Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Pharmaceuticals on Television: A Charter Challenge

The Supreme Court of Canada has consistently wrestled with the conflict between legislation designed to protect consumers’ health and the constitutional guarantee of the fundamental freedom of expression. This paper investigates the justification for the current regulatory framework for pharmaceutical advertising on television. Aware that the provisions in the FDA are able to withstand Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Charter) scrutiny, several possible policy initiations are nevertheless proposed. The paper is divided into five separate sections. Having first introduced DTCA of pharmaceuticals on television in Section I, I will now turn to a more comprehensive examination of DTCA in Canada in Section II. Next, I will fully examine the nature of expression characterized in drug advertising in Section III, before delving into the main argument of the paper, a Section One challenge Char- ter challenge in Section IV. Finally, I conclude that the current prohibitions against DTCA of drugs on television are justified and will provide a few recommendations in Section V

A decade of theory as reflected in Psychological Science (2009–2019)

The dominant belief is that science progresses by testing theories and moving towards theoretical consensus. While it’s implicitly assumed that psychology operates in this manner, critical discussions claim that the field suffers from a lack of cumulative theory. To examine this paradox, we analysed research published in Psychological Science from 2009–2019 (N = 2,225). We found mention of 359 theories in-text, most were referred to only once. Only 53.66% of all manuscripts included the word theory, and only 15.33% explicitly claimed to test predictions derived from theories. We interpret this to suggest that the majority of research published in this flagship journal is not driven by theory, nor can it be contributing to cumulative theory building. These data provide insight into the kinds of research psychologists are conducting and raises questions about the role of theory in the psychological sciences

Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Pharmaceuticals on Television: A Charter Challenge

The Supreme Court of Canada has consistently wrestled with the conflict between legislation designed to protect consumers’ health and the constitutional guarantee of the fundamental freedom of expression. This paper investigates the justification for the current regulatory framework for pharmaceutical advertising on television. Aware that the provisions in the FDA are able to withstand Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Charter) scrutiny, several possible policy initiations are nevertheless proposed. The paper is divided into five separate sections. Having first introduced DTCA of pharmaceuticals on television in Section I, I will now turn to a more comprehensive examination of DTCA in Canada in Section II. Next, I will fully examine the nature of expression characterized in drug advertising in Section III, before delving into the main argument of the paper, a Section One challenge Char- ter challenge in Section IV. Finally, I conclude that the current prohibitions against DTCA of drugs on television are justified and will provide a few recommendations in Section V

What Can We Learn From More Than 140,000 Moments of Ecological Momentary Assessment-Assessed Negative Emotion and Ambulatory Blood Pressure? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Objective Two decades of research has examined within-person associations between negative emotion states and ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) using ecological momentary assessment (EMA), but no meta-analysis has been conducted. We conducted this systematic review and meta-analysis to quantify the magnitude of this association and identify moderators, review strengths and weaknesses in conceptual and measurement approaches, and provide recommendations. Methods We searched databases (PsycINFO, PubMed), identified 15 studies, and obtained data from 13 studies (n = 2511; 142,307 observations). Results Random-effects meta-analyses demonstrated small effect r values between momentary negative emotions and systolic ABP (r = 0.06) and diastolic ABP (r = 0.05; p values \u3c .001). Meta-regressions found that effects were larger among studies focused on anxiety, multidimensional negative emotions, predominantly female samples, or less observations of each participant (p values from .003 to .049). A qualitative review found that few studies examined moderators contributing to the substantial interindividual differences in this association. Conclusions The small association between momentary negative emotion and ABP extends laboratory findings on the association between the experiential and physiological aspects of emotion to the daily, natural emotional experiences of individuals. This literature could be strengthened by determining interindividual and intraindividual moderators of this association (e.g., trait negative emotion and state positive emotion), examining differential associations of different negative emotions with ABP, and standardizing EMA protocols. Although the effect is small, to the extent that repeated emotion-related cardiovascular reactivity may contribute to cardiovascular disease risk, identifying daily life triggers of emotion is important

A decade of theory as reflected in Psychological Science (2009-2019)

The dominant belief is that science progresses by testing theories and moving towards theoretical consensus. While it’s implicitly assumed that psychology operates in this manner, critical discussions claim that the field suffers from a lack of cumulative theory. To examine this paradox, we analysed research published in Psychological Science from 2009-2019 (N = 2,225). We found mention of 359 theories in-text, most were referred to only once. Only 53.66% of all manuscripts included the word theory, and only 15.33% explicitly claim to test predictions derived from theories. We interpret this to suggest that most psychological research is not driven by theory, nor can it be contributing to cumulative theory building. These data provide insight into the kinds of research psychologists are conducting and raises questions about the role of theory in the psychological sciences