In the June 5, 2002 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association
there are several studies and articles on the weaknesses and possible
conflicts of articles that appear in a variety of medical journals. The
story also reported in the June 5, 2002 Intelihealth starts by stating, "
One of world's leading medical journals has put itself and its competitors
under the microscope with research showing that published studies are
sometimes misleading and frequently fail to mention weaknesses."
Rob Logan, director of the Science Journalism Center at the University of
Missouri-Columbia stated " (this) underscores that the findings presented in
the press and medical journals are not always facts or as certain as they
seem". Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, JAMA's editor said that problems are most
likely to occur in research funded by drug companies, which have a vested
interest in findings that make their products look good. The article also
stated that several Journal editors are also concerned that drug
manufacturers sometimes unduly influence how researchers report research
results, and even suppress unfavorable findings.
Dr. Jeffrey Drazen, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine
addresses the issue of conflicts of interest by stating that many top
journals require researchers to disclose any ties to drug companies.
However, he admits there is a weakness in that system in that editors rely
on researchers to be truthful. Additionally, the experts who do the peer
reviews are not accountable. Most print medical journals allow peer
reviewers to remain anonymous. This means that if the peer reviewers have
conflicts of interest it will go unnoticed.
Dr. Jim Nuovo of the University of California at Davis stated in one
article that medical journal studies on new treatments often use only the
most favorable statistic in reporting results. He went on to say, "Most
reported only the "relative risk reduction" linked to a specific treatment,
which is the percentage difference between drug-treated patients and those
in a placebo group. That figure is more misleading than the "absolute risk
reduction," which measures the actual difference between the treatment
results compared with the placebo group." Nuovo said. "For example, if 5.1
percent of placebo-treated patients had heart attacks compared with 3.7
percent of drug patients, the absolute risk reduction in the drug group
would be 1.4 percent. But researchers could use the relative risk reduction
to claim that the drug lowers the risk of a heart attack 34 percent - which
sounds a lot more impressive."