Selective skepticism

From time to time I’ve done battle with Daniel Carlat over CME and industry support. I’m repeatedly amazed by what seems to be his selective skepticism and outrage about bias in medical education, ranging from extreme cynicism about anything touched by pharma to utter credulity concerning non-industry supported sources (buried somewhere in one of our comment threads is an interesting exchange about NCCAM supported CME). It’s as if freedom from pharma influence is the litmus test for reliable information.

I’ve tried repeatedly to call out the inconsistency in this attitude but haven’t succeeded nearly as well as The Last Psychiatrist did in a recent post (H/T to Retired Doc):

It's excellent that Daniel Carlat thinks doctors like himself cannot be trusted to read and interpret their own studies, and that some other group of-- doctors? lawyers? what?-- with special bias-immunity rings need to be assembled to protect us. But those people are still people. This is why the NIH, with their incestuous grant reviewers, crazy politics and flavors of the decade philosophies is so dangerous-- they're just as biased as Pfizer except you think they are objective.

Although the post singled out Dr. Carlat concerning a piece he coauthored in Internal Medicine News all the pharmascolds are pretty much in lockstep with this view.