BMJ Names Panel Members To Assessment Disputed Statin Posts

The BMJ has launched the names of an outdoors professional panel who will decide the fate of two posts that are the subject of a heated dispute.

As previously reported, final week the BMJ published a correction to two papers published last year, explaining that the two papers had  inaccurately overstated the incidence of the adverse results of statins. However, a fierce critic of the papers, the head of the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ (CTT) Collaboration, Rory Collins, still insisted upon a full retraction. In an editorial published in BMJ, the journal’s editor-in-chief, Fiona Godlee, wrote that she was  uncertain “whether the error is sufficient for retraction, offered that the incorrect statements had been in every case secondary to the article’s major focus.” As a end result the BMJ has convened an outdoors panel of authorities “with no canine in this battle.”

Iona Heath, former chair of the Royal School of General Practitioners and of The BMJ’s ethics committee, will be the chair of the panel. There are 6 further members:

• Stephen Evans, professor of pharamcoepidemiology at the London College of Hygeine and Tropical Medication


• Curt Furberg, professor emeritus of public wellness sciences at Wake Forest University College of Medication, North Carolina


• Julia Hippisley-Cox, professor of epidemiology and common practice at the University of Nottingham


• Harlan Krumholz, Harold H. Hines Jr. professor of medication (cardiology) and professor of investigative medication and of public well being (health policy) at Yale School of Medication


• Cynthia Mulrow, senior deputy editor at Annals of Internal Medication and adjunct professor of medicine at Texas University of Health Science Center


•  Paul Wilks, vice president of innovation, Patients Like Me

In addition to determining whether or not the report must be retracted, the panel will also “review and comment on the process by which the articles or blog posts were published” and “on how criticisms and complaints against the articles or blog posts had been raised, and how the journal responded.” The report will be delivered to the BMJ by July 31, 2014 and will be published on the journal’s site.

BMJ Names Panel Members To Assessment Disputed Statin Posts