Scientific publisher snookered by fake journal paid for by drug company

It sounds fairly dry, academic and dependable -- The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine -- but it turns out that its publisher, Elsevier, the world’s leading scientific publisher allowed itself to be hoodwinked by Merck, the US pharmaceutical group.

According to a story in the Financial Times, the journal was presented as being independent, with an honorary editorial board of academics from Australia and New Zealand. But it contained reprinted articles from other journals concerning Merck’s medicines Fosamax and Vioxx without saying it was funded by the company.

The publication marks a fresh twist in tactics to promote medicines by pharmaceutical companies, which have long provided substantial income to academic journals by paying for large numbers of reprints of articles favourable to their drugs for distribution to doctors.

Elsevier, a worldwide company which has a Canadian division, is part of Reed Elsevier, and also publishes the Lancet the official journal of the British Medical Association and other specialist journals reaching more than 30 million scientists, students and health professionals worldwide. The publisher became aware of the problem after 2005, but it was going on for several years before that. The matter has only now come to light as the result of a court case in Australia. Apparently it was not the only such custom pub masquerading as a scientific journal.

Merck described the publication as a “complimentary journal” containing articles about its drugs from peer-reviewed publications, which mentioned its funding for the studies and a “hypothetical cardiovascular risk” associated with Vioxx.

Four issues of the journal were last week described as a “marketing publication” which could easily be mistaken for a peer-reviewed medical journal by George Jelinek, a doctor, during testimony in a trial in Australia brought by a patient – who had suffered a heart attack after taking Vioxx – suing Merck. The claims were first picked up by The Scientist.