A review by bluestarfish
Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients by Ben Goldacre

4.0

The missing data that Dr Ben Goldacre talks about in this book is really infuriating. I've followed a bit of the AllTrials work and so thought it would be interesting to read this book that was very much a call to action in 2012 (and still is to be fair). It's a pop science book (he says so himself) and is a very readable one for all that it goes into the many layered details around why we don't know as much as we should about the drugs that are out there for us to use. But yeah, the missing data is a gaping hole.

Also, I hadn't realised that ghostwriting medical articles for journals is a thing?!? Having just gone through the academic telling-off about plagiarism for students (pre-emptive I mean, I haven't been done for plagiarism...) it does feel a bit rich that that is what is going on in journals!