Merck Authors Kill By Deleting Risk Data

We have recently obtained information regarding inaccuracies in data in the report of the VIGOR study… …Three myocardial infarctions…were not included in the data submitted to the Journal. …Until the end of November 2005, we believed that these were late events that were not known to the authors in time to be included in the article published in the Journal on November 23, 2000. It now appears, however, from a memorandum dated July 5, 2000, that was obtained by subpoena in the Vioxx litigation and made available to the Journal, that at least two authors knew about the three additional myocardial infarctions at least two weeks before the authors submitted the first of two revisions and 4 ½ months before publication of the article. ...Lack of inclusion of the three events resulted in an understatement of the differences in risk… …We determined from a computer diskette that some of these data were deleted from the VIGOR manuscript two days before it was initially submitted to the Journal on May 18, 2000. Taken together, these inaccuracies and deletions call into question the integrity of the data on adverse cardiovascular events in this article. We have asked the authors to submit a correction to the Journal.

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