Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14476

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Silverman E.
The Case of the Disappearing Journal Article
Pharmalot 2008 Oct 21
http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/10/the-case-of-the-disappearing-journal-article/#more-16761

Notes:

The article which is the subject of this piece is:
HARVARD HEALTH POLICY REVIEW
Vol. 9, No. 1, Spring 2008, pp. 46-55
Ethical Standards for Healthcare Journal Editors: A Case Report and Recommendations
Dr. Donald W. Light and Dr. Rebecca N. Warburton
http://www.hhpr.org/currentissue/archives.php
Full text freely accessible

Full text:

Last week, Kevin Huang, the editor of the Harvard Health Policy Review, a student-run journal with a tiny circulation, received an e-mail from Richard Frank, a Harvard Medical School health economics professor, to say that a recently published article (http://www.hhpr.org/currentissue/)about medical journals and ethical standards was unfair to Frank and two of his colleagues. As a result, he would no longer serve as an advisor to the publication. In response, Huang pulled the site down for further review.

Why the fuss? The objectionable article was written by Donald Light and Rebecca Warburton, who chronicled an episode that took place four years ago concerning an earlier article they wrote for the Journal of Health Economics. In that piece, they chastised a widely cited study (http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/econ/dimasi2003.pdf) published in 2003 in the same journal that claimed it cost $802 million to develop a new drug. The lead author, by the way, works for the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development.

They questioned the estimate, in part, because the Tufts Center receives industry funding, a point not noted in the original JHE article (although the authors did not receive industry funding for the study). And there was heated debate involving three JHE editors – Harvard’s Frank, Tom McGuire and Joe Newhouse – over various accusations contained in the critique. Thus ensued a year-long battle in which passages were fought over, responses and counter-responses were written, bad blood boiled over, and a lawsuit was even threatened.

Ultimately, their critique was published. But their latest article in the Harvard journal, which cites the episode as a case study of ethical standards at medical journals, appears to have revived the ruckus. Some academics began complaining that Frank used his influence to squelch the article after Light, who is a professor of comparative health systems and policy at the University of Medicine & Dentristy-New Jersey, alerted others to Huang’s decision to pull down the web site. “I think it’s very peculiar the whole web site was shut down and I’m wondering why it really was done,” he tells us.

We contacted Huang, who wrote: “The site was temporarily taken down because we panicked. We thought that we had might have inadvertently published something that was potentially very biased and/or unsubstantiated. Our articles are closely reviewed by the editors immediately in charge of them, but not all the articles are closely scrutinized by all members of the senior staff. More specifically, I felt completely uninformed about what potential controversy, if any, the article would raise as it had not been flagged for my attention before and I didn’t want us to continue to publish something that I didn’t fully understand.”

For his part, Frank tells us: “I sent an e-mail to Huang saying that I felt the way they dealt with the article – by not fact checking or offering the ability to respond- I felt it violated my sense of fair play. That’s their call, but I just didn’t want to be associated with the publication anymore…My e-mail never indicated any action on my part, other than not wanting to be affiliated with the publication. It was a personal decision…Whatever action they took was on their own…Given they had not sought my advice in a long time, I didn’t think it was anything but an opportunity for me to sever my ties…I saw it as a means to not influence them through my continued position. If anything, it puts less pressure on them. I didn’t want to use my position to influence them.”

Epiloque: Huang writes us a short while ago to say the site is back up and the article by Light and Warburton is accessible once again – along with a profuse apology. As of now, there is no accompanying response from Frank, Newhouse or McGuire, but he indicated that a written reply may yet appear.