Heal Thyself, Medical Journals Told

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In an essay for the Public Library of Science, the former editor of the British Medical Journal, Richard Smith, argues that while corporate advertising may be the most obvious source of revenue for medical journals, they are "the least corrupting." More significant, he writes, are the clinical trials the journal publishes which carry "the journal's stamp of approval (unlike the advertising)." While journals can more tightly screen what gets published, Smith thinks more fundamental steps are required to "stop journals from being beholden to companies." He argues more public funding to research treatments is needed, and journals should consider not publishing trials at all. Trial results, he suggests, "should be made available on regulated Web sites. Instead of publishing trials, journals could concentrate on critically describing them." But the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine accused Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and Merck of "making a mockery" of an online list of drug trials, saying the companies' entries "are written in a way that they are trying to hide what they are doing."