Drug Firms Mislead Public

Cherry picking data is one ploy used to deliberately mis-inform the public, regulators and providers who ultimately prescribe the pharmaceuticals.

Cherry picking is where you report only flattering data, and ignore or bury data you don't like.

For example:
Drug firms hiding negative research are unfit to experiment on people
Another pharmaceutical giant has settled a big compensation claim. So why are they allowed to go on misleading the public?

But in among all these important negative findings, on a few measures of "cognitive functioning" – an attention task, a verbal memory test – Seroquel did better. This finding alone was published in a research paper in 2002. AstraZeneca kept quiet about the fact that patients on Seroquel had worse outcomes for schizophrenia. The research paper went on to become a highly influential piece of work, cited by more than 100 academic research papers. Many researchers can only dream of publishing such a well cited piece of work."

Read Ben Goldacres's complete article