Perhaps you had come to believe that, with all the recent attention given to the issue of conflicts of interest between medical researchers and the pharmaceutical industry, scientific journals publishing such research would be particularly keen to ensure that their authors are keeping their noses clean, so to speak. Turns out not. JAMA apparently has just privately threatened and then publicly insulted a neuroanatomy professor who pointed out that a recent article about a particular antidepressant (a) did not show the positive outcome claimed and (b) was written by authors with undisclosed ties to the manufacturer of the drug in question. What makes this case particularly interesting is that "the authors of the study in question not publicly apologised for omitting conflicts of interest and confirmed that the drug was not a superior treatment in subsequent letters to /JAMA/."
More here: http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/03/jama_editors_pressur.html Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 [email protected] http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ ========================== --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
