In 2007, Purdue and three of the company's senior executives pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges that they had misled regulators, physicians and patients about the addiction risk associated with taking OxyContin. The 1980 study was also misrepresented in both academic and non-academic publications: it was described as an "extensive study" by "Scientific American", whilst "Time" said that it was a "landmark study" showing that "exaggerated fear that patients would become addicted" to opiates was "basically unwarranted", and an article in the journal "Seminars in Oncology" claimed that the Porter and Jick study examined cancer patients when the letter made no mention of what illnesses the patients were suffering from. The authors of the 2017 NEJM letter suggested that the inappropriate citations of the 1980 study played a role in the North American opioid epidemic by under-representing the risk of addiction: the page for the Porter and Jick letter on the Journal's website now includes a note informing the reader that it "has been 'heavily and uncritically cited' as evidence that addiction is rare with opioid therapy". In a study conducted by the Vera Institute of Justice, Weiner and Hala (2008) reported some of the research-related difficulties associated with measuring human trafficking. They describe and map the unfolding of the Woozle effect in connection with prevalence estimates of human trafficking. Searching the relevant literature between 1990 and 2006, Weiner and Hala found 114 prevalence estimates in 45 publications. Only one of the publications cited original research, and several prevalence estimates appeared unsourced. The authors concluded that the sources they reviewed lacked citations, adequate operational definition, and discussion of methodology. Stransky and Finkelhor (2008/2012) criticize the general methodology involved in human trafficking research. They cite the Woozle effect and post a prominent warning on the first page of their report cautioning against citing any specific estimates they present, as the close inspection of the figures "...reveals that none are based on a strong scientific foundation." Gambrill and Reiman (2011) analyze scientific papers and mass-market communications about social anxiety and conclude that many of them engage in disease mongering by presenting the disease model of social anxiety as an incontrovertible fact by resorting to unchallenged repetition techniques and by leaving out of the discourse any competing theories. Gambrill and Reiman further note that even after educating their subjects about the tell-tale signs of such techniques, many of them still failed to pick up the signs in a practical test.