Bad Pharma

Why it’s on the list: Ben Goldacre’s indictment of the pharmaceutical evidence base — unpublished negative trials, surrogate endpoints, ghostwritten papers, regulators who see data the doctors do not. The pharma industry explained from the trial registry outward.

Where I heard about it

• @WillManidis’s thread — named in the replies to his question “what is the single best book you can read that will explain an entire industry?”, June 2025. Full set of replies: what is the single best book… (tweet).

Connections

• Healthcare — the industry.
• Regulation — the book is largely about what regulators do and do not require.
• Open Source Knowledge — trial registration and data publication are Goldacre’s proposed fix.
• Science — publication bias as a structural, not moral, failure.
• what is the single best book… (tweet) — the thread this recommendation came from.