US doctors earn speaking and consulting fees from drug companies that sponsor their research

Medical researchers in the United States often accept thousands of dollars in speaking and consulting payments from drug companies that also sponsor their research, the investigative journalism nonprofit organization ProPublica reported on 25 March.1

In their investigation Charles Ornstein and Ryann Grochowski Jones, reporters for ProPublica, used a searchable database called Dollars for Docs, which tracks payments made to doctors by 15 drug companies.

In their analysis the reporters looked at the payments made by nine companies in the database in 2012: Allergan, Cephalon, Eli Lilly, Forest Laboratories, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, and ViiV Healthcare.

They found that about 10% of the …