Merck Makes Phony Peer-Review Journal

[kpete]

Source: BioEthics

Merck Makes Phony Peer-Review Journal

books old white background.jpgIt's a safe guess that somewhere at Merck today someone is going through the meeting minutes of the day that the hair-brained scheme for the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine was launched, and that everyone who was in the room is now going to be fired.

The Scientist has reported that, yes, it's true, Merck cooked up a phony, but real sounding, peer reviewed journal and published favorably looking data for its products in them. Merck paid Elsevier to publish such a tome, which neither appears in MEDLINE or has a website, according to The Scientist.

What's wrong with this is so obvious it doesn't have to be argued for. What's sad is that I'm sure many a primary care physician was given literature from Merck that said, "As published in Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, Fosamax outperforms all other medications...." Said doctor, or even the average researcher wouldn't know that the journal is bogus. In fact, knowing that the journal is published by Elsevier gives it credibility!

These kinds of endeavors are not possible without help. One of The Scientist's most notable finds is a Australian rheumatologist named Peter Brooks who served on the "honorary advisory board" of this "journal". His take: "I don't think it's fair to say it was totally a marketing journal", apparently on the grounds that it had excerpts from peer-reviewed papers. However, in his entire time on the board he never received a single paper for peer-review, but because he apparently knew the journal did not receive original submissions of research. This didn't seem to bother him one bit. Such "throwaways" of non-peer reviewed publications and semi-marketing materials are commonplace in medicine. But wouldn't that seem odd for an academic journal? Apparently not. Moreover, Peter Brooks had a pretty lax sense of academic ethics any way: he admitted to having his name put on a "advertorial" for pharma within the last ten years, says The Scientist. An "advertorial"? Again, language unfamiliar to us in the academic publishing world, but apparently quite familiar to the pharmaceutical publishing scene.

Read more: http://blog.bioethics.net/2009/05/merck-makes-phony-peerreview-journal/

[Muttocracy]

1. Elsevier is a HUGE academic journal house

Universities pay them major bucks to get journal subscriptions (print and/or online access).

Someone at Elsevier needs to go too!

[nichomachus]

6. It's also big into trade mags

in which advertisers pay to get favorable stuff printed about them.

I worked at one years ago -- for $7,500, you got a photo on the cover.

[Recursion]

9. This is very disturbing

Our lab is going to have to review all of our Elsevier subscriptions now.

[Olney Blue]

2. disturbing

[drm604]

3. Very disturbing

but, unfortunately, not surprising.

[kristopher]

4. You just have to ask

How many more are out there.

A full review and accounting by Elsevier is due the public.

[Aethertek]

5. Fraud?

Being fairly ignorant of the law, would this not be considered a fraud.
A profit was made so why would this not constitute a commission of a crime?

K~

[truedelphi]

7. This practice in not all that far fetched. New England Journal

OF Medicine announced in Summer of 2002 that it would " 'no longer concern itself with the possible conflict of interest when an industry's money pays for scientific research.' Apparently, there is simply so much meddling between industrial concerns that have the bucks and laboratories doing the research, be the labs university-owned, or private, that the Journal will now simply overlook whatever conflict of interest there might be and go ahead, full-throttle, to publish the results. The fact that industry critics point to industry demanding "adjustments" in the data, omitting data results that are not favorable, and in other ways tampering with the findings, no longer seems to concern NEJM.

Up to now, the Journal tried to avoid publishing research that might be tainted. Now they stipulate that the influence can not be significant (Ah, they still possess some scruples!) but insist that if they do not take this major step forward, then they must avoid publishing so much of what is passing for scientific proofs that the poor reader will be left in the Dark Ages.

Oh, really! This entire proceeding smacks of the little known Sterritt Theory of Normalcy. To wit: "If a wrongful event occurs so often that its existence pervades the daily life of a society, than that wrongful event is deemed "normal" and is therefore allowed." Further corollaries of this rule detail how if the wrongful event is indeed pervasive enough, those defending the wrongful event can ignore common sense, critical thinking, and scientific research, to continue to defend their pet "normal" situation."

Full article at
www.coastalpost.com/02/07/05.htm

[tom_paine]

8. Absolutely this is a cmmonality for most, if not all, human societies.

Look at what is now "normal" in journalism, and the Bandwagon Effect that propogates it.

In the last 9 years, we have seen "journalists" casually defending inasane behavior and poor unethical journalism. But they defend it proudly because now it's NORMAL to do so.

On particularly upside-down comment was from a Chicago Trib editor about 7 years ago, proudly stating that editing Bushler's comments into legibility, without parenthesis, sic, or other commentary, was his journalistic duty.

He was so proud to inform us of it.

Yes, you have described a very real phenomena Bushevism takes advantage of in their Bushiganda campaign.

[No Elephants]

10. It's one thing when someone's greed reduces the value of your portfolio. It's another

when it steals your health. Then again, money problems can lead to illness, too, I guess.

Aw, geez, I don't even know anymore. People are just so corrupt and left so unchecked. DMA (Deregulation my ass.)

[DemBones DemBones]

11. When I told my primary care physician that I'd quit taking

Fosamax, he said "I wouldn't take that stuff." (He wasn't the one who prescribed it for me.) Merck has a bad track record.