Frederick Goodwin: What the NY Times Left Out

First, an important disclosure:

The front cover blurb to my book, "Living Well with Depression and Bipolar Disorder" (HarperCollins, 2006) reads:

"A vast trove of knowledge and insight ... a source of information that will prove indispensable not only to patients and families, but also to clinicians and scientists."

The blurb is authored by Frederick Goodwin, MD.

A New York Times piece yesterday reports that Dr. Goodwin, who served as host of NPR's "The Infinite Mind", received $1.3 million from drug companies between 2000 and 2007, uncovered in a Senate investigation that has implicated two prominent psychiatric researchers in academic scandals over failure to disclose their industry earnings.

Dr. Goodwin is the foremost authority on our illness. He is the former head of the NIMH, is author of the definitive text, "Manic-Depressive Illness," and is a professor of psychiatry at George Washington University. A lot of what we take for granted in our understanding of bipolar we owe to Dr. Goodwin.

A couple of weeks ago, BipolarConnect displayed ten short videos of me interviewing D. Goodwin. You deserve an explanation. First, some background:

On June 8 this year, a New York Times article by Gardiner Harris and Benedict Carey reported that a prominent Harvard child psychiatrist, Joseph Biederman, MD, plus a colleague, failed to report drug company income, in violation of university and NIH policy. The report was sourced in a Senate investigation headed by Charles Grassley of Iowa.

Dr. Biederman is a pioneer in the field of child bipolar, whose work has benefitted untold children and their families, but the Times chose to lead with the observation that his "work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic medicines in children."

The article followed on the heels of earlier articles attacking Dr. Biederman and the authenticity of the child bipolar diagnosis, ones I took serious exceptions to in my blogs here. (See, for instance, Why Newspapers Have Lost Their Credibility). But this time, there was no defending Dr. Biederman. His nondisclosure constituted an inexcusable ethical breach, one which seriously undermines his credibility.

In Oct 3 this year, the NY Times and Wall St Journal followed up with news of a similar ethics breach by Charles Nemeroff, MD, PhD of Emory University. Earlier, at a psychiatric conference, I had heard a prominent psychiatrist introduce Dr. Nemeroff as his candidate for a Nobel Prize. Thanks to Dr. Nemeroff's inexcusable lapse in judgment, a free trip to Stockholm is off the table. Immediately following the news, Dr. Nemeroff resigned as chair of Emory's prestigious psych department.

In yesterday's article on Dr. Goodwin, the NY Times mentions both Drs. Biederman and Nemeroff. But is the association fair? A quick read reveals that Dr. Goodwin committed no ethics breaches about failing to disclose to his university or federal agencies. Instead, the Times, taking its lead from Sen. Grassley, impugned Dr. Goodwin's integrity as a JOURNALIST, of all things, in his capacity as a radio host.