…and specific claims of sexual harassment needing only to be handled confidentially, with common sense, and mutual respect; and my condemnation of confounding a sexual-harassment issue with editorial mishandling
[Edit done between asterisks on 12/18/12. Also note: the term "medical media" refers to medical advertising/promotions, not to genuine medical academic publishing.]
And that means whether you work in the holy-purpose [cough] type of business as a medical-advertising firm, or anywhere else.
’Nough said.
[This entry is actually meant to pull punches, and to show that I don't mean to spill a lot of info here, but to give a tip of the iceberg, an "abstract of the study," and to keep the rest in the freezer.]
Elaboration, you want? OK….
Evasion, sneakiness, and mismanagement are of keen interest in a tale of medical media that impacts consumer interests; but the full tale of intrigue is hard to publicize.
I have facts and concerns to share about certain business practices, of a type I’ve seen more than once but the very worst instance of which is a big beast to deal with in narrative form; and these practices seem quintessentially the province of one of the “camp follower” industries tied to the pharmaceutical industry: medical-advertising agencies.
The story I have to tell largely involves worker rights and technical issues that are within the peculiar domain of the media industry, which in some instances may seem like a lot of carrying on by a clique of silly women (and that includes some of the males). But in some respects, it involves more fundamental problems of wider relevance to many people in the country: the effect of private interest on the health-care industry, especially how it may pervert or undercut practices of honest dealing, fair play, and so on to its own workers, to say nothing of how it may disserve public health interests.
The story also involves what could be termed, as a Doonesbury cartoon of months ago phrased it in a censored way regarding a war issue, a “clusterfrig.” An assumption of my engaging in a sort of sexually harassing attitude toward a new coworker was held as reason to, in a remarkably manipulated way, have my work end early (though there was already a plan to have my term end more undramatically); this was bad enough. But this notion was broadcast widely in the division in which I worked, if not further; this was intolerable and, in my experience, unprecedented—it did not follow any acceptable professional standard for such an issue. Why was I brought in on the last day I worked there, with the risk of my finding out about this? Because I was to be used in an editorial way that was unacceptable, especially with regard to what it meant in ways outside the specific concerns of editing. So there are two big problems (tied together in a "clusterfrig"): the harassment issue, which to me almost entirely lacked merit and certainly became unacceptable with how unprofessionally it was handled; and the way in which I was exploited as an editor, which actually may have implications for public health interests. This situation left me so shaken and demoralized that it has taken almost two years to address it as I do here. (The delay, which I regret, has also involved accumulating considerable backup for my contentions on various levels.)
Only summaries or partial stories to be made public, for now
I will not reveal the whole story on this blog. I proceed with fashioning my story, and revealing what I choose to, working painstakingly to square with concerns regarding (1) confidentiality (see my June 28 blog entry) regarding the companies involved; (2) confidentiality regarding certain individuals involved; (3) my own interests regarding my liability to certain possible legal sanctions, as well as my interests in having justice (and my health interests) served for myself; and (4) deciding what is of public interest versus what may only be a novel story, or something of more interest as a sort of noir or strange story of intrigue and corporate bad faith. Much of the intrigue, and evidentiary basis, should remain in reserve for the foreseeable future; some of it is so evocative of a very peculiar industry that my sense of what to do, as I traverse a very familiar work-related domain, is to err on the side of keeping things under wraps for a while.
Thus my blog will be a sort of précis of what story I have to tell, or a teaser. The fuller, and evidence-anchored, story will remain unreleased, pending further decisions; but where appropriate, I can refer to “data on file” (or “DOF”; this term usually refers to information in the possession of the Big Pharma company; I make adapted use of the term here), a common phrase used within medical media’s conventions of referencing claims in ads and the like. And this “data on file” will usually be documents I have copies of, some drawn from the Internet, as it turns out.
In late August 2010, I was distrusted in a way that led me to be handled regarding a harassment issue as I was; but I was still trusted to handle FDA-required materials in a way that, on the management side, was unacceptable for this kind of material or in regard to any proofreading standards I have ever worked with. What is more amazing than this is how sneaky, paranoid, and aloof the company has been about dealing with this 2010 situation subsequently, as it certainly knows what I have revealed of my knowledge of the 2010 situation already. Its one attempt to communicate with me by mail in late March 2011 is yet one more emblematic story of this mess: in sum, it was a silly, weak move by the company, and in fact I refused the letter at the post office. But a deeper set of details, not to be revealed yet, shows how amazing and ironic a move by the company this was, and also offensive on a moral level. *[Note: This account may be adjusted in the future in line with a project category I'll announce, called Afterthoughts.]*
LinkedIn is, ironically, a big helper
Humorously, data from LinkedIn, which can be printed out, have become a very enlightening—and evidence-producing—set of “backup” for much of the factual foundation for what set of problems my fuller story constitutes. It is amusing to me that not only does LinkedIn and its possibilities provide windows onto seeing where former colleagues are working today, and not only does LinkedIn (on the other hand) NOT provide a practical way for me to pursue my career in normal ways (as it runs contrary to, or simply does not conform with, many of the methods I developed over many years for seeking leads and getting opportunities; it’s like an unrealistic geek’s idea of doing the footwork that I’ve found essential to my career). It also provides me a window on former colleagues’ “tracking” me and for me to see how these people seem associated with one another and with conglomerates or constellations of companies in which they (or their associates) work.
I proceed with this “project” with occasional heavy heart; with confused emotions yet ultimately with resolve; with anger, embarrassment, and indignation (this latter is such a common consequence, I find, of working in the media); and with regret, compassion for those of my coworkers I worked with to appreciable extent at the company involved, and an eye to being good-faith and socially responsible.
If you ask, Why don’t people in this industry mind their own business? I answer, That’s my question, too, and it’s been raised by multiple companies I’ve worked for. But in this one company’s case, it’s almost unbearably flabbergasting how this question has been posed.
What public implication is there?
If people were to think that medical-advertising/promotion agencies operate with a level of paranoia as if they were Los Alamos or the North Korean government, aside from the issue of their being afraid to lose a contract (that could be worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars), a main reason is the legal implications of their doing adequate work on their products. Medical advertising and promotions is tied to so much in potential sales, as well as (less directly) to so much in potential fines and penalties (criminal and civil) if a Big Pharma company is held to task for illegal marketing or other malfeasance, that the sense of important purpose, needing to hew to exacting standards, and paranoia about screwing up are understandable. I knew this about as much as anyone involved in this work; I’d been in it off and on for about nine years by summer 2010.
Again, I am sorry that things have come to this, but I am not solely or even largely responsible for the mess that led to this.
