Slashdot Mirror
Merck Created Phony Peer-Review Medical Journal
Hugh Pickens writes "Don't believe everything you read on the internet is a good rule to follow, but it turns out that you can't even believe a 'peer reviewed scientific journal' as details emerge that drug manufacturer Merck created a phony, but real sounding, peer-review journal titled the 'Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine' to publish data favorable to its products. '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...."' writes Summer Johnson in a post on the website of the American Journal of Bioethics. One Australian rheumatologist named Peter Brooks who served as an 'honorary advisory board' to the journal didn't receive a single paper for peer-review in his entire time on the board, but it didn't bother him because he apparently knew the journal did not receive original submissions of research. All this is probably not too surprising in light of Merck's difficulties with Vioxx, the once $2.5 billion a year drug that was pulled from the market in September 2004, after a study showed it doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke in long-term users resulting in payments by Merck of $4.85 billion to settle personal injury claims from former users, but it bears repeating that 'if physicians would not lend their names or pens to these efforts, and publishers would not offer their presses, these publications could not exist.'"
Careful, son. You know not the power of the evil you're belittling.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Apparently the mods had a good night out.. Every single comment so far has been moded "Funny". And I'm pretty sure most of them weren't. A poster further down suggests that we may be dealing with shills.. But I shudder to think that slashdot is such a high-profile news site for drug companies, that they'd bother. So I'm going with drunk/stoned or otherwise giddy mods getting their rocks off.
Hmm.. "2009 A H1N1 flu" (or whatever it is that they've decided to call it) doesn't mess with your brain like that, right? Heh, not to worry -- if they are infected, I'm sure it won't spread.. Who're they gonna infect from their Mom's basement anyway? (bad taste? too soon? ok, I apologize.. carry on)
Your mom's a furry?
Circumcision is child abuse.
Ok, now where are all the funny funny modding moderators?
I was skeptical about this this periodical since their "Bestiality" issue, which had the title headline: "Give a dog a bone."
Bones? Joints?
Oh, never mind, make up your own jokes.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Has any company ever gotten away with stuff like this in recent times?
Yes, I established an advertisement disguised as a medical journal for my company that hasn't yet been outed as a shill. It's called...
Wait... you clever bastard, you almost had me with that one.
Publishers shouldn't censor, they should just publish.
Damn straight.
And on that subject, don't miss the newest issue of Elsevier's Journal of Holistic Electromagnetic Medicine, where my peer-reviewed article "Correlation Between H1N1 Swine Flu Propagation and Near-Field WiFi Radiation from Linux-Based Routers" just came out. I understand it's already garnering favorable attention in Stockholm.