What is a real medical journal? I guess it is in the eye of the beholder. I believe that our Placebo Journal is real in a fake sort of way. At least we don't purport to have real research and try to convince doctors to prescribe one drug over the other. In fact, our drugs are fake. Confused? Well, you should be. There is information that Merck paid Elsevier, a huge medical publishing firm, to produce six bogus medical journals between 2000 and 2005. They were all made to look like legitimate, peer-reviewed medical journals and used for marketing purposes which really means these journals were made to impress doctors and to get them to prescribe their drug. The website called The Scientist was told by a spokesperson from Elsevier that they produced six titles that were a “series of sponsored article publications” released by its Australia branch. It makes you wonder how many other "look alikes" are out there. Now we know what the drug companies are doing with all the money they are saving by no longer giving out pens and mugs to doctors. As far as the publishing companies, this is just a sign of how bad business is right now and what they will do for cash. Medical journals and throwaways are dying out there. Some are wafer thin now (Medical Economics) or are just going digital (Diversions). And they all mocked us at the Placebo Journal because we didn't accept or rely on advertising. At least we didn't produce fake material. Wait a minute, we do.
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