Dick Puddlecote has a blog post today about the BMJ being anti-science. He quotes from the BAT (British American Tobacco) Chief Scientific Officer’s rapid response to the journal. Freedom2Choose agrees with Dick and would like to add a little more.

http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/the-bmj-is-anti-sci

httence.htmlp://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f5193?tab=responses

From the BAT Chief Scientific Officer:

“Ten years ago the BMJ was “passionately anti-tobacco” but also “passionately pro-debate and pro-science” and further commented that the type of ban recently instituted “would be anti-science””

We register every clinical trial in advance, and commit to publishing the results. Every academic who receives funding for fundamental research from BAT today is encouraged to publish any and all results that arise from the project, irrespective of the findings, as well as to acknowledge the funding source. “ [Unlike the pharmaceutical and anti-smoking industries].

This blog post will examine some earlier issues involving the BMJ, tobacco and pharma.

Richard Smith used to be editor in chief of the BMJ and chairman of BMJ Publications Ltd (and has also posted a response). He resigned in 2005 and subsequently wrote a book called ‘The Trouble with Medical Journals’.

In his book, he states that the majority of income for the journal comes from reprints. These are principally copies of pharmaceutical trials and articles used by the companies for promotional purposes.

Another major source of income is advertising. During early 2008 a blogger recorded the proportion of adverts in the BMJ by type of industry and found that around 90% and frequently much more, were by pharma companies:

http://scientific-misconduct.blogspot.com/ bmj advertising

Intimidating witnesses and attempting to pervert the course of justice is a very serious crime. Whether what happened in the following case was actually a crime or not is not clear. But in the public interest and for fair comment, we have manually transcribed the following from page 130 of Richard Smith’s book:

“…Ken MacCrae, a first-class statistician who had been an advisor to the BMJ. There might be better statisticians than Ken. I don’t know, but I’ve never met one with a better sense of humour and with such an ability to explain statistics … This ability was obviously invaluable in court cases and made Ken highly desirable as an expert witness. Another characteristic of Ken was a delight in being as politically incorrect as he could and still be amusing…”

The BMJ had reluctantly had to part company with Ken when he agreed to give evidence on behalf of tobacco companies. He would be giving evidence against Sir Richard Doll. Britain’s leading epidemiologist and one of the first scientists to identify smoking as the main cause of lung cancer. Ken’s argument was that he was no different from a barrister. Justice required that the tobacco companies had good statistical advice. Most statisticians wouldn’t dream of advising tobacco companies.” [presumably because they would be sacked like Ken was from the BMJ].

“The same thinking meant that he had always been willing to give evidence on behalf of pharmaceutical companies… “ [apparently not a problem for the BMJ].

[Smith then describes how he helped win a case for a pharmaceutical company] … “Hours after giving his evidence Ken, who was around 60, collapsed and died.”

The bolding and square brackets have been added for emphasis.

The court case that Ken had agreed to testify in was the McTear vs Imperial Tobacco case. This is confirmed in the Judgement:

“[5.844] In re-examination Dr. Lewis said that he was aware that Professor MacRae, a biostatistician with a great deal of epidemiological experience who worked at the University of Surrey, had been giving advice in this case, but died during 2002. Dr Lewis had become involved thereafter in active preparations for giving evidence himself.”

Dick Puddlecote’s original blog post is well worth reading too:

http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/the-bmj-discards-its-integrity.html

As is the response to the BMJ from Freedom2Choose Chairman, Dave Atherton:

The British Medical Journal Embraces Junk Science