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The author's implication that the majority of these payments are shady or illegitimate is bizarre. I don't know much about it, but performing research, paying for hospital space, and paying licensing fees to doctors who have invented novel devices all seem like healthy aspects of a medical system working as it should. Perhaps I'm being naive?

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Hey etrautmann! Author here, thanks for reading! I agree with you, most payments do seem to be for legitimate purposes (sorry if it seemed like I implied otherwise). But I believe that some types of payments--e.g. industry paying for research--creates incentives with potential negative effects--e.g. on the quality of research; whether these incentives actually do result in negative effects is another question that others have done research on.

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