Conflicted Medical Journals and the Failure of Trust

Journals are failing in their obligation to ensure that research is fairly represented to their readers, and must act decisively to retract fraudulent publications. Recent case reports have exposed how marketing objectives usurped scientific testing and compromised the credibility of academic medici...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Accountability in research 2011-01, Vol.18 (1), p.45-54
Main Authors: Jureidini, Jon N., McHenry, Leemon B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bioethics
clinical trials
Clinical Trials as Topic - ethics
Conflict of Interest
Conflicts of interest
consumer fraud lawsuits
Drug Industry - ethics
Failure
ghostwriting
GlaxoSmithKline
Humans
Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Journalism, Medical
medical journals
Medicine
paroxetine (Paxil, Seroxat)
Publishing - ethics
retraction
scientific misconduct
Scientific Misconduct - ethics
Scientific Therapeutics Information
SmithKline Beecham
Trust
Truth Disclosure - ethics
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Summary:Journals are failing in their obligation to ensure that research is fairly represented to their readers, and must act decisively to retract fraudulent publications. Recent case reports have exposed how marketing objectives usurped scientific testing and compromised the credibility of academic medicine. But scant attention has been given to the role that journals play in this process, especially when evidence of research fraud fails to elicit corrective measures. Our experience with The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP) illustrates the nature of the problem. The now-infamous Study 329 of paroxetine in adolescent depression was negative for efficacy on all eight protocol-specified outcomes and positive for harm, but JAACAP published a report of this study that concluded that "paroxetine is generally well tolerated and effective for major depression in adolescents." The journal's editors not only failed to exercise critical judgment in accepting the article, but when shown evidence that the article misrepresented the science, refused either to convey this information to the medical community or to retract the article.
ISSN:0898-9621
1545-5815
DOI:10.1080/08989621.2011.542683