More Fake Journals From Elsevier 249
daemonburrito writes "Last week, we learned about Elsevier publishing a bogus journal for Merck. Now, several librarians say that they have uncovered an entire imprint of 'advertorial' publications. Excerpta Medica, a 'strategic medical communications agency,' is an Elsevier division. Along with the now infamous Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, it published a number of other 'journals.' Elsevier CEO Michael Hansen now admits that at least six fake journals were published for pharmaceutical companies."
Not true. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not true. (Score:4, Funny)
Not anymore!
Re:Not true. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmm... "Funny" isn't what I would have modded...
But this will in a few blows make all reviews related to the companies involved basically invalid.
And it will also cast a dark shadow over a lot of other reviews in other medical magazines.
I would recommend editors to remove all reviews currently for Merck products as well as all reviews provided by "Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine", "Excerpta Medica" and "Elsevier" just to be on the safe side until the sources of every review from those sources can be verified. And other reviews would have to be deeply scrutinized before added too.
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According to their wikipeia entry, they are entirely legit.
True! And it's also interesting to note that according to its own entry, Wikipedia is also legit.
Re:Google (Score:4, Informative)
I often see google search results linking to elsevier (or other journal) pages, with relevant keywords and text in them, however if you click on the link you get a page that doesn't have the same info.
That depends on the network you're requesting those pages from. When I'm using my university's VPN, I often actually get the documents that the search result page promises, because my university has a subscription.
Elsevier is probably doing the same for Google's IP addresses, and maybe Google even pays for it.
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Elsevier is probably doing the same for Google's IP addresses, and maybe Google even pays for it.
That still violates Google's policies. The problem with cloaked pages is that google doesn't always catch them right away. It helps if people report stuff like that.
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And? Did you do it? Or did you just comment here. ^^
Re:Google (Score:5, Informative)
And... (Score:2, Insightful)
... not a damn thing will become of it because everyone who can do anything about it is in Merck's pocket.
Wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Also, anything that brings the sickening relationship between doctors and pharmaceutical companies to light is a good thing. Many times, doctors will prescribe the latest (expensive) drug to a patient when a generic does the job just as well precisely because the pharmaceutical companies bombard them with this kind of semi-false information. People need to be aware of this.
Packaging a chilling effect on hot topics (Score:5, Insightful)
No. At the very least, this gives schools a bargaining chip when negotiating journal packages with Elsevier....
There are few institutions which can or do afford all packages. Intead, they must choose one or the other. Like with the cable channels, the publishers aren't about to put all the "good" journals in one set and all the crap "journals" and advertisements in another.
Some journals and, thus, packages become must-have. And journals in the other packages become sidelined. And, because journals specialize, you get the subsequent marginalization of various topics and even fields of research.
That's on top of the veto power big business has on reearch funding. Remeber the US government may apportion grants, but since much of the money is coming from private business, it gets to select only from a subset of acceptable recipients and topics. e.g. OpenBSD: secure systems for less than the price of a cruise missile...
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doctors will prescribe the latest (expensive) drug to a patient when a generic does the job just as well
If the solution even requires a generic... I went in for bronchitis, and I came out with a prescription for a generic antibiotic, and a prescription for Prilosec. When I looked it up later, it turned out to be a medication for heartburn! I also noticed that the logo was the same as the big, purple button on the lapel of the doctor's labcoat. :/
Re:Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Mazarin5, if you use Google to search for bronchitis and acid reflux, you will find pages that mention acid reflux as a possible cause for bronchitis. It's possible that the doc who treated you thought that your bronchitis was caused by GERD or stomach acid making its way up into your esophagus. He wasn't trying to give you random pills just to make the drug rep happy. There is a connection between acid reflux and bronchitis. I am not an expert on this topic so I encourage you to do your own research with Google.
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Re:And... (Score:4, Interesting)
Before reading this article, I was neutral toward this company. I didn't really know much about them. But now I know they are not to be trusted. I will make my best effort to avoid using any of their drugs, and I will be wary if any doctor tries to prescribe a Merck drug to me. And more importantly, I will not own any of their stock. Just this week I was reviewing my stock portfolio to do some more dollar cost averaging into the market rebound. Merck is now purged from my portfolio, and I will keep an eye out for it in any index or mutual funds that I buy. They are now in the same list as Monsanto.
I will also pass this article along to my fiends and co-workers. Hopefully they too will take this into consideration before buying their stock.
The justification for not owning their stock is not just moral. It is an economic concern as well. If a company behaves this recklessly, it puts itself at economic risk, as already demonstrated by it's multi-billion dollar Vioxx recall.
All major corporations are engaged in morally dubious behavior of one kind or another. But when it becomes this excessive and blatant, I have to draw a line.
Bad Feeling (Score:2)
I have a bad feeling that, as people start poking around, even more stories like this are going to be uncovered. Sure, Elsevier is admitting to six fake journals. What's the over/under for it being 20?
Now, I wonder if Merck makes a drug to get rid of bad feelings like this. I'll have to check an Elsevier journal to find out.
Re:Bad Feeling (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Bad Feeling (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a bad feeling that, as people start poking around, even more stories like this are going to be uncovered. Sure, Elsevier is admitting to six fake journals. What's the over/under for it being 20?
Now, I wonder if Merck makes a drug to get rid of bad feelings like this. I'll have to check an Elsevier journal to find out.
I'm not a doctor or any sort of medical practitioner. So, the following is just my personal opinion.
The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most corrupt industries in existence today. I actually find pharmacology quite interesting, especially the idea that physical chemicals can impact the nonphysical/intangible mind. Seeing the way this industry operates made me decide some time ago that I can't in any good conscience join up with them, fascinating though the subject may be.
There is one simple principle here: pharmaceutical companies cannot make any profit from healthy people. That's why you have so many "designer diseases" like Restless Leg Syndrome. Just think about how many people you know who do not regularly take some sort of prescription medication; they are becoming a minority. No one really questions this. No one with any sort of media presence is asking whether the fact that the general population is getting sicker and not healthier indicates that our medical system is fundamentally broken. Of course, you don't have to be much of a thinking man to realize that the media is not your friend, otherwise they'd ask questions like this and would go wherever the facts lead them, monied interests be damned.
I was in my doctor's office once and I asked his staff a question. I asked her why it is that pharmaceutical companies advertise prescription-only medicines to the general public, since after all you are supposed to ask your doctor what is wrong and have that doctor determine what medicine you need. There's little room in that process for brand recognition on the part of the patient. She flat-out told me "because the pharmaceutical companies RUN this entire industry". I salute the honesty of her answer. I was half expecting some sort of "party line" on that one.
Re:Bad Feeling (Score:5, Insightful)
The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most corrupt industries in existence today. I actually find pharmacology quite interesting, especially the idea that physical chemicals can impact the nonphysical/intangible mind.
Nonphysical intangible mind?
Neurochemicals, man. Read about them. Any intro to psych course includes education on what a few of the major neurochemicals do and their role in defining who "you" are.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most corrupt industries in existence today. I actually find pharmacology quite interesting, especially the idea that physical chemicals can impact the nonphysical/intangible mind.
Nonphysical intangible mind?
Neurochemicals, man. Read about them. Any intro to psych course includes education on what a few of the major neurochemicals do and their role in defining who "you" are.
Why do people insist on giving me the most simplistic of answers, always with the assumption that I never once came across them in any research on the subject? I'm not trying to complain so much as to point out that it's not necessary.
To say that "the entire mystery is completely rendered moot by the concept of neurochemicals!" is the same thing as saying "I am a materialist." If you are so inclined, and if you find that satisfying, then good for you. Not everyone subscribes to the materialist worldvi
Brain drugs. (Score:4, Insightful)
I equate the working of drugs for the brain much like our current understanding of gravity.
We know it works. We can reproduce it in exacting detail. We can model other experiments based upon our expectations of the way it works. But when we get down to the tiny details and questions... we have no idea exactly HOW it works.
The modern brain chemical industry is this way. Sure we know it is hitting up the "5HT" receptors but as to why that actually causes some effects in some and differing effects in others... well... uh... yeah.
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That's a very interesting parallel. It also comes from the materialist perspective. What we get for it is a theory of gravitation that is irreconcilable with quantum mechanics. That alone should tell us that we are missing something fundamental and need to question all of our assumptions, all of the things that we "know to be impossible." Quantum mechanics itself tends to disregard cause-and-effect. An unstable
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Look, this is the News for Nerds site. You're looking for the News for Mystics site. Perhaps Google can help you find it.
Re:Brain drugs. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're trying to contrast this against history it's simply wrong. Of course most advancement is, always has been and always will be in engineering rather than in the fundamentals - but the rate at which fundamental physics has developed has been nothing short of astonishing by historical standards.
In my personal (unqualified) opinion, the medical industry has its own version of this. We're getting better and better at modifying the system, at obtaining desired results by the introduction of chemicals, without increasing our understanding of what disease actually is, how it originates, and how it can be prevented.
Again, yes, the "engineering" approach of trying a known chemical and seeing what it does advances much faster than the theory - but that's not to say the fundamental work has stagnated. We genuinely do know a lot more about disease than we used to.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in psychiatry.
In more ways than one. While the state of fundamental understanding in psychiatry is particularly poor, we have seen a lot of genuine progress.
My evidence for this is very simple: if we understood these things, we should have a population that is getting healthier. Instead, we have a population that increasingly depends on medications because it is becoming sicker.
And where's your evidence for that? Life expectancy is continuing to rise (we're expecting a "fast food bump", but that's hardly the fault of medicine, and I don't believe it's happened yet), and the fact that a condition is being treated doesn't mean it didn't exist before - e.g. PTSD is often described as a modern invention, but if one looks at contemporary descriptions of WWII soldiers, one can see a lot of very similar symptoms - they simply didn't get treated. It's hard to appreciate how much better our general quality of life is than that of even 50 years ago, because we adjust to what we're used to.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You remind me of the three stages of technology:
Not a bad description. :-)
Personally, I suspect that the reductionist worldview is at least partially responsible for that.
Holistic, reductionist, it's all abstraction.
We're human, with human limitations. To understand we have to abstract and that by definition is an approximation. Some people aren't happy with current abstractions/approximations but unfortunately they have
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Re: (Score:2)
"Since we don't have a fully scientific answer, it's magic! I don't know who broke into my car last night but since a 'materialist' account doesn't have an answer it must be the interdimensional greminlins!"
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't have to be afraid. Just come out and say it: "I do believe in god"
The problem with that is you then have to explain what "God" means to you. My personal concept of that is quite unlike many of the more mainstream interpretations, though (perhaps because I have studied most major religions) it will sound very much like some of them. That makes this a thorny issue that is likely to create much confusion. Really, I was content with showing the limitations of the materialist worldview and I would greatly prefer that each individual works out for themselves whether they bel
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, this guy is bonkers and probably is a creationist disguising his views because he knows what the reaction will be.
He believes in immaterial magic for rather philosophically laughable reasons. He's shot his credibility, that's for sure.
Dr. Thomas Szasz (Score:2)
Re:Bad Feeling (Score:5, Insightful)
I have been diagnosed with that "designer disease", you dickwad. How did the doctor determine that I have Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS)? I have had two sleep studies at a local hospital. During the studies, dozens of electrodes connected to my body monitored everything from my brain waves to the movement of my calf muscles. The summary reports from the sleep studies show that I shift between different stages of sleep much more frequently than "normal" people. While reviewing the results of the first sleep study with me, the doctor pointed to a section of the sleep stage vs. time graph and said that I moved my legs 66 times per hour and awoke 22 times per hour. I don't get restful sleep like "normal" people because my legs move while I am asleep. The sleep doc that I was working with did not fabricate those results just to sell me more Requip or Mirapex.
Please stick your "designer disease" comment for RLS up your ass.
Thank you,
-Scott
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Great. Thanks for letting everyone know that you are not a specialist in sleep disorders. So your opinion regarding medications used to treat sleep disorders holds as much weight as my opinion on how well someone speaks French (a topic I know absolutely nothing about).
Here is my opinion: You are still a dickwad.
Please continue to insert your comment about RLS being a "designer disease" into the orifice
Re:Bad Feeling (Score:5, Funny)
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Well played, Frosty. I'd give you a mod point for that one if I could.
Re:Bad Feeling (Score:5, Funny)
You also seem to suffer from Restless Mouth Syndrome (RMS). I suggest yo try some BSD.
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you for the suggestion, Mikkeles. I am downloading it right now. I will give it a shot tonight.
http://www.freebsd.org/ [freebsd.org]
Re:Bad Feeling (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, I do have a reason: You posted a message on
>for if you do that, the suffering is yours and does not affect me in the slightest.
Do you do this passive-aggressive shit all the time? It's slightly annoying.
>I'll give you some friendly advice.
Free advice is often worth exactly what you pay for it...
>calmly explain to that person why you believe they are misinformed. You may even convince them.
I don't want to convince you that you are wrong. You are a nutcase and you are spreading mis-information that may have a negative effect on someone else's health. I suppose you are also anti-vaccination because the guvmint uses the annual flu vaccines for mind control.
>What you're doing here, however, has no chance of working.
And, once again, you are presenting your opinion. Personally, I think you are a douchebag and I don't care what you think will or will not work. My only concern is that your comments will harm someone else who reads them.
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I'm glad that I brightened your Saturday, Clang Jangle.
"high strung people get jimmy legs". Cut back on the caffeine, alcohol, tobacco,
On a serious note, I have tried changing my diet to see if that has an effect on my legs. I have gone completely off caffeine for a couple of weeks. No change. I drink very little alcohol so there isn't much for me to cut out. I have never used tobacco. There are other dietary changes that RLS suffers can make like cutting back on high-carb f
"restless leg syndrome" is quite real (Score:5, Insightful)
Try to find incidents of Restless Leg Syndrome (by that name or any other) prior to the advertising campaign. See for yourself how difficult that is. Then you will see that it's not some malady that has plagued mankind over the years for which we finally have a treatment.
Having slept with someone who was tormented by this for months, I can assure you that it is quite real, whatever it is. It's possible that it was much rarer (or nonexistent) prior to 1900, but that's hardly proof that it doesn't exist now.
Your argument was going okay until you introduced this howler...
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OK, I admit I'm from a backward country in E.Europe.
I have NEVER ever heard of a "restless leg syndrome" up until now. Never. I actually thought that the original poster made the term up...
I use to bite my nails. Is that a syndrome? Maybe it's a compulsive behavior that can affect my health. Quick - gimme some pills!
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I have NEVER ever heard of a "restless leg syndrome" up until now. Never. I actually thought that the original poster made the term up...
It's a condition in the USA caused by taking too many meds.
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Frosty, I know you were going for the +5 Funny (hey, even I appreciate your sense of humor) but there are medications that make RLS worse. If a person does not get the sleep problem diagnosed correctly, other meds they are taking may intensify the problem.
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I use to bite my nails. Is that a syndrome? Maybe it's a compulsive behavior that can affect my health.
If you do it frequently, without really thinking about it, and get anxious when you don't bite your fingernails or bite your fingernails whenever you get anxious, then yes, it is a compulsive behavior, and there are plenty of people that have such compulsions. Whether or not it affects your health enough that you feel you should correct it is an individual decision.
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One difference is that you can in principle avoid biting your nails, at least for a while. I imagine that even the most compulsive can cease for five minutes.
If you're having a restless leg attack, then you're having it, and there's not much you can do in the short run to stop it, short of suicide.
It's certainly possible that RLS is fallout from all of the wonderful fast food, drugs, lethargy, etc., that comes with a wealthy economy.
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Gaspyy, teh Google is full of good information on RLS:
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=rls&fp=0_TDBcSQxa0 [google.com]
Another term I have heard used when talking about RLS is PLMD:
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/periodic_limb_movement_disorder/article_em.htm [emedicinehealth.com]
Re:Bad Feeling (Score:4, Insightful)
You're confusing two different discussions.
The first is that the number of diagnosed and treated cases of RLS has gone up significantly since advertising campaigns began. The other is that RLS is diagnosed when it shouldn't be.
It's quite possible that RLS was historically written off as blanket "sleeplessness" before. Now we're able to identify and treat it. This would be the result of a completely normal and legitimate evolution in our ability to practice medicine, not necessarily the result of us fabricating some "designer disease". Otherwise, at one time you could make identical arguments about any common affliction, claiming it's really just bad spirits, not some made-up disease.
It's ALSO quite possible that too many people are diagnosed with RLS that don't have it. Or not. The important part is that they're two different statements, and that difference is whether or not you can infer a massive conspiracy.
Re:Bad Feeling (Score:5, Informative)
You are right. It's nearly impossible. For instance,
1) Open browser to wikipedia.
2) Search for RLS
3) Scan down to the History section
"Earlier studies were done by Thomas Willis (1622â"1675) and by Theodor Wittmaack.[54] Another early description of the disease and its symptoms were made by George Miller Beard (1839-1883).[54] In a 1945 publication titled 'Restless Legs', Swedish neurologist Karl-Axel Ekbom (1907-1977)[54] described the disease and presented eight cases used for his studies.[55]"
So you are absolutely correct, provided, of course, that you can show us that the advertising campaign for RLS began in the early 1600s or earlier.
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While I'm not nearly as bad as the person your replying too (and potentially bating) my legs indeed got all "twitchy" and kept me from sleeping BEFORE the "RLS" ads. It might not have been "RLS", since the term wasn't coined yet, but the symptoms were still there. I'm lucky enough to have it very mild, so I mocked it as well, but one of my freind's gets only 30% of normal sleep because of it, and this was true BEFORE, yet again, the ad campaign.
In other words, just because Pfizer invented "ED" (Erectile D
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Thank you, Anonymous.
But I can't be a "sick boy" because Dr. Causality has learnt us that there ain't no such thang as the Restless Legs.
I guess the sleep docs have been lying to me and this "sleep disorder" stuff is all made-up. Maybe Dr. C was right about my problems being caused by my daddy never being home and my momma didn't hug me enough.
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Oh shit! That's the one thing the docs have not tested for. I will print your message and talk to the docs on Monday. I will need to do some research on what sort of dietary changes I should make if the tests indicate that I really am a sheep. I am indebted to you, Anonymous Coward.
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Dude! Please tell me that you did not just rip on The 80's. Who can have a bad day when they are driving down the freeway singing along to "Too Shy" by Kajagoogoo?
Re:Bad Feeling (Score:5, Interesting)
There is one simple principle here: pharmaceutical companies cannot make any profit from healthy people.
They also can't make any profit off the majority of sick people in the world, either, because those people have no money. That's how you get situations like this:
We found that, of 1393 new chemical entities marketed between 1975 and 1999, only 16 were for tropical diseases and tuberculosis. (Trouiller et al., "Drug Development for Neglected Diseases: a Deficient Market and a Public-Health Policy Failure." The Lancet 359, no. 9324 (June 22, 2002): 2188-2194.
(Ironically, I got that through ScienceDirect). Yet while the pharma giants won't focus R&D on neglected diseases, they'll also lobby against any attempts to set up alternative incentive systems designed to stimulate research into those disease... probably too afraid that the alternatives will be more successful than the current patent system, and people will start to wonder why more drugs can't be developed that way.
in their defense (Score:2)
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Yes, R&D is not the only major cost involved with new drugs. Regulatory hurdles are enormous as well. However, PhRMA's own figures emphasize how expensive it is to do the research and development, along with how much research fails, etc.
Even if you got rid of regulatory requirements completely, it would not reduce the price of new medicines to the point where it would be financially feasible for drug companies to focus on neglected diseases. This doesn't mean that they are evil - there is just no motiva
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R&D is not the only major cost involved with new drugs. Regulatory hurdles are enormous as well.
Yes, but not as enormous as lobbyists and kickbacks to politicians [citizen.org] or marketing. [citizen.org]
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I just wanted to say that I've had a few *very* sporadic occurrences of RLS (when I was younger), but if it was something that I had to cope with on a regular basis, I'd consider it anything but a designer disease. Yes it's weird, but I don't think you can appreciate how actually disruptive it can be until you've actually had to cope with it.
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Ah, everybody's favourite sport: Libelling the pharmaceutical industry. Especially funny in combination with the remarkable allegation that nobody seems to question its actions. I guess you spent the last ten years on a trek through the Kalahari?
Having worked in this industry for most of my career, I have to say that I have yet to meet the corrupt pernicious vampires of legend. I have met quite a few idiots, and remarkable number of people who honestly try to combine helping people with running a business.
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I was in my doctor's office once and I asked his staff a question. I asked her why it is that pharmaceutical companies advertise prescription-only medicines to the general public, since after all you are supposed to ask your doctor what is wrong and have that doctor determine what medicine you need.
This seems to be a US-only phenomenon.
Isn't it amazing how so few people in the USA are willing to question that? Even fewer are willing to say "I don't know" instead of automatically siding with those who stand to profit from this phenomenon. Like most problems, this one is systemic, and I'm not talking about RLS but about the decline of critical thinking.
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Perhaps the more frightening truth revolves around discovering which medical journals are actually real?
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There was a similar story going around the conspiracy theory websites about a paper published by bentham.org relating to active thermitic material (flakes of paint that burn under intense heat).
The Open Chemical Physics Journal [bentham-open.org]
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I have a bad feeling that, as people start poking around, even more stories like this are going to be uncovered. Sure, Elsevier is admitting to six fake journals. What's the over/under for it being 20?
Noticing a pattern here, I'd doubt, at a minimum, anything elsevier publishes with "Australasian" in the title
Which is of course not to say that it's a codeword for "this journal is crap" and that every crap journal has it, just tha
More reason to ditch publishers (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting. This militates against the argument that the "imprimatur" of a publisher always adds to a journal's legitimacy, and is one more reason to ditch money-grubbing publishers for open-access journals.
That is really a huge blow to the reputation of Elsevier... of course they publish hundreds (thousands?) of journals, so in absolute terms maybe it is not that big a deal, but still...
Re:More reason to ditch publishers (Score:5, Insightful)
I think I've heard it said this way: "It doesn't take much arsenic to poison a well."
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Only takes one mistake to have your reputation decimated.
Re:More reason to ditch publishers (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is not that you lied to me. The problem is that I can no longer trust you.
Re:More reason to ditch publishers (Score:5, Insightful)
This militates against the argument that the "imprimatur" of a publisher always adds to a journal's legitimacy.
It sure does. Especially since Elseiver has explicitly made that argument. Here's an official Elsevier position paper on open access [elsevier.com]: "By introducing an author-pays model, Open Access risks undermining public trust in the integrity and quality of scientific publications that has been established over hundreds of years. The subscription model, where the users pay ... ensures high quality, independent peer review and prevents commercial interests from influencing decisions to publish. This critical control measure would be rmeoved in a system where the author - or indeed his/her sponsoring institution - pays."
That gives the open access movement a big boost. [earlham.edu].
Re:More reason to ditch publishers (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely right. Even though Elsevier is huge and a fixture in scientific research, this is the kind of ethical breach that could lead to ruin for the company. As big as they are, the NIH is bigger and there are people there who do not appreciate these kinds of shenanigans. It is absolutely an argument for community based open-access journals. All that would have to happen is the NIH putting publication in such journals as a condition in their grants and librarians the world over would rejoice.
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I would respectfully disagree. I believe LexisNexis is their American subsidiary, therefore EVERYTHING about LexisNexis is now suspect.
Can this be considered fraud? (Score:5, Interesting)
The journals seem to be intended to mislead the reader into believing that research and reporting has been done which has not. Does that not constitute fraud? Would there not be an option to have the publisher and the pharmacorp charged with fraud?
Re:Can this be considered fraud? (Score:4, Interesting)
"The journals seem to be intended to mislead the reader into believing that research and reporting has been done which has not."
But what if the research WAS done? Does the data/research meet the industry standards? As far as I can tell, it was. So there is no fraud
How is this different from any other journal that arbitrarily decides what articles to publish?
The whole point of medical research is to influence doctors.
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That's why the corporate entity was created back in the 1890's, to avoid responsibility.
Well, and that's not entirely illegitimate. If you have a large corporation, there's no way a few individuals at the top can possibly monitor the behavior of hundreds or thousands of employees. Should a CEO go to prison because some low-level manager commits fraud? If that were the case, no-one would ever take the risk of forming and running a major business.
Nevertheless, the corporate veil can be pierced if the crime is of sufficient magnitude. These guys do get away with a lot of crap though, and maybe
Re:Can this be considered fraud? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have a large corporation, you have a set of corporate policies in force. Some of which should prohibit fraud, conflicts of interest, and other assorted bad behavior. If it can be shown that the corporation enforces these policies and takes appropriate steps to correct and/or punish employees that violate them, then the corporation should not be held liable for their misbehavior.
On the other hand, corporations need to be held to a higher standard than individuals in the areas of regulatory compliance. I've seen cases where violations were reduced from felonies to civil violations because the company claimed that it was 'unaware' of the actions of its employees. And yet, those employees were not punished because they were 'unaware' of the applicable law. Civil penalties were assessed and corrective actions undertaken. And then they did it again. If a company can't enforce its policies, it should have its corporate charter revoked.
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Too big to jail? Corporation size could use some downward pressure.
Depends, and what I said doesn't just apply to the likes of an IBM or a General Motors.
... should he be imprisoned for that one employee's misdeeds?
Suppose you have a company of fifty people, and one of them does something illegal without the knowledge of the owner. Should the guy that built that business from the ground up, busted his ass for ten years, took out a second mortgage in order to meet payroll when times were tough
I'm not arguing against accountability for upper management, but like most
Re:Can this be considered fraud? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Milton Freedman won a Nobel Prize in Economics, and argued that corporations should be abolished as incompatible with free-market capitalism (they're collectivist entities, in which decision-makers are neither using their own capital nor responsible for their decisions).
How I found out about it... (with Simpsons ref) (Score:2)
I was watching a panel discussion/documentary show called "Amazing Discoveries!". They were talking about great properties of the "Powersauce bar" ("A bushel of apples packed in every bar, plus a secret ingredient that unleashes the awesome power of apples!)" and the dangers of the "Vita-Peach Health Block".
But seriously, I don't see why this is so surprising. Infomercials have been around forever, masquerading as talk shows, documentaries, etc. This is just a print equivalent. I certa
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These journals are not only printed media, but peer-reviewed scientific journals. They way scientist publish their findings and theories is through articles in this kind of journals, that get screened and reviewed by specialists of the field before publication; so anything published is supposed to have scientific merit.
Of course, nothing prevents a business to set up an allegedly scientific journal that publishes serious-looking articles that push its products or agenda, but it wouldn't have a great impact
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That's certainly true - there are hundreds of "trash" journals out there. I seem to get most of them in the mail despite frequent attempts to not subscribe. Most people just toss them into the recycle bin. The "Austalasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine" sounds like one of those types. Still, it's fraud - Elsievier should be soundly thrashed and the relevant management should commit seppuku
Charge them with fraud (Score:3, Insightful)
This is MAJOR fraud in the medical/pharmaceutical industry. Merck and Elsevier need to be shut completely down for this bullshit.
Or, alternatively, start killing off Merck and Elsevier CEOs, NOW. Send the message that we will not tolerate this misleading information.
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This is MAJOR fraud in the medical/pharmaceutical industry. Merck and Elsevier need to be shut completely down for this bullshit.
Or, alternatively, start killing off Merck and Elsevier CEOs, NOW. Send the message that we will not tolerate this misleading information.
Well, that's probably a bit extreme, but it's certainly true that lies of this magnitude can result in people being hurt or killed. This isn't a joke.
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but it's certainly true that lies of this magnitude can result in people being hurt or killed.
Which is not even relevant for those companies. They just calculate the price that it costs (risk assessment) and decide to go or not go with it.
And apparently they already decided that it's worth it. Including the possibility of death.
But I don't think they are any different from most big industries. whether it's oil, "food", cars, or whatever...
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Or, alternatively, start killing off Merck and Elsevier CEOs, NOW. Send the message that we will not tolerate this misleading information.
Ever notice that the people who talk this kind of shit aren't the kind of people out there getting the headshots?
If you believe so strongly that we should kill people for this stuff, go forth and do it. Otherwise, please shut your pie hole. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leaves the whole world eating pudding in the dark, and I like pudding but that's not the dark future I was planning for.
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Is the whole company corrupt? (Score:2)
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I don't know about corruption, but I can say that the affinity for money from Elsevier is about 9.999 on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest. It's way up there.
Folks milked money from me while on a health care course to the extent that I was almost giving up. It's insane.
One good thing for them is that they seem to be following trends in IT quite closely, so becoming irrelevant is something in the distant, distant future.
Time for a respectability check (Score:2)
Isn't it about time the reputable scientific journals using Elsevier as a publisher started to look elsewhere?
Paid liars (Score:2)
Which is easier to forgive? The jealous man who violently kills another or the man who runs a company founded for the purpose of deceiving millions of people for profit?
The deceit promoting drug makers wares often leads to the slow and painful deaths and disabilities of hundreds or thousands of people. The jealous man usually kills no more than one or two, one of which is typically himself.
The evil of the paid liars are on par with the evil of those who use technological means to spam, steal and destroy t
I worked for them... (Score:3, Interesting)
If your German, reminds me of this (Score:2)
A skit about a Dr from the dark side of ww2 German medical experiments, trying to sell tampons in the 1950's
Almost saying human trials in concentration camps, then correcting to "laboratory camp"
This is how the world is going to think of peer reviewed US medical journals soon.
Just another creepy doctor with a past trying to sell "medical communications"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwjoAlAqkhw [youtube.com]
Elsewhere Science (Score:2, Interesting)
Poisoning The Well (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone who has conducted legitimate science, or expanded their medical knowledge, based on reading and/or referencing the fake journals, has been disserviced. The false information has been passed along and may continue since not all readers/users could ever be located. Science and medicine have been poisoned by this, and the damage can multiply. The publisher should print a final edition of each, containing only one article, saying that all previous work printed there is suspect at best. The problem could be somewhat mitigated if the editors of every other journal reviewed the articles they've printed to see if they contain references to those journals, and request the author(s) examine them for possible revision removing same. When the authors are no longer reachable the editors should do it.
As somebody... (Score:4, Interesting)
who has published something in an Elsevier Journal (they publish a lot of conference series), i am personnaly disappointed. I wonder if it is possible to retract that article and republish it somewhere else.
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That's putting too much stock in your GP. (Score:2)
You need to keep in mind that there is a fair bit of difference between the "scientific community" and "your average GP" (which is who they are targetting with these publications.)
Also, remember that the guy who is the head editor of Chaos, Solitons and Fractals [blogspot.com] has been printing his own stuff (which is crap) for something like 17 years now, and w
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Skeptics have throwing out a variety of reasons that open-access journals like PLoS will never work. One of those reasons is that traditional print journals have a lot of prestige, just based on their centuries of momentum. Scientists won't want to publish in upstart open-access journals, according to this argument, because nobody will take their publications seriously. Well, this scandal would seem to show that you can't trust a journal just because it comes from a centuries-old publishing house.
In my experience, the prestige is based on journal titles, not publisher. No one respects publications because they're carried by elsevier, they respect them because of the journal title. Not sure if nature is elsevier, but if it came out that 90% of elsevier's publications were fraud like this, researchers would still reguard Nature highly and want to publish in it.
So no, this doesn't elevate open-access journals because it doesn't knock down the established journals.
Science is like an Easter egg hunt where there are too many kids and not enough eggs. Everybody is trying to pad their c.v. with as many papers as possible, in order to land one of those prized research jobs. Because of this, there's been a huge proliferation of small, specialized, low-quality, expensive journals, and that's been creating a lot of problems for librarians.
Well, I feel a little sorry for those
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I disagree with that for several reasons. First, graduate programs cost money. In a state university system, that money comes directly from the taxpayers. If the hypothetical graduate program in Italian at CSU Fresno isn't a center of excellence, then there is no reason for the taxpayers to
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And guys like Kevin Trudeau wouldn't even have a leg to stand on.
Personally, he LOOKS shady, but then again so did Galileo when he dared to say the Earth orbits the sun.
Given how much Big Pharma hates the guy, I wouldn't be surprised if KT was actually right. Why else would a bunch of evil companies hate him so much?