[Infowarrior] - Merck Makes Phony Peer-Review Journal

[Richard Forno]

(FYI this type of marketing practice -- and others like it -- by big  
pharma is discussed in a 2006 book 'Our Daily Meds' written by IIRC  
the NYT medical reporter.  Very insightful and disturbing reading.)

Merck Makes Phony Peer-Review Journal

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

It is this attitude within companies like Merck and among doctors that  
allows scandals precisely like this to happen. While the scandals with  
Merck and Vioxx are particularly egregious, we know they are not  
isolated incidents. This one is just particularly so. If physicians  
would not lend their names or pens to these efforts, and publishers  
would not offer their presses, these publications could not exist.  
What doctors would have as available data would be peer-reviewed  
research and what pharmaceutical companies produce from their  
marketing departments--actual advertisements.

Summer Johnson, PhD