March 10th, 2008
Time to out drug test reviewers?
Pfizer is suing the New England Journal of Medicine, aiming to learn the names of anonymous reviewers who conducted peer reviews on its pain relief drug Celebrex.
Donald Kennedy, outgoing editor of Science Magazine (right), says this is a direct threat to all science.
Anonymity is essential to getting honest opinions, he writes, and revealing the names would put those reviewers under political and economic pressure.
Pfizer insists this is no big deal. Subpoenas go out all the time. But is it?
Fact is peer reviewers often out themselves, as Kennedy admitted at an ethics panel last month, telling reporters they peer reviewed papers and what their opinions were.
He also admitted at the conference sponsored by his publisher, the AAAS, that the status of confidentiality agreements involved in peer review has not been determined to exist by the legal system.
The protection of anonymous reviews may in the end become subject to the same balancing test as online anonymity. What we’ve learned in this case is defamatory statements are not protected.
In this case Pfizer is asking for notes which might prove the question one way or another. It’s possible a court might allow an examination of the notes, with the names excised, in order to determine whether defamation has occurred.
At the same time as reviewers’ anonymity is under threat, of course, Nature has decided not to re-institute double-blind peer review, in which reviewers don’t know the names on the papers they’re reviewing, just as authors don’t know reviewers.
Reviewers are the referees in terms of what gets published, and in what form. If the refs become subject to business pressure, does science continue on its way, or is it compromised?
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
Subscribe to ZDNet Healthcare via Email alerts or RSS.
| 03/10/08
