Editors on leading medical journals have co-produced research claiming that rivals have been publishing drug trials that may be little more than marketing by pharmaceutical firms.
The editor in chief of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and a former editor of PLOS Medicine are co-authors of a new paper that argues that a substantial minority of papers in The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) are suspected “marketing trials” designed to promote a new drug.
Six members of the study team looked at 194 drug trials published in five medical journals in 2011, and independently assessed whether they thought they might have been designed for marketing purposes. Where four or more agreed, the trial was categorised as suspected marketing.
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