Big Pharma quer abrir o processo de revisão por pares

A Pfizer por meio de seus advogados pede que The New England Journal of Medicine "abra" o seu processo de revisão. Nada contra a revista, autores ou revisores, somente para ajudar na defesa da empresa. Nobre, não?

Acho que trata-se mais de manobra dos "tubarões" (advogados) do que política institucional da Pfizer. Afinal, qualquer empresa sabe que há momentos nos quais o sigilo é a base do negócio. A revisão por pares na editoria científica é um desses momentos, quando o negócio é a ciência. Abaixo, reproduzo o post do blog to The Wall Street Journal. Porém, o debate aberto nesse post é prá lá de ácido e, repleto de acusações e ressentimentos. Prova que a revisão confidencial por pares tem sua razão de ser e existir.

Pfizer wants the New England Journal of Medicine to turn over confidential peer reviews of certain studies published in the journal — and the company’s filed a motion in federal court to compel the journal to produce the documents. The journal Science writes in an editorial that it’s “a fishing expedition” that could have a chilling effect on scientific publishing. The company says it needs the documents to defend itself in court cases involving its painkillers Celebrex and Bextra, in which plaintiffs lawyers have cited studies published in the NEJM. But the author of the editorial, Donald Kennedy, a former FDA commissioner and the current editor of Science, argues that if Pfizer succeeds it could make scientists wary of reviewing papers submitted to research journals. The peer review process is used to vet papers before publication and is a cornerstone of the research world. Pfizer says the “public has no interest in protecting the editorial process of a scientific journal,” according to a legal filing cited by Kennedy. “Say what?” he responds. “Doesn’t the public want access to credible biomedical science? … Do medical advocacy groups really have no use for knowledge that might help their members?” Kennedy concludes that “if efforts of this kind were to succeed, the sad day might come when Science would have to add a firm caveat emptor to its instructions for peer reviewers.” Pfizer didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment this morning. Update: Pfizer just emailed us a statement. “Subpoenas are a routine part of fact gathering in any litigation by both plaintiffs and defendants,” the statement says. “Indeed, in this litigation, both parties served subpoenas on a number of authors and/or medical and scientific journals.”