Thursday, August 24, 2006

Procter research shenanigans 6: Who stands behind the word?

As of April 2006 the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research has placed an undated "Statement of Concern" on its home page (Not on Pubmed though).

The statement relates to one of the three intended Procter and Gamble publications about change in bone turnover and fractures in patients taking Actonel (Eastell et al. 2003 JBMR 18:1051-6). The other two publications based on overlapping data have only been published in abstract form. The intended first author declined to sign journal declarations while being refused access to underlying raw data.

Medical journals face a crisis of credibility (1-15). Collated correspondence with the JBMR over 2 years provides some insight into the real concerns underlying their "Statement of Concern".

And from (11) a quotation that provides an excellent summary of the crisis facing medicine.


  1. 23 August 2006: Why Today's JAMA Editorial Doesn't Go Far Enough
  2. PLoS takes a stand
  3. NEJM and Vioxx
  4. Manipulating a Journal Article: NYT
  5. Audio interview with NEJM Editor Drazen -(the call from Hrachovec begins at 44:30)
  6. For Science's Gatekeepers, a Credibility Gap
  7. Just how much 'new research' can we trust?
  8. Incident raises questions of editors' and publishers' corporate connections
  9. Why you can't trust medical journals anymore
  10. Commercial influence and the content of medical journals
  11. Presentation by Gavin Yamey
  12. A Story Involving JAMA, Harvard Medical School, Baxter International, Cytyc
  13. More on lessons from Neuropsychopharmacology
  14. Won't Get Fooled Again, Again, Again
  15. About the paper in Am J Psychiatry 163:34A (2006)

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In defence of the Editor of JBMR, editors are wedged between a rock and a hard place.

Editors have no investigatory powers and usually have to rely on some other party to investigate however impossible or unsatisfactory that might be. In the recent BMJ articles about the Singh papers the journal itself took on investigations so it is possible, and I believe that editors should take a much more proactive role. Where the problem is directly editorial the editor should always take charge (such as untrue statements in declarations by authors, faiure to declare conflicts). The "supportive institution" usually support the powerful at the expense of the weak, and do their best to avoid dealing with the problem - because they are more often than not tied to lucrative research grants.

Anonymous said...

As far as conspiracies go I subscribe to the saying “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” Not sure which category fits JBMR or others involved in this.