Key Opinion Leaders and the Control of Knowledge

Abstract

Pharmaceutical companies have moved beyond just producing medicines to also controlling the knowledge about the products that they make and the diseases they are designed to treat. One of the tools that they employ in this pursuit is the use of experts or people known as Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs). Although KOLs are paid by pharmaceutical companies and their messages are crafted by these companies, they are presented to doctors and the public as independent experts. Some KOLs are “bought” by the companies they work for, but most are sincere in their beliefs about the products that they are speaking about and deny that their role places them in a conflict-of-interest position. One-third of the marketing budget for pharmaceutical companies is spent on KOLs and this spending is justified by the return that companies get. KOLs are intensively trained by firms contracted to drug companies to present the “correct” message. Pharmaceutical companies need to maintain the fiction that KOLs are independent sources of information. However, when KOLs deviate from the message, they are no longer of any use to the company that they are working for. The content of the talks given by KOLs can be scientifically valid, but deceptive at the same time, through a variety of techniques. The message from pharmaceutical companies overwhelms that coming from any other source and KOLs are part of the way that companies control knowledge.