Search

The article reports that surgeons participating in clinical trials of a bone-growth protein from medical-device maker Medtronic Inc. neglected to mention medical complications from those trials including cancer and infections in research papers they wrote about them. Among those surgeons were John Dimar, Steven Glassman, and Kenneth Burkus, who collectively have received $10 million or more from Medtronic since 2001.

A new analysis suggests that blood pressure drugs may benefit heart disease patients even if they don't have high blood pressure. The paper, published in the March 2 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, is an analysis of 25 published studies, and the authors cautioned that randomized controlled trials must be done to confirm the results. (They reported no financial ties to drug makers.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science, so the story goes, is a meticulously built edifice. Discoveries balance on ones that preceded them. Research is stimulated by studies that went on before. But what, then, can explain the findings by two investigators at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine? The researchers, Karen A. Robinson and Dr. Steven N. Goodman, looked at how often published papers on clinical trials in medicine cite previous clinical trials addressing the same question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports that the Public Library of Science, also known as PLoS, is starting a freely accessible online journal called PLoS Clinical Trials. Like other PLoS journals, it will not charge for subscriptions but will ask authors to pay a fee if their papers are accepted. It will make its debut in March. Open access, says Emma Veitch, the new journal's publications manager, makes it possible to publish the sorts of trials which otherwise might not get out there. In contrast, journals that rely on subscriptions to pay the bills, she says, will feel the pressure to publish high-profile studies that will attract readers' attention.