Merck's Fake Journal: Down and Dirty Down Under

Because the Healthy Skepticism group is based in Australia, the doings of the drug industry down under tend to be oversampled among those of us interested in such matters. Just lately the big news among this crowd is an article in The Scientist (registration required to access free article): http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55671/

Litigation around Vioxx sprung loose this news about a publication called the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine (see a sample copy at http://images.the-scientist.com/pdfs/blogs/MSD0503540001.pdf). The magazine was published by the major journal company Elsevier back around 2003, and would look to the average reader like a peer reviewed journal--at any rate it has none of the glitzy ads and photo layouts that generally mark the drug company "throw-away" journal that docs routinely recognize as pure marketing. Its articles disproportionately feature the Merck drugs Fosamax and Vioxx and coincidentally, the studies published all show that the drugs work splendidly.

Elsevier has admitted that Merck bought and paid for the "journal" in toto, and indirectly admits that it would not pass muster in today's stricter disclosure climate. Elsevier, in keeping with the tightlipped practices journal publishers presently maintain, refused to say how much money Merck paid for this publication. Experienced journal editors were quoted by The Scientist as saying that the "journal" included many features usually seen in peer-reviewed scientific publications and care and attention would be needed to reveal that it was not a real journal of that type. The "journal" has no website and never had any, so it is difficult to trace its origins and its demise, or to track its circulation.

Anyway, just when we thought we had heard everything...