The trouble with medical journals: bias, fraud, and lack of OA

Amazon is now taking pre-orders for Richard Smith's book, The Trouble with Medical Journals (Royal Society of Medicine, October 2006). See this unsigned review in today's issue of Life Style Extra:

Medical journals have become "creatures of the drug industry" rife with fraudulent research and packed with articles ghost written by pharmaceutical companies, an ex British Medical Journal editor has claimed.

In a highly critical book Dr Richard Smith, who edited the BMJ for 13 years, said: "Medical journals have many problems and need reform. The research they contain is hard to interpret and prone to bias and peer review. The process at the heart of journals and all of science, is deeply flawed." ...

The Trouble with Medical Journals examines the important relationships between journals and patients, the mass media, pharmaceutical companies, open access and the developing world.