Scientists Accuse Toxicology Journal of Industry Ties, Urge Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest By LILA GUTERMAN
Forty-five scientists sent a letter Tuesday to the publishers of the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, accusing it of being little more than an industry mouthpiece.
"The editorial bias of the journal is pro-industry and essentially it reads like an industry trade publication, but it's masked as a peer-reviewed journal," said Virginia A. Sharpe, director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest's Integrity in Research project, who coordinated the letter. "Neither the press which is the owner of the journal nor the editorial board has instituted any kind of publication ethics standards. ... There is no credible peer-review process."
The journal is the official publication of the International Society of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, which takes as its mission ensuring "that the best scientific evidence, applied in an unbiased and transparent manner, underpins the formulation and implementation of policy and regulations of health, safety, and the environment." The society is sponsored by numerous companies affected by government regulations, including Dow Agrosciences, Merck and Company, and the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.
The scientists urged the publisher, Academic Press, a unit of Elsevier Science Inc., to sever ties to the society, as well as to reconfigure the journal's editorial board. The editors' ties to industry are unmistakable, Ms. Sharpe said. But no disclosure of those links appears in the journal's masthead, nor is disclosure required for authors of peer-reviewed papers.
She said that journal-article authors are sometimes paid by companies, which then use their articles to argue for fewer regulations. As a case in point, the scientists mention in the letter that the editor of the journal, Gio B. Gori, received $30,000 from the Tobacco Institute to write an article titled "Mainstream and Environmental Tobacco Smoke," which appeared in the journal in 1991. "The article dismisses the dangers of secondhand smoke. This was used as evidence by the tobacco industry to try to thwart EPA regulations," Ms. Sharpe said.
Lynn R. Goldman, a co-signer of the scientists' letter, said that conflict-of-interest disclosure has only recently become the norm for medical journals and some scientific journals, and that Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology may simply be behind the times.
But Ms. Goldman, a professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins University, said that the significance of the research covered by the journal persuaded her to sign the letter. "This journal is publishing articles that have implications for how we manage the health of whole populations, whole communities. I think it's especially important to have high standards of ethics when you're working in that kind of field."
Ronald L. Melnick, a toxicologist at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and another co-signer, goes even further, accusing the journal of bias. "Many of the articles are opinion pieces based on a look at the literature, which might or might not hold up if a similar article was submitted to a more scientific journal," he said.
The recipients of the letter at Academic Press and Elsevier Science did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. Mr. Gori, the journal's editor, did not want to discuss the details of the letter until he could confer with Elsevier representatives. "All I can say is we are still living in a free country that has a First Amendment," he said. "Suggesting that Elsevier should suppress a publication because somebody doesn't agree with it is the height of arrogance."