Unethical Business Research Conduct
Business research is conducted for many reasons that are dependent on intended recipient of the research. For business marketers, research might include customer surveys of focus groups. When the research is for the development of a product, it can have a scientific basis and when it comes to stakeholders the research may include financial projections. This paper will therefore look at an article that focuses on some of the unethical business research conduct. The paper will clearly highlight some of the unethical research behavior that is involved and the people who are affected by these unethical research behaviors. The paper will further highlight how the unethical behavior has affected the organization, individuals and society at large. Finally a conclusion will be made on how the unethical behavior can be avoided or resolved.
The article "The case of Neurontin; Skewed Research in service selling" is an example of some unethical business research conduct that some pharmaceutical companies use when they intend to prove that their products are safe and effective. They therefore engage in practices that are suspect professionally and morally unethical. Neurontin, manufactured by Pfizer and Parker-Davis is a brand name for a drug gabapetin. It is a drug whose approved use is the treatment of epilepsy and post hepatic neuralgia though physicians prescribe Neurontin off-label for a wider range of conditions that include hot flashes, insomnia and certain types of tinnitus. The off-label uses have greatly increased and even supersede the...
This is because, Pfizer was found to be urging the prescription of the drug by physicians for off-label uses which are very illegal. They are able to urge physicians due to some unethical research conduct that they apply. The pharmaceutical company's interests vested in having FDA approve some of the off-label uses and hence they conduct this research to see if the drug works for some other conditions. Therefore if they manage to convince the federal regulators that there exists evidence that is sufficient and that supports adequate safety and efficacy then the approval of the drug can be extended by FDA for these additional uses hence resulting to a broader market for the drug.
Even though the intention of some of these companies is not to submit studies to the FDA to extend the approved uses, the companies conduct research to publish the new benefits of drugs that they allege exist. Some of the unethical research behaviors that Pfizer is involved in include the delaying of reports that had found evidence of the efficacy of the drug, spinning or the interpreting negative data. They also bundle negative findings with positive studies to neutralize results. They would even go ahead to rewrite and recast the findings from legitimate researchers so that they make this results sound better than they look on the graphs. Recent studies that have been published indicate that when the documents were thoroughly analyzed found that the results that had been published of the randomized clinical trials on the off-label uses of Neurontin that were conducted by Pfizer…
