A curious case of corporate science

The journal "Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Diseases" is not widely known for its high drama. So it might come as a surprise that in 2018, it published a letter-to-the-editor that would end up drawing curse words from urologists and making biomedical executives nervous.

As STAT's Eric Boodman reports, the matter at hand was some data that employees of Beckman Coulter had left out of a recent paper about a diagnostic test. The company has refused to release the requested numbers — and in doing so raised some serious scientific and ethical questions.

And many see this as just one example of a wider phenomenon in which science is spun for the benefit of companies marketing clinical tests.

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