Can self-regulation deliver an ethical commercial literature? A critical reading of the “Good Publication Practice” (GPP3) guidelines for industry-financed medical journal articles

Much medical journal literature is developed by the pharmaceutical and device industries, sometimes with assistance from marketing agencies, writers, and academics. This literature is vulnerable to commercial bias. The publications trade issues self-regulatory ethical guidelines for its production, called “Good Publication Practice” (GPP). I evaluated the most recent iteration, GPP3. The most progressive recommendations in GPP3 call for complete publication of all clinical trials, and full data sharing. GPP3 makes numerous further recommendations more directly concerning the publications trade. Many of these repeat existing editorial requirements, chiefly those of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, but readers are not adequately advised of this. Despite its emphasis on ethical and transparent reporting, the detail of GPP3 enables continued use of academic medical literature for drug marketing, on the basis of commercial steerage of content, coupled with the attribution of published articles to collaborating academic authors. As such, GPP3 provides a de facto manual for how marketing through academic journal content can be conducted in compliance with contemporary editorial standards. Consequently, the self-regulatory GPP3 guidelines are not a sound basis for the production of unbiased industry-financed medical journal literature. I suggest improvements for future iterations of these influential guidelines.     

A Review of: “Handbook of the Evolution of Human Sexuality. Edited by Michael Kauth.”

This study explores the role of the hostess club culture in the creation and maintenance of masculinity in Taiwan. The article focuses on flower drinking (the consumption of alcohol in bars, often integrated with prostitution), which is a common practice in Taiwan. Data were obtained from 58 in-depth interviews with men from a variety of occupations and social backgrounds (mean age = 38.50, SD = 11.00) and 73 questionnaires administered to soldiers (mean age = 21.00, SD = 1.10). Findings indicated that demonstration of skill at flower drinking and facility with the related social etiquette are important channels for male bonding that were central to the mid- to upper-class participants' professional development. Flower drinking also provided a method of discriminating men from other men through their choices of why and where to go and how to behave while there. Specific ways that Taiwanese masculinity differs from Western and from Japanese masculinity, and support for the continuing relevance of the traditional Confucian ideal of masculinity, wen-wu, are discussed.     

Employment mobility or turnover? An analysis of child welfare and protection employee retention

This article challenges the commonly held assumption that there is a high level of occupational turnover of social workers in all child protection and welfare agencies. By analysing occupational mobility patterns (turnover, retention and attrition) in five child protection social work teams, the article demonstrates how occupational mobility is a complex phenomenon and needs to be understood within wider shifts in employment patterns and the gendering of professions. In this paper we argue that it is important to distinguish between employee turnover and employee mobility, and that an examination of the posts taken up after leaving, at least in Ireland, may provide a different perspective on the narrative of high turnover of workers in this sector. Within the five teams, it is estimated that there was a turnover rate of 8 percent in 2006 and 11 percent in 2010, with 72 percent of child protection workers in post at the end of 2005 being retained and still in post at the end of 2010. While this should not lead to complacency, or a failure to recognise and respond to the stressful nature of child protection, it does raise questions for employers about how they might plan for occupational mobility within a stable workforce made up of largely women, aged between 25 and 35, frequently newly-qualified, who are often the main carers for children and adults outside the workplace.     

Tests for Regression Models Fitted to Survey Data

Data from complex surveys are being used increasingly to build the same sort of explanatory and predictive models as those used in the rest of statistics. Unfortunately the assumptions underlying standard statistical methods are not even approximately valid for most survey data. The problem of parameter estimation has been largely solved, at least for routine data analysis, through the use of weighted estimating equations, and software for most standard analytical procedures is now available in the major statistical packages. One notable omission from standard software is an analogue of the likelihood ratio test. An exception is the Rao–Scott test for loglinear models in contingency tables. In this paper we show how the Rao–Scott test can be extended to handle arbitrary regression models. We illustrate the process of fitting a model to survey data with an example from NHANES.     

ROUTES TO HIGHER-ORDER ACCURACY IN PARAMETRIC INFERENCE

Developments in the theory of frequentist parametric inference in recent decades have been driven largely by the desire to achieve higher-order accuracy, in particular distributional approximations that improve on first-order asymptotic theory by one or two orders of magnitude. At the same time, much methodology is specifically designed to respect key principles of parametric inference, in particular conditionality principles. Two main routes to higher-order accuracy have emerged: analytic methods based on 'small-sample asymptotics', and simulation, or 'bootstrap', approaches. It is argued here that, of these, the simulation methodology provides a simple and effective approach, which nevertheless retains finer inferential components of theory. The paper seeks to track likely developments of parametric inference, in an era dominated by the emergence of methodological problems involving complex dependences and/or high-dimensional parameters that typically exceed available data sample sizes.     

Advocacy and surveillance: primary schools teachers’ relationships with asylum-seeking mothers in Ireland

The article analyses the findings of a small-scale qualitative study in Ireland that examines interactions between asylum-seeking mothers and primary school teachers, and highlights the significance of teachers’ understandings of asylum in shaping home-school communications. Mothers and children in this study were living in Direct Provision, collective accommodation for asylum seekers in Ireland. The research identifies a number of concerns including: poor communication between the school and mothers, only English being used as a medium of communication with the mothers, and mothers being directly and indirectly excluded from Parent Associations. Interactions of teachers with asylum-seeker mothers demonstrated a lack of recognition that their situation is different from other migrants/newcomers and is particularly challenging because of the because of living in Direct Provision and under the threat of deportation. The research shows that primary schools are drawn into ambiguous relationships with asylum-seeking mothers in their attempts at advocacy and surveillance, as they are expected to facilitate integration, while at the same time dealing with the uncertainty facing asylum-seeking parents and children.     

Response

Edmund King, England 1175–1425 (1979), xiii+208 (Routledge &; Kegan Paul, £6.50).

G. R. Quaife, Wanton Wenches and Wayward Wives. Peasants and Illicit Sex in Early Seventeenth Century England (1979), 282 (Croom Helm, £11.50).

Louis Bergeron, Banquiers, négociants et manufacturiers parisiens du Directoire à l'Empire (1978), 436 (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, collection ‘Civilisations et Sociétés’ no. 51, Mouton, Paris, 130 fr.). (Bankers, Merchants and Manufacturers in Paris from the Directory to the Empire)

Clive Emsley, British Society and the French Wars, 1793–1815 (1979), viii+216 (Macmillan, £8.95, paperback £3.95).

Dennis Hardy, Alternative Communities in Nineteenth Century England (1979) xii+268 (Longman, £9.95; paperback £5.95).

Richard Lawton (ed.) The Census and Social Structure (1978), xii+330 (Frank Cass, £12.50).

M. Jeanne Peterson, The Medical Profession in Mid‐Victorian London (1978) x+406 (University of California Press, £12.25).

Michael D. Biddiss (ed.) Images of Race (1979), 259 (Leicester University Press, £9.50, paperback £5.00).

Hans Pohl (ed.), Forschungen zur Lage der Arbeiter im Industrialisierungtprozeß (1978), 132 (Ernst Klett Verlag, Stuttgart, DM 32). (Studies of Working‐class Conditions in the Process of Industrialization)

Jack Common (ed.), Seven Shifts (1978), xi+271 (E.P. Pubulishing, £5.95).

Robert Currie, Industrial Politics (1979), xiii+294 (Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, £10.00).

Pogge von Strandmann, Unternehmens‐Politik und Unternehmens‐Fuehrung: Der Dialog zwischen Aufsichtsrat und Vorstand bei Mannetmann, 1900 bis 1919 (1978), 204 (ECON Verlag, Diisseldorf, DM 28). (The Politics and Leadership of Enterprise: The Dialogue between Directors and Management of Mannesmann)     

Estimation of the Distribution Function of a Standardized Statistic

For estimating the distribution of a standardized statistic, the bootstrap estimate is known to be local asymptotic minimax. Various computational techniques have been developed to improve on the simulation efficiency of uniform resampling, the standard Monte Carlo approach to approximating the bootstrap estimate. Two new approaches are proposed which give accurate yet simple approximations to the bootstrap estimate. The second of the approaches even improves the convergence rate of the simulation error. A simulation study examines the performance of these two approaches in comparison with other modified bootstrap estimates.