Spontaneous publishing and academic miscarriages (SPAM)

In 1991, in the week that the Food and Drug Administration held regulatory hearings on fluoxetine and suicide, the BMJ published an article by Lilly employees exonerating fluoxetine, although the article showed a clear increase in risk with treatment and included under the heading of placebo a suicide that had not happened in the randomised phase of the trials.1 2 This likely played a part in the way academics worldwide …