JAMA journal quietly replaces diabetes drug commentary after learning co-author is working for drugmaker

JAMA Internal Medicine has replaced a commentary they published last week on the risks of two diabetes drugs, but you wouldn’t know the new version was a replacement.

One change is a correction about whether Byetta and Januvia carry so-called “black box” warnings from the FDA. The original sentence:

Because both drugs already carry US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) black box warnings for the risk of pancreatitis, why is this study important?

It now reads:

JAMA’s first-ever Expression of Concern appears for hip protector study

JAMA has issued its first-ever Expression of Concern over a 2007 study of hip protectors in the elderly that came under scrutiny from Federal regulators.

As the Boston Globe was first to report yesterday, the journal’s editor and executive deputy editor wrote in a notice published online:

Coming clean: A major figure in cardiology publishes a lengthy conflict of interest correction in JAMA

Authors’ financial disclosures can be a thorny issue for scientific journals.  There’s often confusion over just what should be listed as a conflict of interest, and when relationships are revealed after papers are published, lack of disclosure sometimes leads to corrections.

For example, the Journal of Cell Sciences recently published this:

Potti and colleagues retract 2008 JAMA paper

Anil Potti‘s retraction count is now eight with the withdrawal of a 2008 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Here’s the notice, which appeared online in JAMA sometime yesterday: