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How to steer clear of money scams

This post is the latest in an ongoing <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/search/label/security">series</a> on how to stay safe online. - Ed. As the designated tech support person for my immediate family, I'm used to getting calls about issues like browser crashes and confusing websites. But recently my mom called to ask about something she saw online that said Google would pay her thousands of dollars to work from home with no experience required. She didn't buy it, but she did want to ask — is this for real? My mom was right to be skeptical. In the current economic downturn, a lot of people are looking for ways to make extra money. Unfortunately, some unsavory characters see this trend as an opportunity to trick unsuspecting people with scams and elaborate get-rich-quick schemes. We're seeing disturbing cases in which websites, emails and advertisements claim that you can make large amounts of money from home with very little effort using Google products and services. They're designed to look like they were written by a regular person, just like you, who stumbled across an amazing opportunity to make their monetary dreams come true. What they don't tell you clearly is that Google is not affiliated with these sites and that they may add extra charges to your credit card or misuse your personal information. To be clear, we are proud to say that many companies and individuals do legitimately make money placing ads on their websites with <a href="https://www.google.com/adsense/">Google AdSense</a> or participating in programs like the <a href="http://www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork/">Google Affiliate Network</a>. Creating a successful website is hard work — successful sites earn their money by writing compelling content, developing useful applications and maintaining vibrant user communities. Any claim that you can skip all of that and make just as much money by posting links, using a secret system, or running a kit to generate websites should be treated with a heavy dose of skepticism. Spammers attempt to reach users by generating hundreds of webpages and sending out a flood of spam emails, sometimes even buying advertisements on reputable websites. Their sites also target other popular Internet companies. They may include family photos pilfered from another site or a picture of a check they supposedly received. Spammers use a wide range of techniques that try to slip past automatic filters to get to you. At Google, we work hard to protect users from these schemes by using a combination of automated and manual tools that remove them from our search index and ad network. However, scams target many companies and appear in various places around the web, so we all need to work cooperatively. Google collaborates with various government and non-governmental consumer protection agencies, such as the Federal Trade Commission, that are <a href="http://ftc.gov/opa/2009/07/shortchange.shtm">investigating these types of schemes further</a>. How to identify scams and other schemes In general, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Here are some pointers on what to look out for: <ul><li>Before you fill out a form or give someone a credit card, do a web search to see what other people are saying about the company and its practices. </li></ul><ul><li>Be wary of companies that ask for upfront charges for services that Google actually offers for free. Check out our <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/services/var_1.html">business solutions page</a> before writing a check.</li></ul><ul><li>Always read the fine print. Watch out for get-rich-quick schemes that charge a very low initial fee before sneaking in large reoccurring charges on your credit card or bank account.</li></ul><ul><li>Google never guarantees top placement in search results or <a href="http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?answer=6546">AdWords</a> — beware of companies that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a special relationship with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our <a href="http://www.google.com/addurl/">Add URL page</a> or through the <a href="http://www.sitemaps.org/">Sitemaps program</a> — you can do these tasks yourself at no cost whatsoever. </li></ul><ul><li>Be wary of anything resembling a <a href="http://www.sec.gov/answers/pyramid.htm" style="font-weight: bold;">pyramid scheme</a>, where you make commissions by recruiting more participants.</li></ul><ul><li>Some sales pitches use the word "Google" or other trademarks right in their name with targeted phrases like "cash," "pay day," "money," "secrets," "home business," etc. If you can't find it on our <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/" style="font-weight: bold;">list of Google products</a> or on the business solutions page, don't trust it. </li></ul><ul><li>Look for third party verification. Scammers can easily cut-and-paste images to plaster a site with "as seen on TV," "five-star reviews" and the logos of well-known news channels. Products that have really been recommended by experts and fellow users typically contain links from legitimate news sites and multiple user review sites.</li></ul><ul><li>Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about making money with Google AdWords as you do for "burn fat at night" diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators. In general, be wary of offers from firms that email you out of the blue. Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:</li></ul> "I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories..." <ul><li>Google is not running a lottery, and we have not picked your email address to win millions of dollars. Don't give out your bank account details via email in anticipation of a big jackpot.</li></ul>What you can do <ul><li>If you've been ripped off, or suspect others are, <a href="http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=9110">report the site and file a complaint</a> with the appropriate agency.</li></ul><ul><li>If you come across many sites with duplicate content or common templates intended to direct users to the same product or scheme, please let us know with a <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35265">spam report</a>. </li></ul><ul><li>If you've been contacted to place suspicious links on your site for money, let us know with the <a href="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks">paid link report form</a>. If you have your own website or are in charge of advertising on a site, think carefully before accepting ads or entering into affiliate programs that will lead your users to schemes like those mentioned above. </li></ul><ul><li>If your site's forums or comment sections have been spammed with fake offers of fabulous financial gain, you may need to <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/keeping-comment-spam-off-your-site-and.html">take steps to fight comment spam</a>. Spammers will take advantage of any user-generated content sections of your site, and will even generate thousands of <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/06/spam20-fake-user-accounts-and-spam.html">fake user profiles</a> to try to slip under the radar. </li></ul><ul><li>If you receive suspicious messages that claim to be from Google, these may be <a href="http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=106318">phishing attempts</a>. Please report them to <a href="mailto:%20phishing@google.com">phishing@google.com</a>. </li></ul> Posted by Jason Morrison, Search Quality Team

How to steer clear of money scams

This post is the latest in an ongoing series on how to stay safe online. - Ed. As the designated tech support person for my immediate fami...

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Special Ghana site for President Obama's visit

Special Ghana site for President Obama's visit

In recognition of President Obama's visit to Ghana, we've worked with the Ministry of Tourism in that country on a special site deta...

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Seeing the world with improved Google Search results

As an avid traveler, I know how helpful it can be to see a map when searching for a location on Google. Using our Universal Search technology, we have provided maps in our search results for more than two years. However, as any traveler could tell you, knowing the geographical location of a place is only part of the story. It's often just as valuable to get a sense of what the place is like, and there's no better way to do that than by looking at images of some of its most important sights. Now, when you search for locations using Google Search, you may see pictures from that place alongside a map. You can click on any of those images to go to the <a href="http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2008/05/more-ways-to-find-what-youre-looking_14.html">photos layer</a> on <a href="http://maps.google.com/">Google Maps</a> where you can browse many more geo-tagged photos. So if you searched for [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=paris">Paris</a>], you'd see: <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcfiWiTspDrH6NnpwaNL5inU9_jG_yEz0u96F8upSzNA28CZsv52wet2d1x1C7zEvNIrETMY0Bh8JXztFfvFdw7N3HoC_3WxsC-ef8Nb1KZK-Gn9uOyFGSIG6bcCMZMKFQgFh6RQpYWAWg/s1600-h/paris_maplicious.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356667619292088002" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcfiWiTspDrH6NnpwaNL5inU9_jG_yEz0u96F8upSzNA28CZsv52wet2d1x1C7zEvNIrETMY0Bh8JXztFfvFdw7N3HoC_3WxsC-ef8Nb1KZK-Gn9uOyFGSIG6bcCMZMKFQgFh6RQpYWAWg/s400/paris_maplicious.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 173px;" /></a> Here's [<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=Yellowstone+National+Park">Yellowstone National Park</a>]: <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM9-r7TI6NSF9fDTtQF46SMkzyIjepqheUC8qrMqRvYv_xYO5HAgCaHBuz2HbLxtXVa2T-ugWuTLHAjkXhI12pxq5IyARqYw6xm0piBFF22wSeJQQCSpwQe1olHDpBIxiOcMk_2nZ3RG36/s1600-h/yellowstone_maplicious.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356667775449927010" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM9-r7TI6NSF9fDTtQF46SMkzyIjepqheUC8qrMqRvYv_xYO5HAgCaHBuz2HbLxtXVa2T-ugWuTLHAjkXhI12pxq5IyARqYw6xm0piBFF22wSeJQQCSpwQe1olHDpBIxiOcMk_2nZ3RG36/s400/yellowstone_maplicious.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 175px;" /></a> We think this is a great way to get a better sense of a location as well as get a taste of some of the great user-contributed photos that await on Google Maps. We hope you'll have a fun time exploring! Posted by Lingyun Liu, Software Engineer

Seeing the world with improved Google Search results

As an avid traveler, I know how helpful it can be to see a map when searching for a location on Google. Using our Universal Search technolog...

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Find Creative Commons images with Image Search

Let's say you're a blogger. You've just returned from a trip to New York City, and you're writing a post on New York landmarks. You want to illustrate your travel guide with an image — as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. It's easy to find images of New York online. But you want to make sure that you don't use images without the permission of their owners, and you can't afford licensing fees for professional photographers. Today, we're launching a feature on <a href="http://images.google.com/">Image Search</a> to help you find images that you can use for free, while respecting the wishes of artists and creators. This feature allows you to restrict your Image Search results to images that have been tagged with licenses like Creative Commons, making it easier to discover images from across the web that you can share, use and even modify. Your search will also include works that have been tagged with other licenses, like GNU Free Documentation license, or are in the public domain. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-xaEyxD99A6l85sONjPaIfYMLEIMBpO2dzlksxWuMJfEAnh8eJS2dRbrK6j_FxZ-17DZmGWBCmFxrc_KKSNwl0Ueb7hYmrww0Difhuphto1aieL4-fRBxjGL-2lejT_hMxF3jM_vaFv4l/s1600-h/statue+of+liberty.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356498539430153634" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-xaEyxD99A6l85sONjPaIfYMLEIMBpO2dzlksxWuMJfEAnh8eJS2dRbrK6j_FxZ-17DZmGWBCmFxrc_KKSNwl0Ueb7hYmrww0Difhuphto1aieL4-fRBxjGL-2lejT_hMxF3jM_vaFv4l/s320/statue+of+liberty.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 299px; height: 320px;" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/the-o/2928233768">"New York's Liberty Island - Statue of Liberty and Seagull", David Paul Ohmer, Flickr</a> </div><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356501011799234994" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizdX8MYsG_lhYBGHCZ2ggeF1hfAzS_rQwGN64T6E_VdQGqCjs5BOagVzVQelcddHYZ4RDThOykdiSxvoZnUBA4Z-FopT_QKF5D4vWEE9dO-jFbJl-HdY3o0iXPcK3pfo2fe0EVfUwlr7DV/s400/80x15statue.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 80px; height: 15px;" /></a> This feature also helps artists who want their images to be discovered and reused across the web — on their own terms. Creative Commons licenses allow artists to specify the ways others may use their work. Artists can license their images for general reuse, or for noncommercial reuse only. They can also decide whether or not to grant people the right to modify or remix their images. Once they've chosen to make their work available online under these terms, Google Images helps people start to find and use it. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWOIEdcQrKNXXD_nVqO-B4zT4jIOYJR7X9Fb2FRcXDZh6o6FxylslKeRVV_d1Ui6PSZAhXrt3zwuFzhF2cKRyEYkdH3NSxP6HHScvnlkilZLWPonk8wwgTHn9kbUCPz2vRtTYn5CJap85K/s1600-h/butterfly.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356498888325274786" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWOIEdcQrKNXXD_nVqO-B4zT4jIOYJR7X9Fb2FRcXDZh6o6FxylslKeRVV_d1Ui6PSZAhXrt3zwuFzhF2cKRyEYkdH3NSxP6HHScvnlkilZLWPonk8wwgTHn9kbUCPz2vRtTYn5CJap85K/s320/butterfly.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/q87dOS7zFJtSNHgucBphmQ">Shiroi Hane, PicasaWeb</a> </div><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356501011799234994" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizdX8MYsG_lhYBGHCZ2ggeF1hfAzS_rQwGN64T6E_VdQGqCjs5BOagVzVQelcddHYZ4RDThOykdiSxvoZnUBA4Z-FopT_QKF5D4vWEE9dO-jFbJl-HdY3o0iXPcK3pfo2fe0EVfUwlr7DV/s400/80x15statue.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 80px; height: 15px;" /></a> To enable this feature, go to our <a href="http://images.google.com/advanced_image_search">advanced image search page</a>. Under the "Usage rights" section, you can select the type of license you'd like to search for, such as those marked for reuse or even for commercial reuse with modification. Your results will be restricted to images marked with CC or other licenses. Once you confirm the license of the image and make sure that your use will comply with the terms of the license (such as proper attribution to the image's owner), you can reuse the image. Some of you may already see these options, and we'll be rolling this feature out to everyone throughout the day. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe0OkpKaG-iNYIQc8NSFQPaj4G6yTccarxrRskNlOkwbaUiLi1DoITb536AR_S9Kaq75I4LC6sjCiZTXROThaIW8fRqYWbao6a4Tp8WzxfkypZlh_WCLEsQAQIglM_D1rU9JumjV9gDyU3/s1600-h/squirrel.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356498882668665650" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe0OkpKaG-iNYIQc8NSFQPaj4G6yTccarxrRskNlOkwbaUiLi1DoITb536AR_S9Kaq75I4LC6sjCiZTXROThaIW8fRqYWbao6a4Tp8WzxfkypZlh_WCLEsQAQIglM_D1rU9JumjV9gDyU3/s320/squirrel.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 218px;" /></a><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eichh%C3%B6rnchen_D%C3%BCsseldorf_Hofgarten_edit.jpg"><div style="text-align: center;">"Red squirrel with pronounced winter ear tufts in the Dusseldorf Hofgarten", Ray Eye, Wikimedia Commons</div></a><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/de/deed.en" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" style="text-decoration: none;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356500635054024994" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXg9UsaYJ6mM6PbGg7EfRTwYnwg1tcrkPB3EOrrGZD2JJ7UxjqrXoPMKtIbN2-1-Rfm2u5zmtP7Wg-O1Pol1A8l60WJLhx9GtRJsDU3ViimZQVY7lzuBg-RyDd6K1wgVpT4_KFLb_uCPxy/s400/80x15.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; text-decoration: underline; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 80px; height: 15px;" /></a> There's some fine print, of course. This feature identifies images that are tagged with licenses that authorize reuse. You'll still have to verify that the licensing information is accurate. We can help you take the first step towards finding these images, but we can't guarantee that the content we linked to is actually in the public domain, or available under the license. We believe that we've made it easier for people to find images they can use while helping artists who've made their images available under these licenses to gain exposure for their work. So <a href="http://images.google.com/images?as_rights=%28cc_publicdomain%7Ccc_attribute%7Ccc_sharealike%7Ccc_noncommercial%7Ccc_nonderived%29&hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&um=1&sa=1&q=black+kittens&btnG=Search+images&aq=f&oq=">try it out</a>, and <a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search">let us know what you think</a>. Posted by Lance Huang and George Ruban, Software Engineers

Find Creative Commons images with Image Search

Let's say you're a blogger. You've just returned from a trip to New York City, and you're writing a post on New York landmar...

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A Window on the Unworkable Settings in Which Physicians Practice

The Annals of Internal Medicine just published an important problem that helps explain why our health care crisis is so intractable. (Linzer M, Manwell LB, Williams ES, Bobula JA, Brown RL, Varkey AB et al. Working conditions in primary care: physician reactions and care quality. Ann Intern Med 2009; 151: 28-36. Link <a href="http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/151/1/28">here</a>.) The article arose from the MEMO (Minimizing Error, Maximizing Outcome) study. The study included an initial cross-sectional survey and then longitudinal follow-up of 422 physicians, roughly equal numbers of family practitioners and general internists, in 119 different ambulatory settings in New York City, NY, Chicago, IL, Milwaukee, WI, Madison WI, and smaller towns in WI. The surveys asked physicians about their work-flow and time pressure, the pace of their practice (from calm to chaotic), their ability to control their own work activities, and five aspects of organizational culture (emphasis on quality, emphasis on information and communication, trust, cohesiveness, and alignment of values between physicians and leaders.) The results showed how bad the practice environment in primary care/ generalist practice has become. Some important points were: - More than half of the physicians (53.1%) said they needed more time to do physical examinations, and nearly half (47.6%) for follow-up visits. - Almost half (48.1%) described the pace of their offices as chaotic. - Substantial majorities of physicians thought their workplaces' organizational cultures were deficient, if not hostile. - Only 23.7% thought there was a high emphasis on quality. - Only 28.2% thought there was a high emphasis on communication and information. - Only 30.6% thought there was a great amount of trust. - Only 33.9% thought there was high work place cohesiveness - Only 14.2% thought there was great alignment between the values of leadership and physicians. So, to summarize, many physicians thought they did not have enough time to take care of each individual patient. Most thought their workplaces were nowhere near calm, and nearly half thought they were chaotic. Few thought that their workplaces emphasized quality or communication and information, or inspired trust or cohesiveness. Very few thought that their leaders' values were aligned with their professional values. This blog has focused on problems with the leadership and governance of health care organizations. We have discussed leadership that is: –Autocratic, or “imperial” –Insulated –Uninformed about health care context, indifferent to health care values –Incompetent –Self-interested –Conflicted –Corrupt We have shown that the governance of health care organizations may be: - Unrepresentative - Unaccountable - Opaque - Not Subject to Ethical Standards and that such governance facilitates and enables bad leadership. I submit that the study by Linzer et al suggests how bad leadership can make the settings in which physicians practice unworkable. It may be that some of the time pressure that physicians face is due to the perverse incentives built into their pay schedules (e.g., see <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/06/ruckus-continues-former-medicare.html">this post</a>), and bureaucratic demands of insurers and government agencies. A fast paced and demanding environment is one thing, however, and a chaotic envirnoment is another. What else would explain chaotic work environments other than bad organizational leadership? Futhermore, how could well lead organizations ignore quality, and fail to inspire trust and cohesiveness? How could good leaders inspire four-fifths of the physicians to say the leaders of their organizations did not value what they value? This article strongly suggests that we cannot fix the health care crisis simply by changing financing mechanisms or money flows. We can only improve health care by improving the leadership and governance of health care organizations, and by rethinking the size and scope of health care organizations. The most crucial part of health care is what goes on between individual health care professionals and individual patients. Yet our system is composed of endlessly enlarging bureaucracies run by self-interested, often clueless, and sometimes dishonest, if not criminal leaders. This must change, unless we want this crisis to get much, much worse.

A Window on the Unworkable Settings in Which Physicians Practice

The Annals of Internal Medicine just published an important problem that helps explain why our health care crisis is so intractable. (Linzer...

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A Peabody Award for a Show Featuring Nemeroff's Pontifications

All things that fall must converge? The escapades of the former Emory University Chair of Psychiatry, Dr Charles Nemeroff, now have gotten quite a lot of press, but we were writing about some of them here on Health Care Renewal before the good doctor became so well-known. Dr Bernard Carroll, for instance, posted <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2006/08/money-and-medical-journals.html">here</a> and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2008/01/variations-on-theme-of-sleaze.html">here</a>, and I posted <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2008/10/nemeroff-case-vs-anechoic-effect.html">here </a>(with links backward). We have also posted about how well-intentioned public broadcasters seem to have got caught up in the web of health care conflicts of interest. <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2007/02/pharmaceutical-stealth-marketing-on-pbs.html">Here</a> we talked about how a drug company ended up funding a special on obesity, and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2007/10/funding-of-mysterious-human-heart-and.html">here</a> we talked about the involvement of a device and a drug company in the "Mysterious Human Heart." In late June, the Columbia Journalism Review included <a href="http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/reprimanded_psychiatrist_bad_a.php">an article </a>by Paul Scott about how a US Public Broadcasting System show won an illustrious Peabody award for a show featuring Dr Nemeroff pontificating about depression. <blockquote> Last May, a Peabody <a href="http://www.peabody.uga.edu/news/event.php?id=59" target="_blank">was awarded</a> to the film <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/takeonestep/depression/" target="_blank">Depression: Out of the Shadows</a>, a documentary which aired in 2008 on PBS, was produced by Twin Cities Public Television and WGBH Boston, and was written and directed by Minneapolis-based filmmaker Larkin McPhee. But where her film was generous in its inclusion of heartbreaking personal stories about depression, its broad survey of the science of the illness included frequent appearances by <a href="http://www.psychiatry.emory.edu/NeuropsychopharmacologyLaboratory/Charles%20Nemeroff.html" target="_blank">Charles Nemeroff, M.D.</a>, a leading—<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=5w64WC_-jbMC&pg=RA1-PA209&lpg=RA1-PA209&dq=nemeroff+boss+of+bossess&source=bl&ots=nn_8ZPs04I&sig=lvuv6iiJhXfz2vsqaJ-52G9-hYw&hl=en&ei=QqI3SsOrA5nIM4X6vZkN&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6#PRA1-PA210,M1" target="_blank">some say powerful</a>—mood disorders researcher from Emory University. Last fall, Nemeroff also became one of the most prominent psychiatrists to be rebuked <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/health/policy/04drug.html" target="_blank">for failing to disclose</a> funds earned from the drug industry. Last October, Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa notified Emory that Nemeroff had received $2.8 million from drug companies between 2000 and 2007, $1.2 million of which he failed to report to the university, as he was required to do according to federal rules. To reduce their risk of bias, National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers must limit to $10,000 their annual receipt of payments from the makers of drugs they are studying. As the lead investigator for a five-year, $3.95 million federal grant to study Paxil and other GlaxoSmithKline drugs, Nemeroff pocketed seventeen times the NIH limit from GSK in 2004 alone, and exceeded his limit every year from 2003 through 2006, without informing his employers. Following his rebuke, Nemeroff <a href="http://grassley.senate.gov/private/upload/Emory-to-NIH-2.pdf" target="_blank">lost his chairmanship at Emory, saw $9.2 million in NIH funds meant for Emory </a><a href="http://www.ajc.com/search/content/metro/dekalb/stories/2008/10/14/nemeroff_emory_funds.html" target="_blank">frozen</a>, and was banned from federal research for two years. Some might argue that little about this episode matters, since Nemeroff’s downfall took place in October and Depression: Out of the Shadows aired five months earlier. Yet a simple Google search would have alerted McPhee to the fact that Nemeroff, though the author of hundreds of research papers and well respected in his field, has been dogged by conflict of interest allegations for years. In 2003, he <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/03/us/undisclosed-financial-ties-prompt-reproval-of-doctor.html" target="_blank">came under fire</a> for praising three pharmaceutical products in the journal Nature Neuroscience without disclosing he held a financial stake in their success, one of which he held the patent on. Three years later, Nemeroff <a href="http://finance.senate.gov/hearings/testimony/2008test/091608%20Grassley%20docs%20submitted%20for%20the%20record/Nemeroff%20defending%20being%20Editor%20of%20ACNP%20%28July%2026,%202006%29.pdf" target="_blank">resigned</a> from his editorship of the journal Neuropsychopharmacology after The Wall Street Journal <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115654102420045878.html" target="_blank">reported</a> he held an undisclosed financial stake in a treatment for depression he praised in an article. Nemeroff is either great at making excuses for his conduct or extremely unlucky. Following his 2003 misstep, he blamed the journal in question for not requiring him to mention his conflicts. Following his omission in 2006, Nemeroff blamed a clerical error. Following his rebuke by Sen. Grassley, Nemeroff told his employers he did not realize that drug-industry sponsored continuing education appearances were payments requiring disclosure. All defenses aside, by the time of production for Depression: Out of the Shadows, his drug industry entanglements were both widely distributed and widely known. “With financial ties to nearly two dozen drug and biotech companies,” <a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0404.brownlee.html" target="_blank">wrote</a>Shannon Brownlee in The Washington Monthly in 2004, “Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff may hold some sort of record among academic clinicians for the most conflicts of interest.” That PBS producers either did not know about Nemeroff’s drug industry entanglements or did not believe they tainted his discussion of the science of depression is disappointing. But what made the praise bestowed on this PBS documentary particularly troubling were the erroneous, drug-industry serving statements made by Nemeroff within the film—statements which had the potential to negatively affect public health, and which the documentary left unchallenged. During a segment on the FDA’s 2004 decision to require “black box” safety warnings stating that antidepressants can increase the risk of suicide in children and teenagers, a risk it extended in May of 2007 to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/health/14suicide.html" target="_blank">users under twenty-five</a>, Nemeroff seized the occasion to claim that the federal safety warning was mistaken. He did so by citing a 2007 study partially funded by Pfizer and published in The American Journal of Psychiatry, a paper ostensibly linking the warning with a subsequent <a href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/reprint/164/9/1356" target="_blank">increase in teen suicides</a>. “The FDA put a black box warning for all age groups,” Nemeroff said in the documentary. “I believe this was a mistake, because in hastening our awareness, what we’ve shown is there’s been a marked drop in prescriptions of antidepressants, particularly for children and adolescents…and an increase in suicides and suicide attempts.” But as <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/09/24/suicide_rates_as_a_public_relations_tool/" target="_blank">critics</a> <a href="http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/mental/articles/2007/09/17/its_premature_to_blame_fda_for_suicide_rise/?page=2" target="_blank">quickly pointed out</a>to The Boston Globe and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/us/14suicide.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>, the increase in suicides Nemeroff described actually occurred a year before a drop-off in antidepressant use. (You can’t blame a rise in suicides in 2003 on <a href="http://chemicalimbalance.org/?p=158" target="_blank">a drop off in prescriptions in 2005</a>.) At the time, most parties to this debate agreed that the question of whether black-box warnings were inadvertently dangerous would not be further clarified until the release of Centers for Disease Control suicide data from 2005.That data came out a month later, and showed that suicides have <a href="http://www.furiousseasons.com/documents/2005prelimdeaths.pdf" target="_blank">fallen overall</a>; a follow-up report showed that suicides have <a href="http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/300/9/1025" target="_blank">fallen among youth specifically</a>. The total number remains higher than in 2003, but less than in 2004, when the FDA warning went into effect.Given the complexity of epidemiological data and the rarity of suicide, those findings prove little except that any effort to link an uptick in suicides to reduced prescribing of antidepressant medications to children and teenagers is not supported by the epidemiological data. </blockquote> Mr Scott concluded, memorably, <blockquote> Something about the simultaneously complex and sympathetic nature of mental health reporting is making reputable journalistic organizations and well-meaning reporters sloppy. </blockquote> Were health care journalists to dig deeper into the financial entanglements of some of the "key opinion leaders" who may be so eager to appear in well-meaning, and at times feel-good documentaries, the public might learn more about the web of conflicts of interest that now ensnares health care. They might also learn how much of what appears to be health care education is just marketing in disguise. That marketing is often of expensive, and not terribly effective treatments. Realizing that many seeming miracle cures aren't might lead to the skepticism that could help us control health care costs without hurting patients.

A Peabody Award for a Show Featuring Nemeroff's Pontifications

All things that fall must converge? The escapades of the former Emory University Chair of Psychiatry, Dr Charles Nemeroff, now have gotten q...

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Designing useful mobile services for Africa

Last week, we announced a suite of <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/extending-google-services-in-africa.html">SMS services in Uganda</a>, a country where someone's first experience of the Internet is far more likely to be on a mobile device rather than a PC. We are really excited about this project in part because it is the result of more than a year of true user-centered research and design. We knew we wanted to build useful mobile services tailored to the needs of people in sub-Saharan Africa, but how could we find out what people want from the Internet when they don't have access to it already? What would people who had never used search before want to search for if we gave them a mobile phone and said "Ask any question you like"? In early 2008 we set out with colleagues from <a href="http://google.org/">Google.org</a>, <a href="http://www.grameenfoundation.org/what_we_do/technology_programs/ict_innovation/application_laboratory/">Grameen Applab</a> and <a href="http://www.mtn.co.ug/">MTN</a> (a network carrier in Uganda) with this challenge in mind. Our research needed to be able to assess the feasibility of delivering information via mobile in Uganda as well as evaluate the content "appetites" of local people. Since no search engine existed for testing, we did the next best thing: We decided to mimic the experience of using a search engine using human experts. First, we trained a multilingual team to act as user researchers in 17 carefully selected locations across the country. In each place, they introduced themselves to a cross section of people they met and invited them to participate in a free study that would help create useful services for Ugandans. If the person agreed, the researcher handed them a mobile phone and encouraged them to write a text message containing a question they wanted to know the answer to. (If people had their own phone, we reimbursed them with phone credit.) The text message was then routed to a control room we'd set up in Kampala where a human expert read the text message, typed a response, and sent it back via SMS to the person who asked the question. In the meantime, the interviewer observed and recorded the participant's user experience. This allowed us to record rich qualitative data from hundreds of interviews in just a few days, and to collect quantitative data from hundreds of search queries. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhjC1KbNUHLDux8Pyeq4kAauMaXYRmQCwIbO6CPdwvp6MjpDnTYmVkXrjaKrffNHWTcjqbMOLHYv4OrV0zAUQYR0WAkrVQfqlPSOP4jvfFz5-Av39NfnpEI5ZSgzbkpPHtw5oXqEwghy8S/s1600-h/africa+post.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356154253311404626" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhjC1KbNUHLDux8Pyeq4kAauMaXYRmQCwIbO6CPdwvp6MjpDnTYmVkXrjaKrffNHWTcjqbMOLHYv4OrV0zAUQYR0WAkrVQfqlPSOP4jvfFz5-Av39NfnpEI5ZSgzbkpPHtw5oXqEwghy8S/s400/africa+post.jpg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" /></a><div style="text-align: center;">Trying mobile search for the first time </div> Last week's launch of SMS services in Uganda is the direct result of this research — it's based on listening to what people want and finding a way to get it to them. Our research enabled us to observe first-hand how people instinctively wanted to interact with a mobile phone. We let people select the language they wanted to use. We gained deep insights into the way people formulate their questions and what questions really matter to them. On top of that, we saw the excitement on people's faces when they got their first-ever search results, and we realized that some of the information we could deliver to these users, such as health information, has the power to truly change lives. These new services in Uganda are just one step on the path to providing information to people who have little or no access to the web. This research will help us as we continue to develop more services to increase access to information all around the world. Posted by Sian Townsend, Mobile User Experience Researcher, and Charles Warren, Mobile User Experience Design Manager

Designing useful mobile services for Africa

Last week, we announced a suite of SMS services in Uganda , a country where someone's first experience of the Internet is far more likel...

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