The Scientist has reported that Merck created a fake, but real-sounding, peer reviewed journal - Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine - and published favorable looking data for its products in it. Merck paid Elsevier to publish the journal, which neither appears in MEDLINE or has a website, according to The Scientist.

The sad part of this was that Fosamax was a pretty decent drug. Merck's literature to physicians said , "As published in Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, Fosamax outperforms all other medications...." Given the huge number of journals, most doctors and researchers wouldn't have known that the journal was bogus. Elsevier's moniker is there to give the article credibility, but now that the cat is out of the bag, they have egg on their faces.

Do drug manufacturers routinely do this? I never heard of this sort of behavior before. What do you think about this?

Full article here.