[user1324345]

Nothing is ever as it seems with people. Public perception and our methods of assigning legitimacy to public figures is deeply flawed. How any public individuals are we incorrectly demonizing? How many bad ones do we think are good? Surely more than we are currently aware of.

[mirimir]

To make it personal, consider that the general practitioner that you see has likely been bribed by the pharmaceutical industry throughout their career. Starting in med school, with free food and toys. But if pressed, they'd all say that gifts don't affect their professional judgment. But in fact, studies have shown that they do. For example:[0]

> For years, the evidence has suggested that even small gifts can influence physicians’ behavior, create a mindset of entitlement, and help to promote allegiance to companies and their products. Recently, with the availability of Open Payments data and research made possible by these data, the evidence has become stronger. Using Open Payments data, a 2016 study found that receipt of industry-sponsored meals, even just a single meal, was associated with an increase in the rate of prescribing the brand-name drug that was being promoted.

0) Steinbrook (2017) Physicians, Industry Payments for Food and Beverages, and Drug Prescribing. https://sci-hub.tw/10.1001/jama.2017.2477

[colordrops]

Curious that there's a lot of downvoting of reasonable comments in this thread.