All gifts large and small: toward an understanding of the ethics of pharmaceutical industry gift-giving

Much attention has been focused in recent years on the ethical acceptability of physicians receiving gifts from drug companies. Professional guidelines recognize industry gifts as a conflict of interest and establish thresholds prohibiting the exchange of large gifts while expressly allowing for the exchange of small gifts such as pens, note pads, and coffee. Considerable evidence from the social sciences suggests that gifts of negligible value can influence the behavior of the recipient in ways the recipient does not always realize. Policies and guidelines that rely on arbitrary value limits for gift-giving or receipt should be reevaluated.     

All gifts large and small: toward an understanding of the ethics of pharmaceutical industry gift-giving

Much attention has been focused in recent years on the ethical acceptability of physicians receiving gifts from drug companies. Professional guidelines recognize industry gifts as a conflict of interest and establish thresholds prohibiting the exchange of large gifts while expressly allowing for the exchange of small gifts such as pens, note pads, and coffee. Considerable evidence from the social sciences suggests that gifts of negligible value can influence the behavior of the recipient in ways the recipient does not always realize. Policies and guidelines that rely on arbitrary value limits for gift-giving or receipt should be reevaluated.     

The disruption of STM: A response to our commentators

We welcome the discussion prompted by our data (Larsen & Baddeley, this issue 2003). In the case of Macken and Jones (this issue 2003), we note that much of it concerns inconsistency between their findings and those of ourselves and/or others, emphasizing the need for further replication. We welcome the emphasis that Neath, Farley, and Surprenant (this issue 2003) place on the importance of strategy. This is likely to be an issue of increasing importance in the field, although we have doubts about the correlational approach adopted by Neath et al. Finally, we welcome the demonstration by Page and Norris (this issue 2003) that their primacy model is able to give a computationally explicit account of the irrelevant speech effect within a broad phonological loop framework.