For those readers of MassTortDefense thinking about a new book to read on the beach this weekend, a recent contribution to the Wall Street Journal by Mark Herrmann entitled “The Plaintiff Was Unhappy” reviews, critiques, and balances the recent release Side Effects by Alison Bass. The book is an attack on the FDA and the drug industry in the context of antidepressant medications.

Herrmann shows how one-sided the book/attack is, concluding that Side Effects “belongs to a genre of investigative journalism that involves talking to plaintiffs, their lawyers and their expert witnesses, taking their stories as gospel, and denigrating the opposing view because corporate money (apparently less pure than money from the plaintiffs’ side) supposedly has a corrupting effect” on science.

Herrmann (along with Jim Beck) is an author of the popular Drug and Device Law blog.