Bill Lichtenstein fails to contradict the key points we made in our article; namely that The Infinite Mind series was funded in part by drug company money; that each of the four experts on the show, “Prozac Nation: Revisited” has received drug company funding; that despite enormous controversy about the safety and efficacy of antidepressants, the experts all expressed a singular viewpoint; and finally, listeners were not told about the experts’ financial conflicts of interest.

No matter how much Mr Lichtenstein tries to explain away such financial conflicts, repeated studies of pharmaceutical funding through “unrestricted grants” shows that Big Pharma doesn’t spend money where it doesn’t pay off. In fact, they study their “return on investments” very carefully. For example, “unrestricted grants” by drug companies for continuing medical education programs have been shown have a biasing effect on their physician audiences. In response, the American Medical Association’s ethics journal recommended that drug companies should not be allowed to pay for CME because it led to biased conclusions and inappropriate changes in doctors’ prescribing practices¸ BMJ 2006;332:1410 (17 June), < <link> >. Research has also consistently found that academics who have financial conflicts of interest such as speaking honoraria, consulting fees, and paid board memberships tend to produce research results that cast their benefactors’ products in a positive light. JAMA, January 22/29, 2003—Vol 289, No. 4 pg < <link> >.

Mr Lichtenstein claims that one of us (Lenzer) pitched him a radio show. Quite the opposite. When Lenzer called Mr. Lichtenstein for an interview, after he realized our interest was in the funding of his guests and the absence of those with contrary views from the show, it was he who suggested that we do a show, telling Lenzer that sometimes differing viewpoints are better heard with separate shows (which he used as a defense for why only those experts with pro-antidepressant viewpoints were present on Prozac Nation: Revisited). Lenzer responded to Mr. Lichtenstein’s offer of running a second show with a tentative yes, and added that she’d previously written an article on medicine and the media called Journalists on Prozac for the BMJ (previously the British Medical Journal).

Perhaps Mr. Lichtenstein has forgotten his last e-mail correspondence on the subject of a second show dated April 9th in which he said he had not yet decided whether to run it. He never addressed the issue again after that April 9th e-mail, despite a subsequent query from Lenzer. Numerous efforts to contact Mr. Lichtenstein and The Infinite Mind for comment for our piece in Slate went unanswered.

Finally, the BMJ article to which Mr. Lichtenstein refers involved a correction of a minor point – not a substantive one. In fact, the full truth about that story is one we plan to tell in another forum and a link HERE will be inserted when that article is published.

As for Lenzer’s credibility as a journalist, readers might like to know that the BMJ has continued to publish her articles on a regular basis. So have other respected outlets. She was also won a coveted Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT last year. But perhaps this brings us back to the beginning of our response: It is interesting that Mr. Lichtenstein’s comments do not contradict a single statement of fact found in our article. Instead he attempts to smear the reputation and credibility of the messenger.