So who are Wager and Jacob?
They are involved in EMWA (sponsors of the symposium the MHRA referred me to) and their involvement in the actual meeting as hosts and moderators. As hosts you would expect a modicum of transparency. It seems Wager and Jacob are about as transparent as the MHRA if this particular response is to be believed (See 'Poachers & Gamekeepers HERE)
The response, by John Stone, reads:
Challenged by me just over two years ago in Rapid Responses Adam Jacobs was unwilling to name a single article which he had co-authored and also defended practices which make my hair stand on end [1]. He remains shy about declaring which pharmaceutical companies he works for but in Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons he noted: "AJ's company regularly provides services to a variety of pharmaceutical companies, some of which make vaccines, including SmithKline Beecham and Aventis-Pasteur' [2]. There is no client information on his website [3].
Stone continues...
...Liz Wager lists as clients on her website Fujisawa, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen-Cilag, Ortho-Biotech and the Royal Brompton Hospital [4] but not here. She is also a member of the BMJ Ethics Committee [5].
The Nordic-Cochrane study, just published Gøtzsche et al 'Ghost Authorship in Industry-Initiated Randomised Trials' is full of citations of Jacobs and Wager, and lists intriguingly 'Liz Wagner' as academic editor [6].
"Elizabeth Wager is a medical writer and trainer for a variety of organizations, including pharmaceutical companies. She is a coauthor of the European Medical Writers Association guidelines for medical writers and Good Publication Practice for pharmaceutical companies, and occasionally receives payment for speaking about or providing training on publication ethics." [7]
Now let's see Jacob's position on the study of clinical trial data and publishing - just so you can all paint your own picture of him.
The thread is entitled 'In defence of medical writers' . This particular sentence grabbed my attention - ... In my own experience of writing papers on behalf of investigators, the named authors always have access to the summary tables and graphs, which is far more important than access to the raw data.
You getting the picture people?
The summary tables and graphs are far more important than access to the raw data?
Far more important to earn a fast buck rather than safeguard human health you mean?
Do I really need to remind Jacob's of the Paxil Study 329? Do I really need to throw names around such as Prof. Martin Keller? Read about him here
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