Merck and Elsevier Create Fake Medical Journal

[bananas]

Furious Seasons:

Merck Creates Fake Academic Medical Journal

There is very little about Big Pharma's manipulative, lies-as-marketing behavior that shocks me anymore, but this time out I am astounded: Merck has gone and created a fake academic journal, Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, according to The Scientist. Merck products such as Fosamax were featured in "studies" in the journal, which is reportedly published by Elsevier, a well-known academic journal publishing house. Both it and Merck have got a lot of explaining to do.

From the bioethics.net blog:

"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!"

The attitude of pharma companies that they can get away with whatever the hell they want whenever they want and that they can deeply manipulate doctors and patients through various smoke-and-mirror techniques has simply got to stop. It's dangerous.

I hope someone in Congress asks Merck some tough questions.

Drug Injury Watch has more details on how this all came to light.

Popular Science:

Merck and Elsevier Create "Peer-Reviewed" Advertorial

It seems as though pharmaceutical giant Merck (best known for the deadly painkiller Vioxx), has teamed up with science publishing titan Elsevier (who, not long ago, got caught producing a rather questionable math journal) to put out a fake peer-reviewed medical journal.

The journal in question, named Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, does not have a web site or a listing on the medical journal database Medline. According to The Scientist, Merck paid Elsevier to create the journal so Merck could publish favorable data, and then quote that data as appearing in a peer-reviewed journal when trying to persuade doctors to use Merck products.

The fake was first reported by The Scientist, and later disseminated by the blog of the American Journal of Bioethics, Boing Boing and Slashdot.

This is essentially the Big Pharma equivalent of Dick Cheney leaking a story about WMDs to Judith Miller so he can later quote his own leak to support his assertions.

n-Category Cafe':

The Foibles of Science Publishing

The latest news about Elsevier journals and Scientific American.

Fans of Chaos, Solitons and Fractals will be pleased to hear that Elsevier also publishes a phony medical journal: the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine! It’s run by the pharmaceutical company Merck, the secret goal being to advertise Merck products:

Bob Grant, Merck published fake journal, The Scientist newsblog.

In a mealy-mouthed statement, Elsevier says that it “does not today” consider this publication “a journal” — despite its title.

You can see PDF files of the first two issues here, together with an analysis of them:

Mitch André Garcia, Merck faked a research journal (.PDFs available).

Note the “honorary editorial board”.

Meanwhile, Scientific American may have taken a turn for the worse. Ad pages are down 18 percent this year. Now the editor in chief and president are gone, and staff have been cut 5 percent:

<snip>

I haven't been following any of this.
Lots of links in the above articles.

[MineralMan]

1. Wow! Just like the creationists...

[semillama]

2. That's not the only questionable journal Elsevier publishes

While the company does publish some really top-notch journals, they are also responsible for putting out dreck like Medical Hypotheses, Homeopathy and Explore.

Orac has a great dissection of this issue on his blog:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/05/when_big_pharma_pays_a_publisher_to_publ.php#more

[Nihil]

3. K & R #5 for visibility (n/t)

:wow:

[TZ]

4. They are just following the trend

of the homeopathic crowd who have been publishing "fake" peer reviewed journals for years that have "studies" which show this fad sugar pill cures disease A,B,C..all they have to do is say "this statement has not been evaluated by the FDA" and you can publish anything.
How nice that the Pharmaceuticals are now following the HIGHLY successful supplement industry. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery..:sarcasm:

[Wednesdays]

5. K&R

:kick:

[mzmolly]

6. K and R. Even so called reputable journals are

questionable unfortunately.