Free for me, but not for thee

I just found a cool new blog: sabermetric research. For those of you who don't know, sabermetrics involves (roughly) the rigorous statistical/econometric analysis of sports (especially baseball) performance issues. The name comes from SABR, The Society for American Baseball Research.

Anyway, the first thing I saw on SR was a post having absolutely nothing to do with sports. Nope, SR guy was complaining about CR (that is, Consumer Reports). He pointed out 3 potentially egregious errors in the most recent issue, but the one that caught my eye was their opinion of "free samples" provided to doctors by drug companies. After a doctor wrote to them praising this practice as it allows his patients to try out a new drug without a financial commitment, while admittedly allowing the drug company to make a potential future sale, CR responded rather snarkily:

Free samples are not free. They are part of the drug company’s advertising budget and contribute to the high cost of drugs. The free sample is a tool to tune the patient in to brand-name recognition, so that when it runs out they will stick with the same brand, despite the expense. There might be less-expensive drugs that are just as effective.

Now I know it's popular to bash the drug companies, and I certainly don't think they are saints, but this kind of knee jerk reaction bugs me. Mr. SR did a nice job of spelling out the faulty economic thinking behind this sentiment, but what I loved, almost as much as pizza, was when he applied the same reasoning to CR itself:

Strangely enough, CR’s argument doesn’t seem to apply to their own products. In this very same issue, on page 38, they offer me a "risk-free sample issue" of "CR on Health." If I like it, I have to pay for more.

What makes CR’s offer so much more reasonable than a drug company’s? Isn't it true that free issues are not free? Once CR stops with the expense of giving away free issues, won't the price of a subscription drop? And how come they're not worried that "when my free sample issue runs out I will stick with the same magazine?" After all, there are many less-expensive alternatives than $39 a year.

Hear, hear. I really cannot believe CR would be blind enough to criticize free drug samples while engaging in exactly the same behavior with regards to its own products, but I guess we all tend to miss the motes in our own eyes. Wasn't there something in the Bible about that?