New England Journal of Medicine Wins Peer-Review Court Case

[Atanu Garai/Lists <atanugarai.lists@gmail.com>]

New England Journal of Medicine Wins Peer-Review
Court Case

In the second such ruling in the past month, a federal judge in 
Boston, Massachusetts, yesterday turned down a drug company's 
request to obtain peer-review documents from a major medical 
journal. The judge agreed in a 31 March decision that forcing the 
journal to release the information would harm the integrity of 
the peer-review process.

The case stems from lawsuits filed by consumers and health care 
providers against Pfizer involving two arthritis drugs sold by 
the company that have been linked to serious side effects. Last 
year, Pfizer issued subpoenas seeking peer-review documents and 
unpublished manuscripts from several journals that had published 
studies on the drugs, including the New England Journal of 
Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, 
JAMA.

In January, the company sued JAMA and NEJM to force them to 
comply. The editors of both journals argued that releasing the 
documents would harm the peer-review process, which relies on 
confidentiality so that reviewers will feel free to be candid. 
Last month, a judge in Chicago, Illinois, agreed with JAMA and 
denied Pfizer's request

Now, NEJM has won its case, too, winding up the matter for these 
two leading journals. Unlike the Chicago court, Magistrate Judge 
Leo Sorokin of the U.S. District Court for the District of 
Massachusetts agreed that information Pfizer wanted--which the 
company had narrowed to anonymous comments provided to 
authors--could be relevant to the company's defense. But Sorokin 
found that "the NEJM's interest in maintaining the 
confidentiality of the peer review process is a very significant 
one ... and tip [sic] the scales in favor of the NEJF.  NEJM's 
editors said in a statement that they are "pleased that the 
confidentiality of the peer-review process remains intact."

Atanu Garai