Critics poo poo the measure as little more than lip service, a PR move that doesn’t address the far bigger issue: that the drug industry and medicine are hopelessly financially intertwined. (Want proof? Exhibits A, B, and C.) Doctors, meanwhile, brush off the idea that logo-ed pens and Post-Its could alter their prescribing habits.

Still, there’s plenty to be said for the influence of everyday objects, not to mention the power of advertising. Surround yourself with enough Burger King merchandise, and you’d be amazed at how often you start craving Whoppers. Wouldn’t the same principle apply when it comes to physicians and drugs?

(Full disclosure: RB is the child of two doctors, and our childhood desk was filled to overflowing with pens, paperweights, magnets, notepads, and countless other booty emblazoned with words like Diflucan, Avandia, and Provigil. We never went to med school, but we’d probably prescribe Lipitor simply because of their awesome mousepads.)

The pendulum has already started shifting towards greater disclosure in the medical industry, and eliminating freebies is a good move in that direction—not to mention an acknowledgment by the industry that the obscene amounts they’ve been spending on marketing may not be good for medicine.

Now if we could just get them to do something about those free lunches.

Related:
RB: Is Nothing Sacred? Nobel Prize Engulfed in Drug Company Scandal
RB: Clinic to Reveal All Doctor-Drug Industry Ties on the Web
RB: Drug Company Pocket-Padding: The Latest Chapter

• Where have we seen this before? A President’s Guide to Science, in video form.

• A holy union of incentives and science: A car key that disables cell phones when the car is in use.

• Will the hordes of laid-off techies be driven to crime?

• All this carbon offsetting and greening is nice and all, but the elephant in the room is still coal.

• Any chemists want to weigh in on what type of drugs can be manufactured at home?

• When Madoff strikes, no sustainable food business is safe.

• And finally, the perfect Christmas medley: electronics meets art meets taut consumerist criticism.

Welcome to today’s heaping dose of cynicism, to start off the weekend right: Scandal has hit none other than the Nobel Prize, after it was revealed that a member of the Nobel selection committee also sat on the board of AstraZeneca, a pharmaceuticals juggernaut that will benefit from this year’s award for medicine.

The 2008 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine went to three people this year, Luc Montagnier and his (ahem, female) partner Françoise Barre-Sinoussi for discovering HIV, and Harald zur Hausen for his work on the human papilloma virus (HPV) and its link to cervical cancer.

Wouldn’t you know it, AstraZeneca just happens to have a big fat stake in two lucrative HPV vaccines.

To make matters worse:

Two senior figures in the process that chose Mr. zur Hausen have strong links with the pharmaceutical company, which has also recently begun sponsoring the Nobel website and promotional subsidiary. The company strongly denies any wrongdoing.

Ah yes, well as long as they deny any wrongdoing! No matter that these sponsorships are estimated to cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next three years. Also mildly fishy is the fact that the chairman of the five-person committee that assesses Nobel candidates served as a paid consultant for AstraZeneca in 2006.

And as if improper drug company ties weren’t enough, there’s also the little matter of expenses-paid trips to China for Nobel committee members, made with the intention of “tell[ing Chinese] officials how candidates are selected for prizes.”

The anti-corruption unit of the Swedish police is reportedly starting a preliminary investigation—though Michael Sohlman, executive director of the Nobel Foundation, has dismissed the whole hubbub as a media ploy. Meanwhile, the rest of us can cry into our smörgåsar and wait for Santa to announce his sponsorship deal with Pfizer.

Related:
RB: Note to Media: They Give Nobel Prizes to Women These Days
RB: Clinic to Reveal All Doctor-Drug Industry Ties on the Web
RB: Drug Company Pocket-Padding: The Latest Chapter

In case you haven’t picked up a newspaper in the past few days—or if you have, but the number of huge scandals has grown too big to digest in one sitting—a certain elite hedge fund manager by the name of Bernie Madoff has been accused of running a Ponzi scheme that defrauded hordes of the world’s most elite investors out of a possible $50 billion. The level and depth of fraud, as well as the amount of money involved, could make this the single biggest scandal in financial history.

So what path of psychology could possess someone to steal so much, so blithely and brazenly, for so long? How can white-collar criminals, who typically lack the sociopathic personality that accompanies more violent crimes, lie so much and so well to the point where reality (and astronomical sums of money) are lost?

Lauren Cox at ABC News spoke to one such (reformed) white-collar criminal to find out. Barry Minkow, who spent seven years in federal prison for a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme (which, by comparison, looks like pennies next to Madoff), had the following insight about the psychology that lies behind this level of ongoing criminal activity:

“We all have a cure,” he explained. “The irony of white collar crime is we believe that we’re one good week in trading away and we’ll get enough to pay it all back.”

So there you have it! Justification, entrenched in narcissism, topped with a heavy dose of self-delusion. Mush these elements together with charisma, professional credibility, and access to investors like Steven Spielberg, and you wind up with Park Avenue schemes that boggle the mind. What eventually pops the bubble is not the criminal himself, but an outside variable, according to Minkow:

“We all get caught because of the unknown variable. It’s the thing that brings us down,” said Minkow. “For me, it was an investigative reporter. For Madoff, it was an economy that’s so bad people began asking for redemptions.”

On the good side, once the ax drops, the perpetrator (if not investors) can look forward to a rosy catharsis:

Ironically, Minkow said the end of a Ponzi scheme can be the most psychologically therapeutic.

“The first good night sleep I got was in prison,” said Minkow. “Because it was over, I didn’t have to lie anymore.”

Well thank goodness all this is good news for somebody.

Related:
RB: Advocacy Group May Have Registered Phony “Voters.” But Does It Matter?