I wasn’t trying to defend Vivek’s behavior here. That is an entirely separate issue. In fact all of the shadiness happened before the phase three trial even started. I was just posting an ignorance fighting correction of the specific assertion that having people from the company on the paper reporting the results of the trial was a red flag.
Now as to what Vivek could have done, is to fudge the results in the one of the early trials which are less carefully audited since they aren’t going to be the ones that are going to be used in the final determination of whether or not to approve the drug. Also the drug companies have a long term interest in getting the actually factually right answer in those early trials because even though they might help the stock price short term, if they are fooling themselves and the drug is not good, then they are going to run an expensive trial that is going to prove that its no good and their stock would tank. so it would be a stupid thing to do unless they were just concerned about short term gains and sold their stock before the phase three trial…
Trading on the basis of unpublished foreknowledge of clinical trial outcomes is pretty much the very definition of insider trading and so would be a definite no no.
For a self-annointed expert in foreign affairs of long standing he would seem to have a tin ear. The old “The US does not have a foreign policy position, but does have a global domestic policy position.” gambit.
“We will maintain our treaty obligations until we have taken the loot, then we throw them to the wolves to save our loot.”
A play right out of the robber barons playbook. Endearing.
I think it is legitimate to say how many police, how many federal agents, were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers," he said. "Maybe the answer is zero. It probably is zero for all I know, right?
Conservatives have this weird attitude towards names, being very concerned if it looks like someone changed their name to appear less ethnic,
I knew Nikki Randhawa when we were kids, and she was always ‘Nikki’ to everybody. She was such a shy, quiet, sweet girl. So she changed her personality, but not her name. Lol
It’s because the racist language was in the cartoon itself. Sure, you can point out that the point was to portray such language as negative, and it wasn’t endorsing it, but rather condemning and mocking it. But regardless, people are going to be offended by it, and it’s not in a paper’s best interest to offend its readers, as they’re likely to stop reading.
I support what the cartoonist was trying to say, but putting an actual slur in the cartoon is a bit past what’s normal for a cartoon.
Not in the Kwik-E-Mart. I do recall an episode where Bart and Millhouse demanded an “all-syrup slushie”, and Apu objected because “such a thing has not been done before”. He did it anyway and made it himself, as the machine shuddered with the effort.