[Sci-tech-public] Reminder: STS Circle, March 19th - Sergio Sismondo - (Please RSVP)

[STS]

*STS Circle at Harvard*
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*Sergio Sismondo*
*Queen's University, Philosophy*
*
*
on

*Pharma's Key Opinion Leaders: Valuing Conflicts of Interest and
Independence*
Monday, March 19th
12:15-2:00 p.m.
124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 100, Room 106

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Lunch is provided if you RSVP.
Please RSVP to sts
<sts at hks.harvard.edu>@hks.harvard.edu<sts at hks.harvard.edu>by 5pm
Thursday, March 15th.
*
*
*Abstract:* The pharmaceutical industry uses some physicians, called key
opinion leaders or KOLs, as intermediaries to influence prescribing
physicians. One marketing firm says, for example, that “KOL” is “a
convenient shorthand for those people – usually eminent, usually physicians
– who we co-opt into our development and marketing strategies.” This
presentation describes the history and evolving structures of KOL
management, and the industry's delicate balancing, both rhetorical and in
practice, to influence or control the dissemination of medical knowledge,
while maintaining the value of that knowledge by allowing KOLs to appear
independent. The use of KOLs fits a broad pattern of pharmaceutical
industry management of medical knowledge. This calls for attention to
political economies of scientific knowledge.

*Biography*: Sergio Sismondo is Professor of Philosophy and Sociology at
Queen’s University, Canada, and in 2011-12 is a non-resident fellow at
Harvard University's Safra Center for Ethics. His current research is on
the political economy of pharmaceutical knowledge, exploring the industry’s
development and deployment of clinical trial knowledge. Sismondo also is
the author of An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies (2nd ed.
Wiley-Blackwell 2010) and a number of other general and philosophical works
in STS. See www.sismondo.ca


A complete list of STS Circle at Harvard events can be found on our website:
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sts/events/sts_circle/
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