A Bitter Pill for Journal Editors

John Travis at AAAS pointed out to me Monday's amazing story in Wall Street Journal [humungously expensive registration required to even think about reading this article, think "if you have to ask, you can't afford the download] about New England Journal of Medicine and the Vioxx paper. The ethics of editors under corporate sway (or pressure, anyway) is the next frontier not just for books and articles by Marcia and other but for business people and lawyers. His favorite and the most galling quote from the piece is from Dr. Drazen:

Dr. Drazen says journal editors are "just the middleman in picking what goes out there" and "when there are problems the onus lies with" authors to sound the alert. "If you ask me, it is none of our concern about whether [Vioxx] is a cardiovascular risk in the patients that are on trial," he says. The concern was making sure what was published was correct, he says, and "people could have set the record straight."

Uh, no.