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. 2005 May;2(5):e138.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0020138. Epub 2005 May 17.

Medical journals are an extension of the marketing arm of pharmaceutical companies

Richard Smith  1
Affiliations

Medical journals are an extension of the marketing arm of pharmaceutical companies

Richard Smith. PLoS Med. 2005 May.

Abstract

Medical journals have become dependent on the pharmaceutical industry for their survival, which can have a corrupting influence on their content, argues Smith, the former editor of the BMJ.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: RS was an editor for the BMJ for 25 years. For the last 13 of those years, he was the editor and chief executive of the BMJ Publishing Group, responsible for the profits of not only the BMJ but of the whole group, which published some 25 other journals. He stepped down in July 2004. He is now a member of the board of the Public Library of Science, a position for which he is not paid.

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