ThingsPharma.com

According to Wikipedia, “Camelot is the most famous fictional castle and court associated with the legendary King Arthur… a place… associated with ideals like justice, bravery and truth, the virtues Arthur and his knights embody…”

Not virtues associated with Pharmalot though, according to readers of the blog in response to a recent posting on the site about a series of prank video clips about the pharma sales world:

This soap-opera thing and the Pharmagossip have no place in serious journalism. Shame on you, Pharmalot, for propagating such trash.

Another reader writes:

First, your sports page lost its luster. Now, this. You’re getting closer and closer to the NY Times. What trash. Shame on you for even publishing it.

And another reader adds:

For what it’s worth, these “humorous” things that you post from time-to-time always are at the expense of an industry full of hard-working and honest people who work to develop life-saving medications. I think Bob (and myself) would appreciate your humor a little more if it were balanced. I’ve never seen any humorous stuff on your website about frivolous lawsuits. What about ill-informed juries making ridicules decisions about patents? Your humor is one-sided — the pharma industry is always the butt of the joke. While those pieces are funny sometimes, your inclusion of them on your site says something about the views that you try to hard hide in your journalistic pieces. If you strive to be unbiased in your reporting, I think you should strive to be unbiased in your humor as well.

Pharmalot is written by Ed Silverman of The Star-Ledger of New Jersey. The blog is generally geared towards standard reporting of activities in the pharma/ healthcare industries. However, in the recent piece: “A Soap Opera: Pharmaceuticals Is An Ugly Business,” posted on March 15, 2008, Silberman appears to have taken his cue from the notorious PharmaGossip Blog.

For his part, Silverman appears steadfast in responding to his readers…

With all due respect, I’ve already explained my decision about why I chose to post the soap opera. And I’m not ‘hiding’ my own views in choosing to post this particular soap opera. Go back and read my explanation if you’re not clear – it addresses some of the issues that are often discussed on this site.

I’m not sure which other humorous items you’re referring to when you say the pharma industry is always the butt of the joke here. You suggest there have been a lot. In reality, I’ve posted only a couple of outright parody items since the site launched in January 2007 – one was the spoof of John Lennon’s Imagine, which I already mentioned, and that was last summer. (Recently, I did post two politically oriented humorous items – about Kennedy, Obama and Clinton; and last week, about Spitzer).

Lastly, I like to think I have a well-developed and well-rounded sense of humor (candidly, you need one to be a journalist and run this kind of site). But I’ll tell you what – if I find a parody of ‘frivolous’ lawsuits concerning pharma, and it’s a well done parody, I will consider posting. To the best of my knowledge, no one has bothered to make a good one.

Regards
ed

Will the jousting continue?