EMBARGOED UNTIL TUESDAY 19 SEPTEMBER 2006

Medical journals require urgent reform, says former editor of BMJ

Medical journals are over influenced by the pharmaceutical industry, too fond of the mass media and neglectful of patients, writes Richard Smith, a former editor of the BMJ in a new book.

The Trouble with Medical Journals, published by the Royal Society of Medicine Press, is the first book written by Dr Smith following his departure from the BMJ.

“Medical journals have many problems and need reform. The research they contain is hard to interpret and prone to bias and peer review, the process at the heart of journals and all of science, is deeply flawed,”

said Dr Smith.

Dr Smith said the book was an honest analysis of trends in medical journal publishing and a frank account of his own experiences as Editor of the BMJ.

“I went away to Venice to write this book and I was rather taken aback by how negatively it turned out,”

he says.

“When I put together all the evidence on journals I was surprised by the extent of the problems.”

“Medical journals have increasingly become creatures of the drug industry. The authors of studies in journals have often had little do with the work they are reporting.
The use of ghost writers by pharmaceutical companies is rampant and many studies have conflicts of interest that are not declared,”

said Dr Smith.

Dr Smith estimates that research fraud is probably common in the 30,000 or so scientific journals published throughout the world.

The book examines a number of dramatic cases of questionable research including:

• Andrew Wakefield's MMR paper published in the Lancet in 1998;
• The VIGOR paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2000;
• Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk, who claimed in 2005 to have produced stem cells from adult cells, which opened up new ways to treat Parkinson’s and other degenerative diseases.

“It is increasingly apparent that many of the studies journals contain are fraudulent and the scientific community has not responded adequately to the problem of fraud,”

said Dr Smith.

The Trouble with Medical Journals examines the important relationships between journals and patients, the mass media, pharmaceutical companies, open access and the developing world.

Dr Kamran Abbasi, Editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine said:

“Richard Smith’s portrayal of the world of medical journals and medical publishing will cause outrage but it is an entertaining and insightful challenge to the idea that what medical journals publish is sacrosanct.

“Medical journals influence policy makers, doctors, and ultimately patient care, the best example is the MMR crisis. Smith’s book tells it like it is and the truth hurts – money can corrupt science and medical research. Better to hurt the misplaced pride of editors, publishers and industry than harm patients,”

Dr Abbasi said.

Richard Smith worked for the BMJ for 25 years. He was Editor of the BMJ and Chief Executive of the BMJ Publishing Group from 1991 to 2004. He is one of the most influential people within medical journals. Dr Smith is now Chief Executive of United Healthcare Europe.

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The Trouble with Medical Journals by Richard Smith is published by the Royal Society of Medicine Press in September 2006. It is available in all good bookstores and online at www.rsmpress.co.uk and Amazon.

The Trouble with Medical Journals will be launched on 19 September 2006 at The Royal Society of Medicine, London.

Review copies are available on request.

RRP: £19.95, ISBN: 1-85315-673-6, 256 pp, Paperback