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Both Yahoo and Microsoft search engines advertise illegal medications, according to a study conducted by two independent research firms.

The study by LegitScript and KnujOn found that 80% of the sponsored pharmaceutical ads in Yahoo and Bing search results sold prescription drugs without a valid prescription. In some cases, the drugs were imported from India, which is a violation of U.S. law.

This even violates Yahoo’s own policy, which requires all Internet pharmacy advertisers to be based in the U.S. or Canada. But some Canadian advertisers that were approved by Yahoo imported the drugs from India, Singapore or Barbados.

In one case, a researcher ordered a drug without a prescription from a pharmacy advertised in Bing search results and received a counterfeit version of the drug.

The researchers also found that Microsoft was slow to respond to these violations of U.S. law. Shortly after the company vowed to take “immediate action … to remove any policy violators,” a researcher was able to buy a drug that is a controlled substance in some U.S. states from a Bing advertiser without a prescription.

KnujOn found that searchers who clicked an online pharmacy ad that appeared legitimate were sometimes redirected to an illegal Internet pharmacy.

“If the search engines continue to knowingly facilitate illegal prescription drug sales, then we’ll continue to issue these reports,” said KnujOn president Garth Bruen.

According to LegitScript’s web site, 98% of the online pharmacies in their database do not meet their standards for an Internet pharmacy (http://www.legitscript.com/standards). That’s 44,293 online pharmacies!

So before you order prescription drugs on the Internet, visit http://www.legitscript.com, enter the URL of the online pharmacy and click Validate. The company has 268 valid online pharmacies in its database, and 780 more are awaiting approval.

Sources:
http://www.pharmatimes.com/WorldNews/article.aspx?id=16473
http://www.legitscript.com
http://www.knujon.com/news.html

Copyright 2009, Ruth M. Shipley

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Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, tells how he got the idea for his book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.

He was talking to the CEO of Ecast. This company made a digital jukebox with a hard drive and a high-speed Internet connection so people can download individual songs from tens of thousands of online albums.

The CEO asked him to estimate what percentage of albums had at least one song downloaded every financial quarter, or every three months. Anderson guessed 20%. Just the “top 100” albums right? Only the most popular songs would be downloaded at least once every three months.

The correct answer was 98%!

Songs were downloaded from virtually all of the tens of thousands of albums available through Ecast at least once every three months.

Anderson confirmed these results with Netflix, Amazon.com and Apple’s iTunes. Approximately 90% of their individual movies, books, and songs were bought by someone at least once every three months.

In other words, people were no longer satisfied to see only the “blockbusters,” read only the “best-sellers,” and listen only to the “top 40.”

Abundant Choices Everywhere

Next, Anderson analyzed a month of downloaded songs from Rhapsody, an online music store. He defined “popularity” as the number of downloads. Songs that were downloaded many times must be more popular than songs that were downloaded fewer times. The resulting graph looked like this:

Ranked by popularity, downloads for the most popular songs started out high and dropped substantially, but never reached zero. Even the #100,000th song had thousands of downloads. Even the #400,000th song had downloads!

In other words, even the least popular songs were still being downloaded by someone. “No store could ever carry this much music,” Anderson writes.

Would you ever find the least popular songs in a record store? And how many traditional record stores sell individual songs? You have to buy an entire album just to get the few songs you really like.

Unless you have an iPod and a subscription to iTunes or Rhapsody. Then you’ll have access to many, many more songs than you could ever buy in a record store. Even a large one! And in a format no record store sells. You’re experiencing the Long Tail of music.

When you buy an obscure used book on Amazon.com, you’re experiencing the Long Tail of books. Would you have found that book at your local book store? What if you live 100 miles from the nearest large book store?

And when you watch an amateur comedy skit on YouTube, you’re experiencing the Long Tail of entertainment. Would CBS ever broadcast a six-minute amateur comedy skit? Would you ever see that obscure documentary you found on Netflix in a movie theater?

The Long Tail is about abundance. Abundant music, abundant books, and abundant entertainment. Abundant choices everywhere you look. Whatever you want, it’s probably out there somewhere. You just have to find it.

It hasn’t always been that way, has it?

Living a Life of Scarcity

Until the Internet and broadband access came along, most of us experienced an economy of scarcity. Especially if we lived far from a large metropolitan area.

Suppose you lived in a suburb of a small city 30 years ago. Suppose when you went shopping for jam, you only found strawberry jam, grape jam, and apple butter. That’s it.

Even if other types of jam were available, you wouldn’t know it, would you? Your small general grocery store had to sell everything, so they only had space for the most popular jams.

When you went shopping for music, you could only buy the “top 40” hits. The “top 100” albums. Your local music store couldn’t possibly carry every recording that had ever been made. Shelf space is expensive, so they only carried the music most people would buy.

But that was okay with you. The music they carried was the only music you knew, because that’s the only music your local radio station played. They played very popular music to generate a large audience for their advertisers.

You had a small book store close by, but a small book store couldn’t carry every book that has ever been published. So they only carried the “best sellers.” The books that most people would buy. Leasing and running a physical store is very expensive!

In other words, you lived a life of scarcity. Very few products, very few choices.

Technology to the Rescue!

Technology has changed all of that.

Sure, strawberry jam, grape jam, and apple butter are probably still the top-selling jams. But suppose you love lemon and discovered that lemon curd jam was available on Amazon.com.

“Jam on Amazon.com?” I hear you say. “I thought Amazon only sold books.”

Yes, Amazon revolutionized the used book industry in the mid-1990s. But in 1999, they went a step further and offered to advertise other companies’ products on their website. And not just books. Everything from furniture to sporting goods to jam.

Amazon grabbed the bull by The Long Tail so they could help you find the most obscure products in the world. Giving you many, many, many more products and many, many, many more choices.

It doesn’t even matter where you live anymore.

And when faced with more choices, many people investigate new music, new foods, and new entertainment.

And when they do, the world of limited “hits” and “best-sellers” descends into the Long Tail of “everything else.” Because most songs are not hits, most movies are not blockbusters, and most books are not best-sellers.

But millions of people think they might still be worth listening to, watching, and reading. That’s the Long Tail in action.

A world of abundant choices. That’s Life in the Long Tail.

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. Chris Anderson. 2006. NY: Hyperion. http://www.TheLongTail.com

Copyright 2010, Ruth M. Shipley

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I recently participated in a very interesting discussion in the LinkedIn Biotech & Pharma Professionals Network group, of which I am a member.

The discussion was started by an unemployed scientist who wondered “how do you access current scientific literature if you don’t have company or university access?”

Traditionally, the reports of most scientific research are published in scientific journals. Journals like Science, Nature, JAMA, and the Journal of Molecular Biology. In order to read the articles, you would have to subscribe to the journal. Just like you subscribe to Time magazine.

But these scientific journals are much more expensive than Time magazine. You would have to pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars a year to subscribe to just one! For that reason, most people can’t afford to subscribe to scientific journals.

But a large university library can afford to subscribe to them. And large companies can afford to subscribe to them.

So if you want to read an article in a scientific journal, you have to go to a large university library. You can’t go to a company library, because only employees have access to their company’s library.

But what if you don’t live near a large university? What if you don’t work for a large company? That’s why this scientist started a discussion on LinkedIn. He was unemployed, and didn’t have access to a large university library or a large company library.

But he still wanted to read articles in scientific journals to keep up with scientific advancements and increase his chances of getting another job. And he wanted recent articles.

Publishers Control Access to Scientific Information

The discussion this scientist started eventually accumulated over 70 comments. As a former reference librarian and current independent researcher, I added my own comments.

First, I listed several sources of free scientific reports, such as PubMed, Highwire, and Scirus.

Unfortunately, many of these free resources don’t have recent articles. By recent, I mean articles that were published in the past few weeks or months. Many of the articles on these free websites are six months old and even older.

That’s because the publishers who publish scientific journals control access to scientific information.

It starts when a scientist finishes his research project, writes the report, and sends it to a scientific publisher. The editors who work for the publisher read the report and decide whether it’s worth publishing.

Then they send it to other scientists who work in the same subject area. What do they think about the report? Is it worth publishing? Do they have any ideas for making the report better?

This process is called peer review. Publishers believe they add value to scientific reports by asking other scientists to review every scientific report before it is published. They use peer review to ensure that only the highest quality research is published.

They also hire editors to edit the reports and invite advertisers to advertise in the journal. Then they send all the articles and ads to a printer, who prints the journal.

And they say all of this added value costs money. A lot of money.

So once a publisher publishes a report, they do not allow it to be published anywhere else. For at least six months. Sometimes for one year.

This is called an embargo. It maximizes the publisher’s return on its investment. All ad revenues and subscription fees are paid to the publisher. They don’t have to share their profits with any other distributor.

And resources like PubMed, Highwire, and Scirus must obey that embargo. They cannot include recent reports on their website until the embargo date has passed. That is why you can’t even find reports in PubMed until six months or more after they were published.

And that is why it is so hard to access recent scientific articles. If they’re not in PubMed, how do you find them? Many scientists at large universities just go to the library and browse through recent issues of scientific journals to find recent scientific reports.

Of course, this means you have to guess which journal published a report. And what if you don’t have easy access to a large university library?

Your Tax Dollars Paid For the Research!

And did you know that Americans pay for most scientific research done in the U.S? Your federal income taxes support the National Institutes of Health (NIH), one of the largest providers of grant money to American scientists.

For this reason, many scientists, librarians, politicians, and taxpayer representatives believe that all research funded by taxpayers should be available free of charge. With no embargo period! They call their movement the Open Access (OA) movement.

In fact, the NIH implemented an open access policy in 2005. Under this policy, all scientists whose research was funded by the NIH were asked to submit their final report to PubMed Central. PubMed Central is an online source of free scientific reports.

One year later, the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) was introduced into Congress. It took the voluntary NIH open access policy and made it mandatory. And it expanded the number of federal agencies covered by the policy.

So all researchers funded by the following federal agencies would be required to place a copy of their final report in PubMed Central and possibly other OA websites:

• Department of Agriculture
• Department of Commerce
• Department of Defense
• Department of Education
• Department of Energy
• Department of Health & Human Services, including NIH
• Department of Homeland Security
• Department of Transportation
• Environmental Protection Agency
• NASA
• National Science Foundation

Unfortunately, FRPAA never made it into law back then. So six congressmen from both parties introduced it again in 2009. Both the House and Senate are reviewing the act. Supporters say the bill finally has a good chance of passing in both chambers.

And Barack Obama believes in open access, so if the bill passes, he will most likely sign it.

If so, copies of reports from most federally funded scientific research would be placed in PubMed Central and other open access websites, where they would be available for free to anyone, anywhere.

Naturally, many publishers oppose FRPAA.

“Non-profit and commercial publishers invest hundreds of millions of dollars every year in the peer review, editing, publishing, disseminating and archiving of scholarly journal articles,” says a report from the Professional Scholarly Publishing division of the American Association of Publishers. Publishers just want to “recoup their investments.”

But FRPAA still lets scientific publishers print scientific journals and place an embargo on every report they publish. And they can charge whatever they want for the journals.

University of California Fires the First Shot

The University of California Libraries sent a letter to all faculty members in June 2010. The letter announced a potential boycott of Nature Publishing Group (NPG), a company that publishes 85 different scientific journals.

Like many state universities struggling to operate during the recession, UC faces severe budget cuts. Between 2005 and 2009, its library budget for books, magazines and journals only increased seven percent. During that same time period, NPG increased its subscription fees 137 percent!

UC librarians say many other publishers have worked with them to give them a fair deal under the circumstances. But not NPG. The publisher told UC it will increase the subscription fees for its journals 400 percent in 2011.

So a group of faculty members from one of the largest university systems in the world is seriously considering boycotting one of the biggest scientific publishers in the world. “UC scholars can help break the monopoly that commercial and for-profit entities like NPG hold over the work that we create,” the UC librarians and faculty members said in their letter.

Yes, that work was created by scientists working at a publicly funded state university, using grant money ultimately derived from U.S. taxpayers.

And scientific reports can now be placed on the Internet, where they can be read and downloaded by anyone, anywhere, any time. Including unemployed scientists who have no access to a large university library.

Which raises the following questions:

• Do we even need printed journals anymore?
• Why should libraries subscribe to journal articles that no one will ever read?
• Can we move to an iTunes model where users pay only for what they download?
• If so, what would be a reasonable fee for a single scientific report?
• Could universities become publishers and publish their own scientific reports?

In other words, is the traditional publishing industry becoming obsolete?

The first scientific journal published in English was the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London in 1667. Maybe it’s time to drag scientific publishers – kicking and screaming – from the 17th century into the 21st.

Copyright 2010, Ruth M. Shipley
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