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Research by Ron Epstein, MD (’87) and colleagues on the power of drug advertising (which was published in JAMA) was recently covered by the Washington Post.
"Actors pretending to be patients with symptoms of stress and fatigue were five times as likely to walk out of doctors' offices with a prescription when they mentioned seeing an ad for the heavily promoted antidepressant Paxil, according to an unusual study being published today." (This is an excerpt from the link to the Washington Post article listed below.)
Leading the Rochester part of the study was Ronald M. Epstein, MD, director of the Center to Improve Communication in Health Care and associate dean for educational evaluation and research at the University of Rochester.
"The first thing we found was that advertising works: It sells drugs," Epstein tells WebMD. "And second, we found that doctors are human. They want to satisfy patients while trying to do the right thing. Third, patients have a very powerful influence on what doctors do. This is for better and for worse."
Refer to these websites for the full coverage: