Leaked Study Results?
This is seamy. According to the New York Times, one of the New England Journal of Medicine's physician manuscript reviewers is accused of leaking confidential results of an Avandia study to GlaxoSmithKline.
A key member of the Senate said Wednesday that a prominent diabetes expert leaked an unpublished and confidential medical journal article to GlaxoSmithKline last year, tipping the company to the imminent publication of safety questions involving the company’s diabetes drug Avandia.
The doctor, Steven M. Haffner of the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, faxed the article to the drug maker after agreeing to read it as part of the peer-review process for the New England Journal of Medicine, according to a statement Wednesday by Senator Charles E. Grassley.
“The most troubling aspect of this situation is that the integrity of another aspect of the scientific process is called into question — scientific peer review,” Mr. Grassley’s statement said. The peer-review process, he said, is meant to ensure “that other scientists will judge a study’s quality before it is made public.”
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