About the Authors
- Michael A Steinman
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*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mike.steinman@ucsf.edu
Affiliations San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Francisco, California, United States of America , Division of Geriatrics, University of California, San Francisco, California, United States of America
- G. Michael Harper
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Affiliations San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Francisco, California, United States of America , Division of Geriatrics, University of California, San Francisco, California, United States of America
- Mary-Margaret Chren
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Affiliations San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Francisco, California, United States of America , Department of Dermatology, University of California, San Francisco, California, United States of America
- C. Seth Landefeld
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Affiliations San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Francisco, California, United States of America , Division of Geriatrics, University of California, San Francisco, California, United States of America
- Lisa A Bero
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Affiliations Department of Clinical Pharmacy, University of California, San Francisco, California, United States of America , Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California, San Francisco, California, United States of America
Competing Interests
MAS, MMC, and CSL served as unpaid expert witnesses for the plaintiff in the litigation from which source data for this report was obtained (United States of America ex rel. David Franklin v. Pfizer, Inc. and Parke-Davis, Division of Warner-Lambert Company). GMH and LAB were not involved in this litigation. MAS is a member of the board of No Free Lunch. He does not receive any compensation for this position and No Free Lunch had no role in the preparation or submission of this manuscript. Seed funding for an online searchable archive of documents from the gabapentin litigation (http://dida.library.ucsf.edu) was provided by a gift from Thomas Greene, lawyer for the whistleblower plaintiff in this litigation, to the University of California Board of Regents. Two of the authors (MAS, CSL) participated in the creation and development of the archive, including solicitation of start-up funding from Mr. Greene. The cost of obtaining and photocopying some of the documents used in this research was paid by the archive, which incorporated these documents into the collection. The authors have no financial conflict of interest with any product discussed in this manuscript.
Author Contributions
MAS developed the research question, obtained and coded the data, conducted the analyses, and wrote the paper. GMH, MMC, CSL, and LAB assisted in the development of the analytic plan and interpretation of the findings, and critically reviewed successive drafts of the manuscript. GMH and LAB also assisted in coding of the data.