Garnett, Emma and Hodges, Sarah (2019) The ghost in the data : evidence gaps and the problem of fake drugs in global health research.

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Abstract

For the past several decades, global health researchers and policy makers have raised the alarm about the growing threat of counterfeit and low-quality drugs (henceforth ‘fakes’). These high-profile and regularly repeated claims about fake drugs pepper scholarly publications, grey literature, and popular writing. Much of this writing shares two characteristics. First, it asserts that fake drugs constitute an urgent problem to global health because these drugs threaten lives. Second – and rather perplexingly, given the ubiquity of these claims and urgency with which they have been made – nearly all authors also report trouble with ‘gaps’ in the evidence on which their claims are based. In particular, authors report their surprise that the data is weaker and less conclusive than they had anticipated. Through a close reading of the strategies authors employ to overcome evidence gaps, we ask questions about the cultures of knowledge production in scholarly publishing, and in particular about how data and evidence are deployed in global health research. We argue that scholarly commitment to studying fakes despite the evidence – rather than because of it – functions to avoid difficult questions about the lack of access to pharmacological data and to support spending on anti-counterfeit policing and products.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts > History
Official Date:	5 July 2019
Dates:	Date Event 5 July 2019 Accepted
Date of first compliant deposit:	17 July 2019
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant:	Project/Grant ID RIOXX Funder Name Funder ID 212584/B/18/Z Wellcome Trust Collaborative Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences UNSPECIFIED

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