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The UCSF Industry Documents Library is pleased to highlight the work of 2024 Summer Fellow Gordon Lichtstein. Gordon is an incoming MIT student with an interest in the intersection of computer science and linguistics in NLP and the application of NLP for the betterment of humanity such as in environmental sustainability or the digital humanities.
Over the course of the 8-week internship, Gordon crafted and completed four distinct projects that leverage natural language processing and data science within the context of our JUUL Labs Collection and the broader IDL. Project One investigates the optical character recognition (OCR) accuracy of low-quality and handwritten documents in the absence of ground truth data. Project Two explores the implementation of embedding search algorithms and visualizations aimed at enhancing the relevance of document recommendations for users. Project Three employs txt-ferret to conduct a thorough scan of a substantial corpus of industry documents to identify sensitive information, including credit card numbers. Finally, Project Four assesses the biases present in large language model (LLM) summarization through the lens of sentiment analysis.
Read Gordon's entire report and reflection via eScholarship.
The IDL staff is deeply appreciative of Gordon's thoughtful and comprehensive contributions, as well as his engagement in team meetings and Amazon Web Services workshops. His projects and use of NLP techniques with our document corpus have greatly enriched our understanding.
We are pleased to announce the addition of the Talc Litigation Collection, a new Chemical Industry Documents Archive collection.
This initial set of 3,500 documents was obtained through investigations and lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson, which alleged that the company knew its talc products contained asbestos, a known toxin linked to ovarian cancer and mesothelioma.
Please check out the UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment's blog post announcing this new collection. We are thankful for PRHE's continued support of the IDL and the crucial work they do disseminating research on industry strategies that harm public health.
Alfred-John (A.J.) Roderos, Anthony Wong, James Chhen, Clever Chiu, Dorie E. Apollonio. Retail Chain Pharmacy Opioid Dispensing Practices from 1997 to 2020: A Content Analysis of Internal Industry Documents. Drug and Alcohol Dependence Reports, 2023.
Opioid Industry Documents
The UCSF-JHU Opioid Industry Documents Archive (OIDA) added more than 11,500 documents to the Insys Litigation Documents collection. This set contains emails, reports and documents from 2013 & 2014 discussing the many aspects of Insys's business activities, ranging from sales to speakers bureau training.
The Insys collection ultimately will contain several million documents that are currently being processed chronologically. Processed documents are being made public on a rolling basis with monthly releases expected in 2023–2024.
New Collection - West Virginia DEA Investigation Collection
The 418 records in this new collection were obtained as a result of the West Virginia Attorney General’s Office multi-year investigation into the US Drug Enforcement Agency’s process of setting aggregate production quotas (APQs) for controlled substances.
The West Virginia Attorney General alleged that the DEA’s quota setting process was flawed and resulted in an overproduction of opioids which contributed to the drug crisis in West Virginia and elsewhere. The AGO submitted multiple FOIA requests to the DEA and received several batches of responsive documents.
35 additional transcripts of video declarations have been added to the SF Walgreen Litigation Collection.
Bibliography updates:
Five new papers and publications were added to the IDL Bibliography this month including:
Gaber, Nadia; Bero, Lisa; Woodruff, Tracey J. The Devil they Knew: Chemical Documents Analysis of Industry Influence on PFAS Science. Annals of Global Health 2023 June 01.
Robert Fife, Steven Chase & Bill Curry. McKinsey pitched Purdue Pharma Canada on plan to boost opioid sales in 2014, memo reveals. The Globe and Mail, 2023 June 19.
Opioid Industry Documents Archive
We added 127,511 documents to the UCSF-JHU Opioid Industry Documents Archive's Insys Litigation Documents collection. These documents, which arise from Insys’s early years bringing the fentanyl spray Subsys to market (2012–2013), shed new light on the genesis of the company’s speaker program and reimbursement center (See the Insys At a Glance page for more information), both of which have featured prominently in litigation against Insys.
This release is the fourth batch of Insys documents to be added to OIDA; the Insys collection ultimately will contain several million documents that are currently being processed chronologically. Processed documents will be made public on a rolling basis with monthly releases expected in 2023–2024. Information arising from a December 2022 release (UCSF News, Johns Hopkins University News) served as the basis for reporting from USA Today.
Opioid Industry Documents Archive National Advisory Committee Update
We are pleased to welcome four new members to our National Advisory Committee, a group that supports the Archive through expert recommendations on the project’s development and sustainability pertaining to use, transparency, accessibility, impact, and other measures: Sandy Alexander (former Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General), Michelle Muffett-Lipinski (recovery advocate and Founding Principal, Northshore Recovery High School), Melina Sherman (communications scholar, Knology), and Anthony Ryan Hatch (Professor of the Science in Society Program, Wesleyan University). Many thanks to our outgoing NAC member Beth Macy (author of Raising Lazarus and Dopesick) for her remarkable service.
3,600+ New USRTK Food Industry Documents Added
The 3,634 new documents posted today were donated by USRTK and acquired in their ongoing investigations into the influence of large food and beverage companies on academic partnerships and government regulatory processes around sugary beverages and obesity, among other topics.
Postdoctoral Fellowship in Opioid Industry Documents Research and Community Data Engagement -
The UCSF OIDA Postdoctoral Fellow will pursue original, publishable research using materials housed in OIDA and work closely with the archive research team to enhance the accessibility and usability of archival materials for a diverse array of communities, with a particular focus on racial and health equity. Fellows will work on a multidisciplinary team including faculty, other postdoctoral fellows and research assistants and will be mentored by and work closely with researchers and information specialists at UCSF. Fellows will be based at the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education (https://tobacco.ucsf.edu/) and participate fully in the fellowship program. Fellows will also be affiliated with the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the UCSF School of Medicine (https://humsci.ucsf.edu/).
Postdoctoral Fellowship in Tobacco Control Research -
The CTCRE Postdoctoral Fellowship offers diverse educational and research opportunities, including a grant writing seminar, graduate research positions, advocacy training, and individualized documents training. Work spans policy and historical research, economics, and science. Fellows are recruited from a variety of fields including the basic sciences, social sciences, public health practitioners, clinical fields, political science, history, economics, law, and marketing.
Fellowship stipends range from $55,500 - $66,600, depending on years of postdoctoral experience.
More about the fellowships and application submission
The Digital Health Humanities Pilot (DHHP) will facilitate new insights into historical health data. Participants from all disciplines (including faculty, staff, and other learners) will learn how to evaluate and integrate digital methods and “archives as data” into their research through a range of offerings and trainings utilizing datasets from holdings within the UCSF Archives and Special Collections (including the AIDS History Project and Industry Documents Library, among others.)
Check out the workshops and sign up!
UC Love Data Week (February 13-17)
Want more information on working with data?
The UC-wide Love Data Week offers free sessions on topics such as data access, management, security, sharing, and preservation.
As 2022 comes to a close, we’d like to say a big THANK YOU to all of you for your continuing support and connection to the Industry Documents Library.
We’re grateful for your interest in industry documents and for your participation in the IDL community, whether that’s through documents research, workshops and trainings, project partnerships, or strategic planning and guidance.
This year we celebrated 20 years (!!!) of making industry documents available online and we appreciate all the ways you’ve worked with us to make the IDL stronger.
Here are some of the achievements you helped us reach in 2022:
17,508,831 documents now available through IDL!
We added 2.3 million new documents to the collections in 2022 -
If you’re able, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the Industry Documents Library to help us preserve and provide access to the collections for years to come.
From all of us at the IDL, we wish you a safe and festive holiday season, and a healthy and hopeful New Year ahead.
Kate, Rachel, Rebecca, Sven, Melissa and Erik