Science Intelligence and InfoPros

Study:

Even though there is a pervasive use of the Internet, cell phones and social networking, the majority of students surveyed do not readily identify them as a means to access databases, the library catalog, or to retrieve full-text articles on demand or on the go.

The results of this study provide ample evidence that many of our students are accessing the Internet using various devices. Ninety-seven percent of them access library resources remotely, mostly using their laptops and other computers. Only 17 percent of them use their cell phones to access library catalog and subscription databases resources remotely.

Salisbury, L. (et al.). Science and Technology Undergraduate Students’ Use of the Internet, Cell Phones and Social Networking Sites to Access Library Information. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, Spring 2012. Available from: http://www.istl.org/12-spring/refereed3.html [Accessed 23rd of May 2012]

An excellent study about how pharma companies use of the internet through direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertisements on the internet and internet based “social media”. To identify examples of fraudulent DTC marketing they used 4 major sources of information: scientific literature, gray literature, PubMed and the FDA website.

Some findings:

• FaceBook: Pharmaceutical companies use this interface to promote drug sales. In July of 2010, the FDA issued a warning letter to Novartis for its Facebook advertising. Many companies removed their Facebook pages after August 2011, despite the fact that companies can delete these comments as soon as they are posted they were concerned that “open walls” would lead to the reporting of side effects, promotion of off-label use or inappropriate statements
• Youtube:  A number of pharmaceutical companies have established YouTube channels for marketing purposes, including Abbott, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Boehringer-Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline, Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer, Sanofi Pasteur… while the issues of advertising ethics and adherence to existing DTC advertisement standards are raised by these promotional outlets, of even greater concern are the unbranded (or covertly branded) YouTube channels that a number of pharmaceutical companies have introduced.
• Twitter: Novo Nordisk uses the branded Tweet technic that does not mention drug benefits to maintain its status as a reminder advertisement. Web reminder ads do not have to provide any information on side effects.
• Third-party endorsements: People are more likely to believe third party endorsements than identified corporate product advertising. To capitalize on this phenomenon companies have funded patient advocacy groups, disease specific expert panels and physician organizations to promote their drugs. Companies have transferred this clandestine marketing technique to the internet which is particularly well suited to support this subterfuge. Pharmaceutical companies have created websites for front organizations (labeled “Astroturf” sites – for fake grassroots) to promote their drugs. These pharmaceutical company-created websites appear to be unbiased sources of information.

Conclusion: “ Web 2.0 DTC is merely a subset of pharmaceutical marketing; however, as we have shown, it is more likely to be camouflaged, permits companies to directly gather data on patients, and changes rapidly. Internet DTC is difficult to monitor. (…) The majority of the public does not understand the possible side effects and ultimate purpose of DTC advertising; many believe that the mere presence of DTC advertising indicates that a drug is “perfectly safe.”

“FDA has repeatedly cited pharmaceutical companies for illegal Web 2.0 marketing. Pharmaceutical companies have repeatedly called on the FDA to regulate web based marketing but the FDA has refused to issue any regulations. Thus Web 2.0 marketing remains an unregulated threat to public health and the general economy that must be addressed“.

Egilman, David & Druar, Nicholas M. 2012. Spin your science into gold: direct to consumer marketing within social media platforms. Work, Vol. 41, pp. 4494-4502. DOI: 10.3233/WOR-2012-0751-4494

According Geoffrey James:

“With all due respect to Facebook, paying $1 billion for Instagram smacks of desperation.

It’s as if CEO Mark Zuckerberg is terrified of becoming irrelevant and is willing to spend insane amounts of money in order for Facebook remain on the forefront of cool. (…)

That’s a hopeless quest, though.  Facebook may be many things, but it’s not cool any longer.  It lost that imprimatur back when it allowed corporate pages (yes, even yours) and advertising. (…)

More importantly, nobody seems to love Facebook any more.  People seem mostly tolerate it, because it’s convenient. And that’s why Facebook remains vulnerable.

Consumer-oriented social networking sites are like television networks: People will switch when there’s something better on another channel. (…)

That’s not true of LinkedIn, though.  LinkedIn is all about business and people’s resumes.  Because its scope is limited to fundamentally dull information, LinkedIn is simply not vulnerable to something “cooler.” (…)

That’s why I believe that LinkedIn will keep growing, becoming increasingly valuable and relevant–while Facebook will eventually be replaced by “cooler” technologies that appeal to a fundamentally fickle base of consumers. (…)

As a result, LinkedIn is building a loyal customer base, while Facebook is involved in an expensive and probably pointless quest to remain relevant.

James, Geofrrey. LinkedIn will outlive FaceBook. Here’s why. Inc, Apr. 13, 2012. Available from: http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/linkedin-vs-facebook-which-will-survive.html?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed [Accessed 13th April 2012]

Based on a new report by Joseph McKendrick.  The Digital Squeeze: Libraries at the Crossroads surveyed 730 public, academic, special, education, and government libraries in the US.

“Librarians report a levelling off in the use of Facebook and LinkedIn to connect with customers and the use of wikis and blogs is declining.  However, more of them are using collaborative tools including the sharing of web pages, subject guides, and the use of document-sharing, photo and video sharing web apps.

Libraries, unsurprisingly, reported an increased demand for ebooks, wireless connectivity and other technology tools and services.  More than one-third of the respondents reported that they spent more money on information technology hardware, software, and related IT services over the past year. 

More libraries are moving to the cloud for operational support and content storage.  26% of them are already offering e-readers, with one respondent stating that this activity will be an area of ‘extreme growth’.

Skelton, Val. Libraries, the digital squeeze and ebooks. InformationToday Europe, 12th of April 2012. Available from: http://www.infotoday.eu/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Libraries-the-digital-squeeze-and-ebooks-81910.aspx [Accessed 13th April 2012]

According Pharmalot:

“More than a year after launching its Psoriasis 360 page on Facebook, the Janssen UK unit of Johnson & Johnson is closing down due to a growing number of comments that had to be removed because specific drugs were mentioned or, in some cases, offensive language was used.  (…)

The move comes amid an ongoing debate over the extent to which the pharmaceutical industry can – and should – embrace Facebook and, in general, social media. Last year, Facebook no longer allowed drugmakers to disable posted comments…

In fact, the Psoriasis 360 Facebook page was the first in the pharmaceutical industry to allow comments to appear before being vetted by a drugmaker (…)

Read further:

Silverman, Ed. J&J unit closes Facebook page due to comments. PharmaLot, 22nd of March 2012; Available from:
http://www.pharmalot.com/2012/03/jj-unit-closes-facebook-page-due-to-comments/

“Here at Comprendia, we’ve never advocated that Facebook should be recreated for scientists, as there are 700,000+ life science graduates in the US already using the application,* and they are likely already connected there to lab mates and colleagues. Rather, we should broaden our idea of the ‘social network’ to include any online community of scientists, not just those which are similar to Facebook. The value of social networks for scientists lies in faster access to information relevant to their research and the communities that are made more available by new tools. Here are 6 successful examples which can be used to understand scientific social communities. (…)

1. Facebook Pages & LinkedIn Groups. Scientists have used mailing lists and forums for years. Facebook pages and LinkedIn groups are a ’2.0′ version of them with the benefits of centralization and easier access to participants. Life science companies, most notably Life Technologies, have fostered social networks in the form of Facebook pages centered on a topic.
2. Twitter Hashtags. Scientists use Twitter to share scientific blog posts and news, to find friends and colleagues around a topic or event, and sometimes to vent about their situation. Hashtags, which are text identifiers for status updates on a topic, allow a Twitter social network to form around it…
3. ScienceOnline
4. True Social Networks. (…) ResearchGate’s has 1.4 million users, as we know that scientists don’t have time for frivolous endeavors, especially when they’re under the watchful eye of their Principal Investigator. As we noted in our post a year ago, there has to be a value for them to participate, and the successful ones center around research publications. BiomedExperts, CiteULike, ResearchBlogging, andResearchGate had the highest traffic in our quick study, and they all rely heavily on publications. I like to say that PubMed was the first social network for scientists.
5. Publication Sharing/Open Access. Related to the last point is a subject that requires its own mention as it transverses from proper social networks to desktop applications, Twitter, and even a movement to make research publications more accessible.Mendeley is the rock star of the publication sharing/open access genre, boasting 1.77 million users who are sharing 169 million publications. When we speak with life scientists at conferences or client visits, we often hear about the application even from those who are not strong believers in social media. Additionally, these applications have whetted scientists’ appetites for more open access to publications
6. Blogs.  “blogs were one of the first forms of social media for scientists.”  Blog aggregators such as ResearchBlogging orScienceSeeker feature hundreds of blogs and likely a comparable number of communities focused around individual research topics.

Surprising results of a recent study:

• Businesses are failing to get to grips with Facebook, according to research. Analysis of 1.7 million Facebook pages categorised across business, personal brands and interest groups, reveals that businesses have the lowest engagement rates and are ‘less social overall’. 
• Businesses are failing to optimize fan engagement and interactions due to a lack of basic education of platform familiarity and fan/page analytics
• 82% of Facebook pages have fewer than five posts a month, local business pages have the fewest; local business do not participate in 94% of conversations on their page and 91% of conversations on company pages are left unattended

To read in Information Today Europe:

For the last five years the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s Center for Marketing Research has been conducting a study about the use of social media in the 500 fastest growing organisations in the US (The Inc. 500.)  The first study, conducted in 2007, found that these companies were much more likely to have adopted blogs than those in the ‘traditional’ Fortune 500.

The latest findings show that the use of blogging in the Inc. 500 companies is declining for the first time. Blogging had declined to 37% from 50% in 2010. (…)

However, as blogging reaches maturity in these organisations, the use of other social media, including Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Mobile apps, texting, Twitter and YouTube, is growing.  74% of responding companies were using Facebook, and 73% using LinkedIn. (…)

Read further:

Val Skelton, A blog post about the decline of blogging. Information Today Europe Blog, 2nd of February 2012.

http://www.infotodayeurope.com/2012/02/02/a-blog-post-about-the-decline-of-blogging/

PharmaLive reports interesting findings from a recent study:

“Despite heavy restrictions on DTC advertising in Europe, nearly two in five online Europeans would like to be able to learn more about prescription drugs directly from a pharmaceutical company, according to the new Cybercitizen Health^® Europe study from pharmaceutical and healthcare market research company Manhattan Research. (…)

Online consumers show much higher demand for practical online resources from pharmaceutical companies, such as disease and treatment information and condition management tools, than for online contests and games. (…)

Among consumers who are already using or interested in online information and tools from pharmaceutical companies, only 13 percent want to access this content on Facebook and 5 percent on Twitter. In contrast, 43 percent of this audience would like to obtain pharma resources from websites about conditions and diseases.

New Study Finds European Consumers Show Considerable Interest in Learning from Pharma Companies – But Not on Facebook or Twitter. PharmaLive, Posted on 12th of December 2011.
http://pharmalive.com/news/index.cfm?articleid=816624&categoryid=43

Study about DTCA practices by the 10 largest Pharma:

Pharmaceutical direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) is legal only in the United States and New-Zealand(…)

It is linked with inappropriate medication use, over utilization, and increased spending on expensive branded drugs, and it may endanger public health due to promotion of potentially dangerous products. (…)

With the Internet’s rapid development, users have migrated from passive information sources, using read-only “Web 1.0” technology, to interactive, dynamic, and custom-built relationships, using “Web 2.0” technologies.

Along with this digital revolution, new potential DTCA marketing opportunities haven recently emerged that include Web 2.0 social networking sites and other interactive systems (“eDTCA 2.0”), which cross geopolitical borders.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not issued guidelines on eDTCA 2.0 marketing, nor have regulators recognized eDTCA 2.0 and its potential global spillover.

Presence is strong:

- 100% are on Facebook, have blogs and provide RSS feeds

- 80% have dedicated YouTube channels and are developing mobile applications

The point is that social media are also used by illicit drug sellers to promote online sales…

Liang, B.A. & Mackey, T.K. Prevalence and global health implications of social media in direct-to-consumer drug advertising. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2011, Vol. 13, N°3, pp. e64

http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/jmir.1775