s record-breaking $3 billion settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, a number of psychiatrists and researchers have redoubled their efforts to get Paxil study 329 retracted. As mentioned here and in other news accounts, the … Continue reading
Posted in antidepressants, clinical trials, conflicts of interest, drug marketing, ghostwriting, National Institutes of Health, pharmaceutical industry, scientific journal retractions, scientific misconduct, university industry collaboration
Tagged antidepressants, Brown University, Department of Justice, GlaxoSmithKline, Health Care Renewal, Martin Keller, oneboringoldman, Paxil
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When it comes to scientific misconduct, should there be a statute of limitations?
Share I was hesitant to weigh in at first when I learned that Brown University’s School of Medicine had decided not to pressure a psychiatric journal to retract the seriously flawed Paxil study that I wrote about in Side Effects. … Continue reading
Enforcing anti-kickback laws: a powerful deterrent against ghost-writing in medicine
Share The Obama administration recently made it clear that it will require drug companies to disclose the payments they make to doctors for research, consulting, speaking, travel and entertainment under the new health care law — see the New York … Continue reading
Posted in antidepressants, conflicts of interest, continuing medical education, drug marketing, ghostwriting, pharmaceutical industry, university industry collaboration
Tagged anti-kick statutes, conflicts of interest in medicine, Congress, continuing medical education, corruption, drug and medical device companies
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Deceptive drug research practices explain why over-medicating of children still going on
Share A new report from the U.S. Government Accountability office confirms something that Rose Firestein, the eponymous prosecutor in the title of Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower and Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial noticed way back in the ’90s: that … Continue reading
International group seeks Brown University’s help in retracting controversial Paxil study
Share The international research organization Healthy Skepticism has called on Brown University to help convince a psychiatric journal to retract the controversial Paxil trial that I wrote about in Side Effects, according to the Brown Daily Herald. The principal investigator … Continue reading
Allegations of fraud and extensive ghostwriting form core of upcoming Texas case against Johnson & Johnson
Share On November 28, the Texas Attorney General is expected to begin a landmark trial against Johnson & Johnson on charges that the pharmaceutical giant “subverted scientific integrity” by paying off academic psychiatrists and state officials to boost the use … Continue reading
What’s behind the growing rate of scientific retractions?
Share The retraction of studies in medical and scientific journals has surged in the last decade, according to separate analyses done by the Wall Street Journal and Retraction Watch. In its page-one article today, the Journal noted that while just … Continue reading
UPenn President is urged to resign as chair of Obama’s bioethics commission for ignoring scientific misconduct allegations
Share The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) has called on President Obama to remove Amy Gutmann, University of Pennsylvania’s president, as chair of his presidential commission for the study of bioethical issues. The reason: Gutmann did nothing to sanction the … Continue reading
A lesson in how not to run for public office — in Canada or anywhere else
Share In his latest blog, Paul Thacker, an investigator for the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) and former aide to Senator Charles Grassley, struggles to understand how Dr. Stan Kutcher, a psychiatrist turned politician in Canada, could possibly say that … Continue reading
Posted in antidepressants, ghostwriting, pharmaceutical industry
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