Medical group threatens to sue journal

Written byBob Grant

| 2 min read

A professional medical association has threatened to sue a scientific journal over an linkurl:article;http://www.ijoeh.com/pfds/IJOEH_1304_LaDou02.pdf accusing the group of pandering to industry. The article was published in the most recent issue of the __International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health__ (__IJOEH__), and it claims that members of the linkurl:American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine;http://www.acoem.org/ (ACOEM) have "deeply embedded" conflicts of interest. The article, by the __IJOEH__'s editor and members of the journal's editorial board, also says that the ACOEM, "provides a legitimizing professional association for company doctors, and continues to provide a vehicle to advance the agendas of their corporate sponsors." The 23-page article claims that ACOEM members employed by the petrochemical industry blocked the association from taking a stand against global warming and calls the society's journal, the __Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine__ (__JOEM__), "decidedly pro-industry in its editorial policy and publications." The ACOEM fired back at the __IJOEH__, publishing on its website an open linkurl:letter;http://www.acoem.org/ResponseToIJOEH.aspx from the group's president, Robert McLellan. He writes that the __IJOEH__ article "offers what is essentially a giant conspiracy theory involving virtually all sectors of our profession." According to a linkurl:story;http://chronicle.com/news/article/3454/medical-society-considers-suing-journal on __The Chronicle of Higher Education__'s website, the ACOEM has demanded that the __IJOEH__ retract the article and has threatened a lawsuit against the journal. In a letter to IJOEH's publisher, Sandy Lovegrove, McLellan calls the article and an accompanying essay, "irresponsible, unfair and grossly distorting of the facts." Lovegrove responded to McLellan's letter, writing: "This article was peer reviewed, its content is considered important, and it has been published openly in the hope that it will provide important information to the community." Lovegrove also explains that the ACOEM denied the article's authors access to files which they requested for fact checking before the article was published. This is not the first time that the ACOEM's journal has been called out for questionable activities. In 2005, we linkurl:reported;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/22663/ on a researcher whose editorial critiquing an industry-funded study from another journal was rejected from __JOEM__ and was later published when he bought two pages of ad space in which to print the article. McLellan has submitted a letter to the editor of __IJOEH__ that attempts to defend the ACOEM.

Meet the Author

Bob Grant

From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.

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