The influence does not usually amount to outright bribery, DeAngelis added. "We just have to be more careful, all of us, and insist that we are not going to be hoodwinked by them, fooled by them," she said.
"The physician should learn from other physicians, not from some detail person," DeAngelis said.
The Consumers Union agreed.
"Pharmaceutical companies need to get out of the business of 'ghostwriting' articles for medical journals," Dr. John Santa, a medical consultant to Consumers Union, said in a statement.
One of the studies in the journal shows that Merck researchers mostly wrote one of the studies alleged to have shown the higher risk of deaths but later added the names of Alzheimer's experts Dr. Leon Thal of the University of California, San Diego, and Steven Ferris of New York University.
Ferris denies his name was simply pasted onto the study and said he was involved in both the research and in writing the article. "I am livid about it," he said in a telephone interview.
Thal died in a plane crash in 2007 but was a prominent Alzheimer's expert who would have been able to catch any errant data showing a risk of deaths or stroke, Ferris added.
"We did participate in the study and we did participate in the process of producing the final manuscript," Ferris said.
