Peer Review has Credibility Gaps

Excerpt: Recent disclosures of fraudulent or flawed studies in medical and scientific journals have called into question as never before the merits of their peer-review system.

NYT: For Science's Gatekeepers, a Credibility Gap by LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN, M.D., published: May 2, 2006

Virtually every major scientific and medical journal has been humbled recently by publishing findings that are later discredited. The flurry of episodes has led many people to ask why authors, editors and independent expert reviewers all failed to detect the problems before publication.

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Journals have devolved into information-laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry, say Dr. Richard Smith, the former editor of BMJ, the British medical journal, and Dr. Richard Horton, the editor of The Lancet, also based in Britain.

The journals rely on revenues from industry advertisements. But because journals also profit handsomely by selling drug companies reprints of articles reporting findings from large clinical trials involving their products, editors may "face a frighteningly stark conflict of interest" in deciding whether to publish such a study, Dr. Smith said.

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