Nature: Journal scoops papers–but there’s a catch
Who is Paul Thacker?
Some of you may remember that Sen. Charles Grassley, before getting tangled up in death panels in August, fought aggressively against conflict of interest in medicine. The most famous and notorious case was that of Charles Nemeroff, who was the chairman of psychiatry at Emory until documents revealed he’d accepted $1.2 million from drug makers that he hadn’t reported to Emory.
That information comes from an illuminating profile of Paul Thacker last week in Nature, written by Meredith Wadman of Nature’s Washington bureau. Thacker is the behind-the-scenes Grassley staff investigator who pursued Nemeroff, and seven other researchers, according to Nature, all of whom failed to disclose large payments from drug makers.
Thacker’s Nemeroff investigation has had a huge influence on the liaisons between academia and industry. Nature quotes the cardiologist Steven Nissen at the Cleveland Clinic, who says the investigation has “changed the practice of medicine.”
I took a quick look at the websites of The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, for whom this might be considered a red-meat story, something they would want to rip into with their bare hands. The Times and the Journal reported on Grassley’s investigation of Nemeroff; The Washington Post mostly skipped even that. But I couldn’t find any mention of Thacker in these three. Grassley is the pretty face, but Thacker is the bloodhound, and it was fascinating to learn something about him. Kudos to Nature.
Immediately following the Grassley piece is an important story on Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or NICE. That’s the group that decides what will be covered under Britain’s National Health Service, and the story has immediate relevance to the current health care debate in Washington. The story was written by Daniel Cressey, a staffer based in London.
This is first-rate journalism. Alas, if you are not a subscriber to Nature, you won’t see it. Or you won’t see it unless you have a lot of disposable income.
Each story costs $32. The journal itself has a cover price of $10, yet two articles in it would set you back $64.
At that rate, six articles cost as much as a year-long subscription to Nature. I can scarcely resist using an inappropriate expression to respond, so I’ll paraphrase: What the heck?
Reluctantly, I take back the kudos I dished out to Nature. This is good journalism, but for those who can’t read it, it’s worthless.
(In an email, I asked the Nature press office for permission to link to full versions of the articles. I also asked whether the company could explain its pricing policy. See Nature’s response.)
- Paul Raeburn
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September 29th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Nature publishes weekly, so I believe you’re talking about a $510/year cover price. The website lists a $199/year subscription price if you’d prefer to go that way. Not cheap. But as you note, it’s a journal, not a consumer magazine that sells a lot of ads.
That’s not to say that the $32/story fee makes any sense at all.
October 4th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Paul -
You’re certainly right that $32 makes little sense for a single story, but I think you’re wrong to take back the kudos. Nature’s got a business model that allowed it to pay Waldman to do this. Giving away journalism for free seems, sadly, not to be working so well for us in the business model department. So I’d offer Kudos to Nature for what is, I think, an excellent news product in an economically brutal environment.
October 5th, 2009 at 10:59 am
John,
Fair point; we want writers to make money. But my guess–and it’s only a guess–is that not a heck of a lot of people pay $32 an article, and that Nature might make a lot more money to pay writers if it charged, say, 99 cents. Note Nature’s response (link at end of post) saying that it is reviewing its policy.
Paul