This is old news, but philosophers may be amused to know that Elsevier once put out a publication that looked just like a real scholarly journal but was not. It contained only articles reprinted and summarized from elsewhere, most of which were favourable to drugs produced by the pharmaceutical giant, Merck. The journal styled itself the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, and was circulated to doctors, who presumably took it for a real journal.
The story broke in The Australian (a newspaper) in 2009 when it was part of a lawsuit against Merck's Australian subsidiary regarding Vioxx. According to The Scientist
In testimony provided at the trial . . . George Jelinek, an Australian physician and long-time member of the World Association of Medical Editors, reviewed four issues of the journal that were published from 2003-2004. An "average reader" (presumably a doctor) could easily mistake the publication for a "genuine" peer reviewed medical journal, he said in his testimony. . . [he said].
He also stated that four of the 21 articles featured in the first issue he reviewed referred to Fosamax. In the second issue, nine of the 29 articles related to Vioxx, and another 12 to Fosamax. All of these articles presented positive conclusions regarding the MSDA drugs. "I can understand why a pharmaceutical company would collect a number of research papers with results favourable to their products and make these available to doctors," Jelinek said at the trial. "This is straightforward marketing."
Jelinek also pointed out several "review" articles that only cited one or two references. He described one of these articles as "simply a summary of an already published article," and noted that they were authored by "B&J Editorial."
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