Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15587
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
Davoudi S, Jack A.
Elsevier admits journal error
The Financial Times.com 2009 May 5
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bab0fcf4-39a2-11de-b82d-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Full text:
Elsevier, the world’s leading scientific publisher, said it had failed to meet its own standards for “accuracy and transparency” in producing a publication sponsored by Merck, the US pharmaceutical group, but presented as an independent academic journal.
The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, complete with an honorary editorial board of academics from Australia and New Zealand, contained a selection of reprinted articles from other journals concerning Merck’s medicines Fosamax and Vioxx, and no disclosure it was funded by the company.
The publication marks a fresh twist in tactics to promote medicines by pharmaceutical companies, which have long provided substantial income to academic journals by paying for large numbers of reprints of articles favourable to their drugs for distribution to doctors.
However, the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, produced in several issues between 2003 and 2005, has no website and is not listed as a journal in standard depositories of academic literature such as the Medline database.
Elsevier, part of Reed Elsevier, which publishes the Lancet, as well as other specialist journals reaching more than 30m scientists, students and health professionals worldwide, said its local management had become aware of a problem after 2005 with a series of publications including this one. The employees responsible had since left the company.
Elsevier said: “Elsevier’s high standards for disclosure were not followed in this instance. Accuracy and transparency are at the core of what we do and the publications in question clearly failed to meet those standards. While the lack of disclaimers is not acceptable, this all took place several years ago and these publications were discontinued.”
Merck described the publication as a “complimentary journal” containing articles about its drugs from peer-reviewed publications, which mentioned its funding for the studies and a “hypothetical cardiovascular risk” associated with Vioxx.
Four issues of the journal were last week described as a “marketing publication” which could easily be mistaken for a peer-reviewed medical journal by George Jelinek, a doctor, during testimony in a trial in Australia brought by a patient – who had suffered a heart attack after taking Vioxx – suing Merck. . The claims were first picked up by The Scientist.
