In November 2013, shortly after the release of controversial new cholesterol guidelines that expanded the target population for preventive statin therapy, I ran into a man known for his work on eliminating unnecessary medical care. “Can you believe the guidelines?â€? he asked. Then he added, shaking his head, “The authors are all in bed with the pharmaceutical industry. It’s a marketing scheme to get more people on statins.â€?He was not alone in that perception. In a New York Times op-ed, for example, a cardiologist and another physician and industry critic argued that making more patients eligible for statin therapy would “benefit the pharmaceutical industry more than anyone else.â€?1 Objecting to using statins for primary prevention, they drew from a medical journal article that one of them had coauthored emphasizing the frequency of side effects.2 This frequency turned out to be exaggerated, necessitating an erratum in the journal.2 Yet no one was questioning the editorialists’ credibility in the public press; rather, the editorialists challenged the credibility of the guideline writers: “The American people deserve to have important medical guidelines developed by doctors and scientists on whom they can confidently rely to make judgments free from influence, conscious or unconscious, by the industries that stand to gain or lose.â€?One could argue that people also deserve to know that statins are, in many cases, the best drugs we have to prevent cardiovascular disease and that the committee had spent 5 years reviewing the evidence to identify the patients who would benefit most. True, 7 of the 15 committee members had current or previous ties to industry, mostly in the form of research support or consulting fees.3 Nevertheless, it does not seem reasonable to conclude that their recommendations were motivated by a desire for financial gain.