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.'"
Oh no. They will get a fine far less than the money they made doing it, which is corp-speak for "please keep doing it." None of the executives will get any time. None of the doctors involved will get a reprimand, heck, this is just an advertisement that they play ball. On to the next corporate gig.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Has any company ever gotten away with stuff like this in recent times? Doesn't the availability of everything on the Internet ensure that someone somewhere, doing just a little research, will call 'bullshit' when a certain journal/reviewer goes overboard in praising just one company?
I've seen a lot of seedy stuff in my time, but this might just take the cake with respect to all-time industry lows. To hell with the music industry; this is beyond reprehensible. They're playing with peoples' lives. Somebody please tell me someone's going to jail for this.
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the article forgot ...and publishers would not offer their presses, AND MANUFACTURERS DID NOT OFFER THEIR MONEY TO SAID PHYSICIANS AND PUBLISHERS these publications could not exist
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
So the study was cherry-picked: deceptive, because what is good in the short term can be bad in the long term.
This is why drugs oughtn't be marketed to patients. If an ad says a drug has fared well in a study, Joe Regular will assume it's automatically a good thing. He doesn't know a good study from a bad one, or whether a medical journal is reputable - or even exists. A physician has a far greater probability of distinguishing bullshit from actual facts than a layperson, though it doesn't of course always hold true.
Who's to say only the "American people" got fucked over? It's usually the rest of us.
When some greedy corporation in the US gets the urge to over-reach common sense in the name of profit, people die. Hello Halliburton, Blackwater - sorry, "Xe" - Merck, Chevron, Shell, Union Carbide, Monsanto - This is going on all around you, every day. It's just the kind of business y'all have been trained to tolerate, encourage and sponsor. And let's be frank, the absurd US military budget is largely what it is so that they can keep doing it with impunity. Nice little system.
If a corporation is legally a person, then let them be shut down and incarcerated like the murderers and thieves they are.
you had me at #!
Why is it the publishers job to censor or police what people publish?
Elsevier is a major scientific publisher; articles appearing in their journals are generally considered respectable. The fact that they were willing to publish a "journal" like this one will do a lot of damage to that reputation. Researchers will be less likely to submit high-quality articles to other Elsevier journals, and university libraries will look more closely at the subscription package deals which is where the journal publishers make most of their money.
That's why.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Suppose I am a publisher. Suppose I take a job from the mafia...
If I were a publisher by the name of Elsevier, I would be very, very careful what journals I accept to publish. Elsevier is a very high profile outfit, publishing most of the reputable journals in my discipline (biotech) and many others. Backing up a shonky outfit like this was ill-considered, and whoever's idea it was deserves to be fired.
the pharmas are just shopping in probably the purest free-market, the buying and selling of congressmen
Actually, thats a highly regulated market, too. They have to jump through a lot of hoops to buy a congressman without the congressman, the lobbyist and the buyer all landing in jail. Again, it's something that larger companies can afford to do far more easily than smaller ones.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The more any industry is regulated, the more it will concentrate into fewer and larger organizations. Big companies can cope with the regulation, but the compliance costs drive smaller competitors out, or push them to be acquired by larger organizations.
That's an interesting observation, but I think it's actually the other way around. The more wealth concentrates, the more the elite will lean on the government to issue laws that secure their wealth, and tilt the odds in favor of their acquiring more. There is no non-disruptive way to hold this in check once this happens. You cannot legislate against money's corruption. People can be bought - period. This makes systems of political checks and balances incompletely, because wealth is power, power corrupts, and economic power is most other forms of power spring from.
This is why I am absolutely in favor of redistribution of wealth. I approve of Norway's lack of a sharp division between rich and poor.
That would be like suing HP for selling the Laserjets that were used to print it.
Nope - the publisher actually gets to see the content before publishing it. What if they put out a magazine full of kiddie porn? Could they claim "we only publish it?" Didn't think so.
You're confusing the publisher with the printer. The publisher is responsible for hiring the editors (you know, the people who are supposed to be reviewing what's published - unless it's slashdot), etc., and will contract with a printing company for the actual print run.