CYA Over At NEJM Regarding Vioxx

The weekend Wall Street Journal reports (sorry, no link; I just have the hard copy) that editor Gregory Curfman is strongly defending the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) for its handling of the revelation that Merck & Co. omitted data regarding three heart attacks from its article submitted to NEJM regarding the drug Vioxx. Apparently Dr. Curfman was *surprised* at his deposition last month:

The discovery of the deleted heart attacks was prompted by information contained in internal Merck documents and provided to Dr. Curfman during the deposition last month. The documents indicated to Dr. Curfman that Merck researchers on the study knew of the three heart attacks in July 2000, more than four months before the journal published the Vigor paper - plenty of time to have included them in the report.

Yet, how is this possible? Hasn't NEJM been paying attention? Earth to NEJM! I mean, it's been clear that Merck & Co. completely corrupted the scientific review process of Vioxx: I blogged myself about it in May and August of this year, after reading open-press articles in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. If the problem was obvious then, why isn't Dr. Curfman, who has a stake in the process, better informed? Or is it precisely because he has a stake in the process that he can't handle dissonant information? This a CYA process gone awry!

Apparently the third Vioxx trial ended in a mistrial today: it'll be fun to read the details!