GMW: Science Journals Harder to Trust/Bad Science and Industry

[Guest guest]

GMW: Science Journals Harder to Trust/Bad Science and Industry

" GM WATCH " <info

Sat, 18 Feb 2006 22:43:50 GMT

 

 

 

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

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1.Reporters Find Science Journals Harder to Trust, but Not Easy to

Verify

2.Big Pharma, Bad Science

3.Ghost Writing for Industry

 

" Bad science and biased work are not just the domain of the

pharmaceutical industry "

 

http://www.wame.org/pharma.htm

 

EXCERPTS: The Hwang case was not the first time journals had been

duped: recently, editors at The New England Journal of Medicine said

they suspected two cancer papers they published contained fabricated

data. In December, the same journal said that the authors of a 2000

study on the painkiller Vioxx had omitted the fact that several

patients had had heart attacks while taking the drug in a trial. A

study on the painkiller Celebrex [originally a Monsanto product] that

appeared in The Journal of the American Medical Association was

discredited when it was discovered that the authors had submitted only

six months of data, instead of the 12 months of data they had

collected. (item 1)

 

" The journal could no longer find enough independent experts... in any

given field, you cannot find an expert who has not been paid off in

some way by the industry. So the journal settled for a new standard:

Their reviewers can have received no more than $10,000 from companies

whose work they judge. " (item 2)

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1.Reporters Find Science Journals Harder to Trust, but Not Easy to

Verify

By JULIE BOSMAN

New York Times, February 13, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/13/business/media/13journal.html

 

When the journal Science recently retracted two papers by the South

Korean researcher Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, it officially confirmed what he

had denied for months: Dr. Hwang had fabricated evidence that he had

cloned human cells.

 

Papers from scientific journals like these are routinely picked up by

newspapers and news programs.

 

The journal Science recently retracted two papers by the South Korean

researcher Dr. Hwang Woo Suk.

But the editors of Science were not alone in telling the world of Dr.

Hwang's research. Newspapers, wire services and television networks

had initially trumpeted the news, as they often do with information

served up by the leading scientific journals.

 

Now news organizations say they are starting to look at the science

journals a bit more skeptically.

 

" My antennae are definitely up since this whole thing unfolded, " said

Rob Stein, a science reporter for The Washington Post. " I'm reading

papers a lot more closely than I had in the past, just to sort of

satisfy myself that any individual piece of research is valid. But

we're still in sort of the same situation that the journal editors

are, which is that if someone wants to completely fabricate data, it's

hard to figure that out. "

 

But other than heightened skepticism, not a lot has changed in how

newspapers treat scientific journals. Indeed, newspaper editors openly

acknowledge their dependence on them. At The Los Angeles Times, at

least half of the science stories that run on the front page come

directly from journals, said Ashley Dunn, the paper's science editor.

Gideon Gil, the health and science editor for The Boston Globe, said

that two of the three science stories that run on a typical day were

from research that appeared in journals.

 

Beyond newspapers, papers from journals are routinely picked up by

newsweeklies, network news, talk radio and Web sites.

 

" They are the way science is conducted, they're the way people share

information, they're the best approximation of acceptance by

knowledgeable people, " said Laura Chang, science editor for The New

York Times. " We do rely on them for the starting point of many of our

stories, and that will not change. "

 

There are limits to the vetting that science reporters, who are

generally not scientists themselves, can do. Most journal articles

have embargoes attached, giving reporters several days to call

specialists in the field, check footnotes on an article and scrutinize

the results.

 

" Scientific discoveries are more difficult because they often require

in the generalist reporter a good deal of study, follow-up interviews

and some guidance on how to make sense of technical matters, " said Roy

Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, which studies

journalism. " But I think the scandals do require both a new level of

skepticism on the part of the reporter and also maybe some new

protocols between scientists and journalists. "

 

The Hwang case was not the first time journals had been duped:

recently, editors at The New England Journal of Medicine said they

suspected two cancer papers they published contained fabricated data.

In December, the same journal said that the authors of a 2000 study on

the painkiller Vioxx had omitted the fact that several patients had

had heart attacks while taking the drug in a trial. A study on the

painkiller Celebrex that appeared in The Journal of the American

Medical Association was discredited when it was discovered that the

authors had submitted only six months of data, instead of the 12

months of data they had collected.

 

While the journals have a peer review process that is in part meant to

filter out fallacious papers by checking research techniques and

conclusions, perhaps the greatest difficulty for science reporters is

trying to catch what journal editors have missed.

 

After hearing the news of Dr. Hwang's fabrications, Mr. Gil of The

Globe said he immediately remembered his newspaper's coverage of the

stem cell papers.

 

" We were blown away, in part because we had written those stories on

Page 1, " Mr. Gil said. " And when we wrote them, we called the leading

experts in the world on all this embryonic stem cell stuff, who are

here in Boston. And they were as hoodwinked as anybody else. "

 

Despite the fraud cases, most of what the journals publish is

basically credible, said David Perlman, the science editor of The San

Francisco Chronicle. Among the most prestigious science journals that

reporters consult regularly re Nature, Science, The New England

Journal of Medicine and The Journal of the American Medical Association.

 

" I think they and we have been burned enough that they're making

efforts, " Mr. Perlman said. " They're being more careful now, and I

think reporters are too. I definitely have more of a 'Hey, let's look

more carefully' attitude now that I did 5 or 10 years ago. "

 

Donald Kennedy, the editor of Science, said in a statement in December

that the journal itself was not an investigative body. But when

reporting on journal findings, most news outlets fail to caution that

studies must be replicated to be truly authenticated.

 

" Beyond Hwang, the more fundamental issue is that journals do not and

cannot guarantee the truth of what they publish, " said Nicholas Wade,

a science reporter for The New York Times. " Publication of a paper

only means that, in the view of the referees who green-light it, it is

interesting and not obviously false. In other words, all of the

results in these journals are tentative. "

 

The journals' own peer review processes, which are intended to be the

first barrier against fraud, have come under criticism lately. A cover

story in the February issue of The Scientist said that the top-tier

journals were receiving more submissions every year, overtaxing peer

reviewers and weakening the screening process.

 

After the Hwang scandal, Science announced it was considering a set of

changes to better prevent fraud: Dr. Kennedy said in January that new

rules could include " requiring all authors to detail their specific

contributions to the research submitted, and to sign statements of

concurrence with the conclusions of the work, " as well as

" implementing improved methods of detecting image alteration, although

it appears improbable that they would have detected problems in this

particular case. " (Through a spokeswoman, Dr. Kennedy declined to be

interviewed and said the editors were currently conducting a review of

the episode.)

 

Some newspapers have adopted guidelines of their own to check for

conflicts of interest involving authors of journal articles. The Globe

instituted guidelines last July requiring reporters to ask researchers

about their financial ties to studies, and to include that information

in resulting articles. In its weekly health and science section, The

Globe outlines any shortcomings of a study under the heading " Cautions. "

 

Kit Frieden, the health and science editor for The Associated Press,

said: " We've always had our own peer review process, where on the

major studies we seek outside expert comment. We've always regarded

scientific research cautiously because mistakes can be made, and I

don't think that's changed. "

 

The growing competition for the most important research among the

journals may contribute to mistakes and fabrications, even in the most

prestigious of the bunch. But in the end, the severe consequences of

presenting fraudulent research generally act as a deterrent, said Mr.

Dunn of The Los Angeles Times.

 

" Unlike financial fraud, where you can bamboozle somebody of their

money and disappear and then start over again, in science the

researchers are in one place, " he said. " If they get caught in this

type of thing, their careers are over. "

___

 

 

2.Big Pharma, Bad Science

Nathan Newman

The Nation, July 25, 2002

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020805/newman20020725

 

In June, the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most

respected medical journals, made a startling announcement. The editors

declared that they were dropping their policy stipulating that authors

of review articles of medical studies could not have financial ties to

drug companies whose medicines were being analyzed.

 

The reason? The journal could no longer find enough independent

experts. Drug company gifts and " consulting fees " are so pervasive

that in any given field, you cannot find an expert who has not been

paid off in some way by the industry. So the journal settled for a new

standard: Their reviewers can have received no more than $10,000 from

companies whose work they judge. Isn't that comforting?

 

This announcement by the New England Journal of Medicine is just the

tip of the iceberg of a scientific establishment that has been

pervasively corrupted by conflicts of interest and bias, throwing

doubt on almost all scientific claims made in the biomedical field.

 

The standard announced in June was only for the reviewers. The actual

authors of scientific studies in medical journals are often bought and

paid for by private drug companies with a stake in the scientific

results. While the NEJM and some other journals disclose these

conflicts, others do not. Unknown to many readers is the fact that the

data being discussed was often collected and analyzed by the maker of

the drug involved in the test. An independent 1996 study found that 98

percent of scientific papers based on research sponsored by

corporations promoted the effectiveness of a company's drug. By

comparison, 79 percent of independent studies found that a new drug

was effective. This corruption reaches from the doctors prescribing a

drug to government review boards to university research centers.

 

There have long been worries about the advertising and promotional

gifts given to doctors to influence which drugs they prescribe. But it

turns out that even deeper financial ties extend to the medical

experts setting nationwide professional guidelines for treating

conditions ranging from heart disease to diabetes. Surveys have found

that nine out of ten experts writing such guidelines have financial

ties to the pharmaceutical industry, yet those ties are almost never

disclosed in the treatment guidelines, which are often published in

medical journals and endorsed by medical societies.

 

The Food and Drug Administration, for reasons similar to those of the

medical journals, routinely allows researchers with ties to the

industry to sit on drug approval advisory committees. In many cases,

half the panelists on such committees have a financial stake in the

outcome, through links to the drug manufacturer or to a competitor.

 

Increasingly, the industry has converted academic research centers

into subsidiaries of the companies. The billions of dollars of

academic government funding essentially pays to flush out negative

results, while private industry gets to profit from any successful

result. Industry now provides 7 percent of university research

funding, but they are manipulating the system to gain a far more

substantial benefit. At the University of California at Berkeley,

Novartis agreed to pay $25 million to the campus in exchange for the

first right to patent a range of basic plant research produced by the

university.

 

Where once university research was oriented to producing independent

knowledge that any other researcher could access and improve upon,

university research is increasingly being locked up in patents. What's

more, scientists at universities are often allowed to have stock

options in companies benefiting from the research they are conducting.

As Dr. Marcia Angell, a former editor of The New England Journal of

Medicine, noted in the Baltimore Sun, " What would be considered a

grotesque conflict of interest if a politician or judge did it is

somehow not in a physician. "

 

And the results are expensive and sometimes tragic for the public.

Experimental clinical drug trials are hazardous to participants and,

more broadly, critical to those with life threatening conditions who

need to know which treatments are fruitless to pursue. Yet researchers

on industry payrolls end up pressured to suppress negative results.

 

At the most basic level, researchers who defy their corporate sponsors

know they may lose their funding. When one Toronto scientist revealed

in 1998 a serious side effect of deferiprone, a drug for a blood

disorder, her contract was terminated. More dramatically, when a

number of researchers concluded that Remune, an anti-AIDS therapy, was

of little benefit to patients, the company funding their research, the

Immune Response Corporation, sued the scientists in 2001 for $10

million for damaging its business.

 

And these are the examples of scientists who spoke out. Many others

just go along with the demands of their corporate sponsors and

suppress negative evidence. In the early 1990s, a pharmacologist at

the University of California at San Francisco, Betty Dong, found that

a generic thyroid hormone worked as well as Synthroid, the brand-name

drug made by the funder of the research. According to the Washington

Post, the company, Knoll Pharmaceuticals, successfully blocked

publication of the findings for seven years. Only in 1997 was this

fraud discovered, and in 1999 Knoll had to pay 37 states $42 million

to settle a suit for consumer fraud in promoting the superiority of

its drug.

 

This pattern of suppression means that medical knowledge is being

stunted and delayed, as other researchers aren't informed of dead ends

that might have helped steer their own research. And by locking up

knowledge produced at academic centers in patents, what should be free

knowledge for the public (free in both the intellectual and economic

sense) instead feeds the profit margins of the pharmaceutical industry.

 

Universities once opposed patents for any academic research. Yale

University's 1948 policy on patents stated, " It is, in general,

undesirable and contrary to the best interests of medicine and the

public to patent any discovery or invention applicable in the fields

of public health or medicine. " That policy was later abandoned and

Yale now holds a key anti-AIDS drug patent jointly with Bristol Myers.

Facing massive global rotest, Yale last year agreed to relax its

patent rules, but the fact that universities routinely now balance who

will live and die against their own profit motive is a degradation of

their public purpose.

 

This corruption of academic science is pervasive and the costs are

extremely clear, but what is remarkable is how easy it would be to end.

Federal and state governments still supply the overwhelming percentage

of university research funding. If all such funding was conditioned on

ending non-disclosure agreements and on barring the licensing of

government-funded results to private industry, the public would

benefit both scientifically and financially. We've paid for the

knowledge once. We shouldn't have to do so again in increased costs of

medicine and increased deaths due to suppressed knowledge.

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3.World Association of Medical Editors Listserve Discussion January

24, 2005 to January 28, 2005

http://www.wame.org/pharma.htm

 

Ghost Writing for Industry

 

[This listserve has been edited to remove identifying details in the

case but retain the essential points for educational purposes.]

 

Dear WAME members,

I edit a general medical journal. We received a manuscript reviewing

_____ . We sent it out for peer review and one of the reviewers

responded that

 

" This paper was written by a medical education company (Y) for X,

apparently as part of a campaign meant to pave the way for acceptance

of ___. "

 

We require a conflict of interest statement from each author of each

manuscript before sending the manuscript out for review, and this

author did not list X as a conflict of interest. However, I understand

that no money changed hands: the " reward " for writing this paper for X

(which provided all of the research in a format that could be cut and

pasted into the article) is having an easily published article. The

article itself stated that " Editorial assistance from Y, was made

possible via educational funding from X. " Clearly, this is a

misrepresentation of the financial relationship between X, the

intermediary Y, and the author. The author of the original draft and

the person(s) who did the obviously biased literature review is/are

not listed as authors.

 

The reviewer included with the review a copy of the original offer

made to the reviewer by Y that included the draft manuscript (complete

with title page) and the following header:

 

[Title]

[Contact for Y]

Client company: X

Project number: [withheld]

Target journal: To be decided

Target audience: Pharmacists, nurses, general practitioners

Aim of article: To outline ______.

Number of references: 65

Word count: Approx. 3000 (excluding abstract and references)

Number of tables: 1

Number of figures: 0

Current status: First draft

[Date]

 

Comparing the material sent by Y and the submitted manuscript shows

some minor editing by the submitting " author, " but a lot of it is

word-for-word the same between the two documents.

 

I am writing this for two reasons. First, I wanted to alert WAME

members that pharmaceutical companies do this, although I suspect that

most of you know that. Second, I would like to know if your journals

have specific policies about accepting articles commissioned by drug

or device companies to create a " literature " that supports arguments

for their products by ghost writing the articles for other " authors "

to submit to a journal. Although it is clear to me that this is

unethical behavior on the part of X and Y, it is less clear to me how

a journal can protect itself from publishing such articles. We were

very fortunate to have the article reviewed by an expert in the field

who had previously turned down Y's request to edit and submit this

article for them.

 

I would be interested in whether WAME editors have had similar

experiences, how they have handled them (we obviously rejected the

article but are also contacting the author to discuss the

inappropriateness of this approach to publishing " science " ), and how

they have avoided being victimized in this way.

 

Bill Tierney

 

 

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