Remdeswvier
Pharma Paid $1.06 Billion to Reviewers at Top Medical Journals
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.
The pharmaceutical industry paid $1.06 billion to reviewers at top medical journals between 2020 and 2022, according to a research letter published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Payments to peer reviewers for The BMJ, JAMA, The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine included $1 billion to individuals or their institutions for research and $64.18 million in general payments, including travel and meals. Consulting fees and speaking compensation accounted for $34.31 million and $11.80 million respectively.
Among the nearly 2,000 physician peer reviewers analyzed, more than half received at least one industry payment between 2020 and 2022.
Although conflicts of interest among journal editors and authors have been investigated, the study authors wrote, any conflicts of interest the peer reviewers may have have been harder to assess.
“The traditionally opaque nature” of peer review has hindered the evaluation of peer reviewers, “despite their crucial role in academic publishing,” the authors wrote.
The typical conflict-of-interest policies most journals have for authors — requiring only that they disclose their conflicts — do not usually apply to peer reviewers, according to the JAMA study.
Journal editors may inquire about those conflicts, but they rarely publicly disclose them — even though many reviewers for top journals may have industry ties “due to their academic expertise,” the authors wrote.
Link
https://publichealthpolicyjournal.com/pharma-paid-1-06-billion-to-reviewers-at-top-medical-journals/
The Taíno
The Taíno was a subgroup of the Arawakan Indians from northeastern South America, inhabited the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Jamaica,
The Taíno were a historic Indigenous people of the Caribbean, whose culture has been continued today by Taíno descendants and Taíno revivalist communities.
The Lucayan branch of the Taíno were the first New World peoples encountered by Christopher Columbus, in the Bahama Archipelago on October 12, 1492. The Taíno historically spoke a dialect of the Arawakan language group.They lived in agricultural societies ruled by caciques with fixed settlements and a matrilineal system of kinship and inheritance. Taíno religion centered on the worship of zemis.
A zemi or cemi (Taíno: semi [sɛmi]) was a deity or ancestral spirit, and a sculptural object housing the spirit, among the Taíno people of the Caribbean. Cemi’no or Zemi’no is a plural word for the spirits.
Taíno religion, as recorded by late 15th and 16th century Spaniards, centered on a supreme creator god and a fertility goddess. The creator god is Yúcahu Maórocoti and he governs the growth of the staple food, the cassava. The goddess is Attabeira, who governs water, rivers, and seas. Lesser deities govern natural forces and are also zemis. Boinayel, the Rain Giver, is one such zemi, whose magical tears become rainfall.[1] Spirits of ancestors, also zemis, were highly honored, particularly those of caciques or chiefs. Bones or skulls might be incorporated into sculptural zemis or reliquary urns. Ancestral remains would be housed in shrines and given offerings, such as food.
Zemis could be consulted by medicine people for advice and healing. During these consultation ceremonies, images of the zemi could be painted or tattooed on the body of a priest, who was known as a Bohuti or Buhuithu.The reliquary zemis would help their own descendants in particular.
The Taíno society, as described by the Spanish chroniclers, was composed of four social classes: the cacique, the nitaínos, the bohíques, and the naborias. According to archeological evidence, the Taíno islands were able to support a high number of people for approximately 1,500 years. Every individual living in the Taíno society had a task to do. The Taíno believed that everyone living on their islands should eat properly. They followed a very efficient nature harvesting and agricultural production system. Either people were hunting, searching for food, or doing other productive tasks.
Tribal groups settled in villages under a chieftain, known as cacique, or cacica if the ruler was a woman. Many women whom the Spaniards called cacicas were not always rulers in their own right, but were mistakenly acknowledged as such because they were the wives of caciques. Chiefs were chosen from the nitaínos and generally obtained power from their maternal line. A male ruler was more likely to be succeeded by his sister's children than his own unless their mother's lineage allowed them to succeed in their own right.