There is a lot of madness when it comes to psychiatry. One recent example of madness–perhaps insanity– is this faux peer review journal. At least there seems to be a growing counter-current in medicine that wants to sever the umbilical cord between doctors and drug companies as well as a vibrant grass roots move to embrace a different politics in and of madness.
May 4, 2009
Mad developments
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o_O did they pay the people from scigen to make some random content for them too???
Comment by h0mee — May 4, 2009 @ 4:42 pm
The fake journal is so unethical it’s difficult to imagine people proposing it seriously, let alone carrying it out. And Merck was assisted in this blatantly anti-academic campaign by Elsevier, one of the respected pillars of the closed-access academic journal trade. The publisher should have known better.
If i were in any way affiliated with a journal published by Elsevier, i would push the journal to switch publishers in disgust, even if that means changing the name of the journal, or at least to issue an explicit, public rebuke and demand for apology and change in policy. These approaches have been used against the publisher for other issues in the past, with some success. Elsevier should make a formal apology, and should set up a strong independent ethical review board with the power to govern its own actions.
Comment by Daniel Kahn Gillmor — May 4, 2009 @ 6:46 pm
Elsevier has been involved in so many dodgy operations, all academic publishers/journals should pull out asap. This sort of thing is ridiculously messed up. SO yes, I agree.
I also sort of can’t believe that this journal would ever come to be (as you put it, it is SO unethical) and yet until someone proves otherwise, big pharma has engaged in so many shady practices that it does lie, very sadly, within the realm of the believable.
Comment by Biella — May 4, 2009 @ 6:57 pm