In its efforts to sell fatally flawed drugs, Merck produced and published a fake journal, the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine. Elsevier was quite happy taking their money for printing it—and keeping quiet about it, too. Perhaps the marketing department at Merck should be given an award for its creativity…right before they and everyone involved is marched off to prison.
It was so blatantly self-serving that one must wonder why it didn’t raise eyebrows in the medical world. The one thing that gives it the appearance of legitimacy is that Elsevier produced it. Two complete photocopies in PDF format are available for your perusal:
Articles called “Reviews” were generally brief, poorly documented, poorly or not referenced, and often didn’t give authors’ names, other than to specify “B&J”, presumably meaning “Bone and Joint” as a reference to the fake journal. Most, if not all, of the studies were reprints or summaries of existing studies that had previously been printed in Elsevier journals.
(insert super hero voice) At least Free Market capitalism will take care of this! They will lose all their business and be shut down because consumers will no longer by their products! Victory!