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.'"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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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Corporations are people like you and I with a right to free speech. Merck is just presenting the scientific facts that are important to them. The so-called scientific method is just a cultural idea, not the final arbiter of 'Truth.' What is truth? Isn't it 'true' that Vioxx may have helped people? Isn't it 'true' that it didn't kill everyone?
The doctors are just looking out for themselves, and if they didn't do it, someone else would. And people's lives? Really now. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. So some people died.
Who is the government to tell people what they can and can't sell? People die all the time, but markets and corporations are eternal. Who is the government to tell people what they can and can't imbibe? Alcohol kills people, cigarettes kill people?
People die all the time, but markets and corporations are eternal. Doesn't that mean they are better than us? Who are we to tell them what to do? Oh sure, they are made up of people, but we're made up of cells. I know I don't care too much when I get a cut and a few skin and red blood cells sacrifice themselves for my well being.
In the end, a few people died so a corporation could grow. Is that so bad?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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)
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!
I am nearly speechless. This is honestly one of the most revolting acts of subterfuge I've ever seen committed on the American People (well..other than our current issues). Merck creates phoney studies so they can pass potentially unsafe drugs to the masses?
They should be run out of town for this. Sadly I see nothing major happening to them.
AnimePapers.org: Anime Wallpapers Handled With Care
My father, who is a psychiatrist, was looking over a medical journal one day and showed me an article where some researcher---in a study funded by one of the drug companies, I forget which one---had determined that whatever SSRI the company was peddling was effective against bipolar disorder. This had been a six-week trial.
I didn't understand. My father explained to me that yes, SSRIs tend to be effective as short-term treatment for bipolar disorder, but that over the long term, they actually can make bipolar symptoms worse. So the study was cherry-picked: deceptive, because what is good in the short term can be bad in the long term. Many bipolar people get put on antidepressants, which are counterproductive. And doctors often go along with it, because the drug companies have been intentionally misleading them in publications.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
My Mom's house doesn't have a basement, you inconsiderate clod! I live in her den!
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Your mom's a furry?
Circumcision is child abuse.
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 #!
Ok, now where are all the funny funny modding moderators?
People need to be informed of the other kinds of 'jobs' that the companies they do business with perform. It will help them make rational decisions about who they want to do business with. Where they want to get their books published, where they want to get their colon checked, who they want to buy their drugs from, you know, that sort of thing.
Unfortunately, people do not like it to be known that they are in the side business of helping kill random strangers. It tends to put a damper on business. So we have governments and courts. But the word never seems to get out to enough people, and it is just ever so easy to ignore the deaths of random strangers. They are just a statistic connected at one remove to the publisher of a fake journal.
Suppose I am a publisher. Suppose I take a job from the mafia, to print and put up a bunch of fliers offering $10,000 for your nut sack, JordanL? And suppose your nut sack is delivered to the mafia, should I be partially liable for your loss?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Fosomax is a crazy drug, it stops bone turnover and in some cases has lead to patients having to have their jaw bone removed. That's nasty!
"""
Raisor was told her jaw bone was going to end up in a bucket. "They took some out, took some out, kept taking more out," Raisor said.
They tried to save what they could. They used a metal plate for reinforcement.
It didn't work.
"""
http://www.wave3.com/Global/story.asp?S=4911501&nav=0RZF
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!
Just who the fuck can we trust these days? What makes these executives think they can act with impunity? Oh, right, they probably can. Yay, free market!
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/intro.cws_home/ataglance
As the world's leading publisher of science and health information, Elsevier serves more than 30 million scientists, students, and health and information professionals worldwide.
We are proud to play an essential role in the global science and health communities and to contribute to the advancement of these critical fields. By delivering world-class information and innovative tools to researchers, students, educators and practitioners worldwide, we help them increase their productivity and effectiveness.
And from http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/intro.cws_home/mission:
That's why Elsevier partners with leading experts to publish the most authoritative and reliable information so scientists and health professionals can make critical decisions that advance scientific discovery and save lives.
At best, they were duped into lending any credibility they have to a sham. At worst, they knew that the thing was fake and went against their mission statement, yet published anyway because the money was too good to pass up.
Hienie flu? Is that not caused by diet? Just because someone farts a lot does not make them contagious. Mind you, I wouldn't put it past companies like Merck to sell placebo cures for a non-existent problem.
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 Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery might not be very happy about this as well. Especially as their slogan is, "Excellence through peer review". :)
I reserve the write to mangle english.
The summary should mention that Elsevier published this. That's the shocking part... We already knew about Merck's lack of ethics.
I am ashamed to be a researcher.
Scientific journals are built on reliability and reputation, if they are willing to squander it for a few extra bucks, the entire peer-review process is dead, and modern scientific advancement with it.
Are you muddying these waters on purpose?
This is the Merck that everyone is thinking of; ie, the manufacturer of Fosamax, Propecia, Singulair, Vioxx and Zocor.
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.
The publisher may be deeper involved than you think; I have been offered 'special issues' of journals with favorable pieces on one of our products in the past. I never figured out if it was just one desperate sales guy or a real company policy.
Even Elsevier is subject to Sturgeon's second law.
You've missed this story then?
Sadly, the blog that was initially involved in this, and where the 'riddle' was solved, seems to have removed the entire blog post + comments (lawyers?), but the posts can still be found here
Good post. But... "shonky"? Never heard that word.
The CB App. What's your 20?
No, publishers should and do exercise editorial and quality controls over the content that they publish. CNN is a publisher. If I write a news article, should I be able to get it published as news if I pay them enough money?
The CB App. What's your 20?
There are hundreds or thousands of journals with a fairly low standard. Even if they are not industry founded, they make it relatively easy for anyone to publish next to anything. I know of scientific institutions that have their own journals just so that the (lousy) researchers can publish *somewhere* and have a non-zero publication list.
That said, it is also fairly easy to see how good a scientific journal is, especially to someone who reads scientific literature. The system is not perfect, but it is better than nothing, and relies on the number of times that a single article from a journal gets cited. This metrics spawns the "Science Citation Index" (how often did I get cited?) and "Impact Factor" (how often, on the avearage, an article from a given journal gets cited?).
Think Google. This is exactly what the original google algorithm was using: number of times someone found an information useful / reliable as a measure of how relevant / important / interesting this information is. However, IF / SCI is much older than Google or WWW.
Both indices can be misused or manipulated. Furthermore, they differ wildly depending on the area studied (in especially, medical journals have ridicoulously high impact factors) because of the different number of citations per article and article turnover rate. Finally, it can be really hard for a new journal to get a high IF because of preferential attachement -- scientists flock to these journals that already have high impact factors.
Still, they are better than anything else.
j.
It is not particularly outrageous in itself that a drug manufacturer should collect a few papers that report favourable data on its products, bundle them with a few adverts and some marketing materials, and hand them out at conferences and trade shows. This happens all the time and it does little harm because you know who the sponsor is, and of course that you should not expect full objectivity.
The problem is in the disguise: Elsevier, a respectable publisher of scientific journals, apparently has a side business "Excerpta Medica", which states on its website that "Excerpta Medica Helps Pharma Companies Fulfill 2009 Pharma Guidelines with Elsevierâ(TM)s Physician and Patient Educational Content." In other words, Excerpta Medica is a marketing organisation that serves pharmaceutical companies. It seems highly unwise for a large scientific publisher to run a side business of this nature, which screams "conflict of interest" pretty loud.
The moral figleaf is provided by the "2009 Pharma Guidelines", issued by the PhRMA. However, the PhRMA is essentially a lobby organization for the pharmaceutical companies. Being a lobbyist is not necessarily evil, and no doubt self-regulation can be a good thing, but nevertheless this figleaf is a bit too small to cover Elsevier's shame: Essentially Excerpta Medica is vowing to obey the moral standards defined by its own customers!
The selling point, of course, is obvious: Elsevier holds copyrights to a vast amount of scientific publications, both journals and books, so it can churn out impressive compilations on demand. Or, as they put it on their website "we can leverage the resources of the worldâ(TM)s largest medical and scientific publisher."
We can only hope that most of these publications will have been peer-reviewed earlier, but Excerpta's website also makes it clear that "authors take full responsibility for the content of their manuscripts" and the editor of the publication is "an outside expert". In other words, Elsevier lends it good name to promotional materials, but declines responsibility for their content.
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.
No, publishers should and do exercise editorial and quality controls over the content that they publish. CNN is a publisher. If I write a news article, should I be able to get it published as news if I pay them enough money?
Never happen. Fox would sue them for infringement of their business methods.
But you're right - the publisher hires the editor(s), contracts with printers and distributors, etc.
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.
I once had a job offer to be an "online forum participant", you needed to have already established identities in many popular discussion boards and be willing to create more and maintain them with daily participation.
Astroturfing is apparently done now by hiring a company with shills established where you want to have a say, not by specific companies engaging the forums directly.
You can't take the sky from me...
Why is it the publishers job to censor or police what people publish?
A publisher, at least one in the dead tree business, always served as a gatekeeper. Admitting contributions that enhanced the publication's overall presentation to the consuming readership could be printed, while flamebait and trolls were consigned to the trash bucket.
Unfortunately, that practice does not seem to have carried over to the internet.
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
Most if not all socialized medicine care DO NOT use civil servant for health care. They use real doctor and nurse that they pay off fater the care has been done. Such doctor have as much incencitive to do their job good as they do in a private health care concept as the US, but with the added benefit that the centralized healthcare allow for bigger cost reduction on the masses. Whereas private health care, unless in the hand in a very few, will only be a set of balkanized private area.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
Just as there is the Proprietary vs OS struggle in Software Engg., there is now a parallel in the field of scientific publishing.
Open Access Journals [http://www.doaj.org/] are all about free scientific information instead of billions charged by these greedy ba$tard$.
An article costs approx 10$ at publishers like elsevier/merck, which can, like, feed a whole family in my country for a full week!
And the most outrageous part is that sometimes that article would be the result from research funded by my taxmoney and my government while elsevier just earns off it for (virtually) nothing!
Die M$, Die Elsevier, Die Die
Jai Ho Open Source!
Well, ask any librarian who has to deal with Elsevier Science about their opinion. Elsevier is the Microsoft of the scientific press. Elsevier charges subscribers as much as they can afford, completely unrelated to the costs related to producing the journal. Typically, they will start a new journal, get some reputable professors to participate in the editorial board. If the journal has enough papers that are being cited, Elsevier increases the subscription price, knowing that a university that does research in the particular niche that the journal covers must have a subscription regardless of the price.
A while ago, I did a price comparison of a couple of journals. The (non-profit) American Physical Society publishes the reputable Physical Review journals (A-E and Letters). An institutional subscription (up to 500 people or so) costs about €0,10 per page IIRC. (There are quite a few pages per year, though) Science and Nature, published by for-profit companies, charge significantly more, I think around €0,60 per page. One of the more reputable Elsevier journals, Chemical Physics Letters, costs €2 per page! That means that a journal that has 5000 pages per year sets you back by 10 k per year. And those prices for Elsevier tend to increase every year.
It doesn't surprise me in the least that Elsevier would do something unethical that makes them money. If you're a scientist and considering to publish papers, avoid citing papers published in Elsevier journals and don't publish there yourself.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
They're already slipping. I try to avoid Elsevier when I publish my articles. Look at this journal, for instance :
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/623042/description#description
There is not a single reference to this "journal" in the entire citeseer database. The query
on Google returns no reference to such a "journal" from before this scandal broke.
This sounds like a fabrication of the quacks! Does anyone have any real evidence that such a fake journal ever existed?
Wild salmon have pink or orange meat because they eat krill and such that have red pigment that gets deposited in their flesh. Farmed salmon or fresh water salmon have white flesh naturally because they don't get krill in their diet. Salmon farmers now feed them red dyes to change their meat to the color that consumers expect.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Oh geez. Yes, our understanding of nutrition and hygiene have added significantly to our lifespan. But overestimating the value of medicine? No, "most sicknesses" are not caused by what we eat. A very few of the classic illnesses - scurvy, for example - were caused by nutrient deficiencies. Most of the rest are caused by infectious migroorganisms or viruses, autoimmune reactions, injury/trauma, genetic abnormality, or aging. Come on, man: the last 150 years have seen the development of:
Vaccinations - clearly "medicine", they are responsible for saving more lives than anything else in history. Because of them we basically no longer suffer from Diptheria, Measles, Mumps, Pertussis, Polio, Smallpox, and Tetanus. Are you aware of how many people these diseases, in combination, used to kill?
Antibiotics - Antibiotics have changed hundreds of bacterial diseases from universal death sentences to something generally handled by a single quick trip to the doctor. Among them are a few you might have heard of: Syphilis, Leprosy, Cholera, and the Black Plague. Antibiotics also have reduced the danger of infection from surgery by, oh, 95% or so, making surgery a much more realistic proposition.
Radiation therapy and chemotherapy - when combined with improved surgery, they have changed cancer from a death sentence to something we can cure over 50% of the time (across all forms of cancer ... there are some we can cure 95% now).
Diagnostic Imaging - starting with X-rays, and progressing to MRIs and CAT scans, the ability to see inside the body without opening it allows doctors to discover what's going on inside - making the planning of proper intervention (surgical or otherwise) possible, and even more importantly making it more possible to avoid unnecessary or unhelpful intervention.
Diagnostic Biochemistry - It's pretty cool that now we can actually tell the difference between a virus and a bacterium, for example, and that we can diagnose diabetes, high LDL cholesterol, and a thousand other conditions through simple blood tests.
Nutrition is a great thing. But the rest of medicine has made some pretty damn big contradictions that you are too quick to discount.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Okay, that's just plain treasonous.
If a company authorized by The People to do business for our benefit goes out and instead defrauds The People, then We have every right and reason to revoke their charter and relegate them to oblivion. And we should!
Yeah, it would mean the loss of some jobs and revenue for the various entities in their web, but it will do more good in the long run. First, the talented people working for this shoddy operation would be freed up to pursue their own eithical enterprises, and second, it would set the proper example and scare the shit out of other companies that might be contemplating or engaged in similar kinds of folly.
Honestly, this is an issue where a company didn't care that it might kill us all so long as they profited, and as far as I'm concerned that's no less than treason.
End them. End them now.
-- thinkyhead software and media
This sort of thing is hardly new. My wife (medical school grad, ER physician) has a whole TEXTBOOK written by GlaxoSmithKline. She wrote a scathing review of that particular segment because of it, but you better believe that if it makes business sense to do this sort of thing it's going to be done.
Astroturfing is apparently done now by hiring a company with shills established where you want to have a say, not by specific companies engaging the forums directly.
No it isn't. Also, be sure to drink your Ovaltine (TM).
There,fixed it for you.
Bees.
Anaphylatic shock.
Why? Especially in Australia, known for some of the most deadly animals in the world!
There are so many bees.
Now, how many asprin are sold?
We've known about the perils of phosphorous exposure, leading to phossy jaw, or basically the rotting-out of the jawbone, since well before the strikes of the late 1800's in England's match factories. More historical data here.
The idea that Merck is in any way 'surprised' by this turn of events, when their drug is essentially the same substance at work in the body more than a century ago, is well beyond the outer limits of credibility. Never mind the sharp increase in cases of osteonecrosis of the jaw just in the last few years, since the introduction of bisphosphonate drugs -- by Merck.
Corporations generally incentivize behaviours that are sociopathic on an interpersonal scale but deemed favorable by investors -- in a nutshell, maximize profits by any means available. This ethical vacuum is one of the real flaws of capitalism in its current implementation. Merck's actions are therefore not in the least surprising, and stand as a pointed reminder that corporate excesses must be held in check by some other external mechanism that is not subject to conflicts of interest. This is generally identified as government regulation, though we have seen time and again how government interests can be made to align with those of the corporations and in opposition to those of the public that the government is ostensibly supposed to serve and protect.
Food for thought. Ain't nothing new under the sun, as it's all recurring patterns of human behaviour. The devil is in the details.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."