Britain’s Lancet : Famous Medical Journal Under Attack

The editor of Lancet, 183-year-old renowned medical journal from Britain, is under attack from the Nobel prizewinners in the Royal Society over what is described as ‘publication of flawed research’.

The Times reports that “BRITAIN’S premier medical journal is endangering public health by publishing unfounded scare stories, 30 of the country’s leading scientists say today.

“Poor editorial judgment at The Lancet has fuelled panic over issues such as the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, hormone replacement therapy and genetically modified (GM) crops, the eminent medical researchers charge in a letter that the journal has refused to publish.

“The signatories, thirty fellows of the Royal Society, two of whom are Nobel laureates, accuse it of favouring ‘desperate headline-seeking’ over sound science, to the detriment of public health. ‘Under the editorship of Richard Horton, the publication of badly conducted and poorly refereed scare stories has had devastating consequences for individual and public health, in the UK and abroad, and carried a high economic cost,’ they say.

“The letter, seen by The Times, responds to a Lancet editorial last month that criticised the Royal Society as a ‘shrill and superficial cheerleader for British science’ that no longer makes major contributions to medicine.

“Fellows of the national science academy were outraged by the attack, which they saw as a cheap shot from a journal with a record of publishing research with serious flaws. Last year, The Lancet partially retracted the 1998 study led by Andrew Wakefield that triggered the MMR vaccine scare. Dr Horton admitted the study was ‘entirely flawed’. Many scientists believe the paper should have been rejected by the journal’s referees.

“It has also been criticised for publishing research by Arpad Pusztai that claimed to show that GM potatoes produced worrying biological changes in rats. A Royal Society committee found it was based on poorly conducted experiments.”

According to Wikipedia the Lancet is one of the oldest and most respected peer-reviewed medical journals in the world, published weekly by Elsevier, part of Reed Elsevier. It was founded in 1823 by Thomas Wakley, who named it after the surgical instrument called a lancet, as well as an arched window (“to let in light”).

“The present editor-in-chief is Richard Horton. The Lancet takes a stand on several important medical issues – recent examples include criticism of the WHO, rejecting the efficacy of homoeopathy as a therapeutic option and its disapproval of Reed Elsevier’s links with the arms industry.”