Academics on the payroll: the advertising you don’t see

Abstract

In the endless drive to get people’s attention, advertising is going ‘native’, creeping in to places formerly reserved for editorial content. In this Native Advertising series we find out what it looks like, if readers can tell the difference, and more importantly, whether they care. Academic medical researchers are hot property for companies marketing pharmaceuticals, complementary medicines, medical devices, fitness equipment, weight loss products, “health foods” and other health-related goods and services. Their opinions are highly respected by the general public, and their endorsement in the media of a product can help to ensure consumers and patients purchase it, or at least discuss it with their “health care provider”. But this raises a question: why would an academic researcher choose to endorse a health-related product in the general media? The most worrying explanation is that the academic is being employed by the company to speak favourably about its product. Such commercial relationships are rarely made transparent and rely on a public perception that academics are objective observers and commentators. For the most part, however, this is unlikely to be the case. A far more likely explanation is that any academic endorsement occurs in the context of a long and mutually productive relationship with the company concerned. Academics are frequently targeted by companies on the grounds that they provide authority and act as “key opinion leaders” who are able to influence the opinions, beliefs and behaviours of others in both professional and public arenas. This relationship with industry is frequently one of many. Academics who comment on products have frequently partnered with the company in its clinical trials of the product; put his or her name to the resulting academic publications; provided strategic advice on how to have the product regulated and perhaps subsidised by the government; or given talks to other academics and clinicians about the research (if not the product itself).