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Medical Journal Faults Past Ethical Lapses
By Hans P. Johnson
Following up on newspaper investigations into the reviewing practices of the New England Journal of Medicine, the journal’s editors announced in February that they had found nineteen separate instances of ethical breaches in their selection of contributing writers.
The violations, spanning the last three years, involved publication of reviews by guest authors who had received corporate grants for projects similar to the subjects of their reviews. The discovery led journal editors to toughen standards for making assignments. "I think we will exclude authors now or in the future with any relevant commercial support, deputy editor Robert Utiger told the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The Los Angeles Times uncovered potential ethical lapses at the journal in late 1999, when it noted that a writer chosen to review antibaldness applications was being paid by the drugs’ manufacturers. Subsequent reports by the newspaper identified a cluster of other similarly problematic assignments.
In a published letter of apology to readers, journal editors lamented their own "failure to apply our policy correctly" and accepted primary responsibility for mishandling the selection of reviewers, noting that in many cases "the authors had informed us of these arrangements."
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