Reading up on drug companies: there in black and white

Say you wanted to keep a casual eye on what the drug industry was up to: where could you look? For the enthusiast, there’s a myriad trade publications, websites, news feeds, and blogs to cater to this need. These, though, may hold little appeal for healthcare professionals, who’d rather remain amateurs in this particular area.

They might try instead general medical journals. But coverage there tends to be tangential and, sometimes, distorting, through its selective focus on individual drugs or conditions. And where the industry, …