Very thoughtful and appropriately provocative editorial in the May issue of Nature, "Nothing to see here." Here's how it begins:
"The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) played a considerable part in manufacturing media outrage last month over an article revealing Merck's use of ghostwriters and rubber stamp experts in the preparation of clinical research articles on Vioxx (rofecoxib). Although the JAMA article (299, 1800-1812, 2008) revealed nothing new about the ghostwriting practice and so-called guest authorship, the JAMA editors nevertheless felt moved to introduce a new, stricter set of policies on authorship and conflicts of interest."
Here's the complete editorial from Nature:
Click Here to Download
And here's how the editors of Nature conclude their essay:
"But the editors of JAMA and other journals would do well to focus on content, not process. JAMA's attack casts a cloud over the entire industry. Stigmatizing any paper that comes from the private sector on the basis of an analysis of one company's poor publishing practices over five years ago is not only unjustified, it is discrimination pure and simple."
"The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) played a considerable part in manufacturing media outrage last month over an article revealing Merck's use of ghostwriters and rubber stamp experts in the preparation of clinical research articles on Vioxx (rofecoxib). Although the JAMA article (299, 1800-1812, 2008) revealed nothing new about the ghostwriting practice and so-called guest authorship, the JAMA editors nevertheless felt moved to introduce a new, stricter set of policies on authorship and conflicts of interest."
Here's the complete editorial from Nature:
Click Here to Download
And here's how the editors of Nature conclude their essay:
"But the editors of JAMA and other journals would do well to focus on content, not process. JAMA's attack casts a cloud over the entire industry. Stigmatizing any paper that comes from the private sector on the basis of an analysis of one company's poor publishing practices over five years ago is not only unjustified, it is discrimination pure and simple."
