As if we couldn't see through journals already.

Surprise, surprise: a major medical journal got busted for printing material in which the author had a conflict of interest. The really surprising news is that this is news at all.

The vast majority who publish in the major medical journals either make their living by prescribing pharmaceuticals (aka physicians) or they make their living figuring out what pharmaceuticals do in pitri dishes with some cells (aka medical researchers). The astute reader can pick up the common thread.

The "news" is that the media only considers work as a consultant to be a conflict. If one's livelihood is in some less direct way tied to the profit-making machine behind clinical medicine, it is considered no conflict at all.

Further, that this instance caught a corporate attempt to whitewash environmental problems is clear evidence that this sort of whitewashing happens. And it happens with the aid of the medical complex itself, regardless of the real health consequences those environmental issues are causing. So much for that stuff about fist doing no harm.

Medical journals have their loyalty, health be damned.

How is one to explain the fact that positive studies are more likely to be displayed prominently in medical journals, if not as a result of bias? What happened to the mythic Scientific Objectivism? Now scientists can study the statistically significant relationship between statistical significance and journal coverage.

Journals, like vitually all other mass media, are vehicles for selling. The strategy of catching a token "conflict of interest" is that it leads one to believe that such cases are rare, rather than status quo.