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• Comment on the Annals' choice of editorialists
  Joel A. Block
  Published on: 13 April 2016

• Published on: 13 April 2016

  Comment on the Annals' choice of editorialists

  • Joel A. Block, Professor and Director, Section of Rheumatology

  Dear Editor,

  I was surprised to find in the current issue of Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases that the lead editorial (“Leader” in British English) was written by the co-authors of one of the manuscripts reviewed in the same editorial (1,2).

  Traditionally, readers of the peer-reviewed biomedical literature have come to expect that editorialists bring an unbiased perspective to the papers or topics bei...

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  Dear Editor,

  I was surprised to find in the current issue of Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases that the lead editorial (“Leader” in British English) was written by the co-authors of one of the manuscripts reviewed in the same editorial (1,2).

  Traditionally, readers of the peer-reviewed biomedical literature have come to expect that editorialists bring an unbiased perspective to the papers or topics being reviewed. It would seem to be a fundamental violation of that implicit trust to permit authors to report their own findings and then concurrently to submit an editorial which compares their work with the other papers in the field.

  An example of the bias that may result from this apparent conflict of interest is that the importance of the findings may be inflated. Here, for example, the editorial is entitled “A historic issue of the Annals: three papers examine paracetamol in osteoarthritis,” thus implying that these are epochal papers of profound historic gravity; close examination of the material, however, leaves one substantially less enthusiastic that major breakthroughs have occurred. Moreover, although in the body of the editorial the authors mention the extremely short trial periods employed by each of the positive paracetamol studies, they conclude that “…the aggregated research data still support paracetamol as being more effective than placebo in relieving pain of large joint OA.” As OA is a chronic disease characterized by recurrent pain over years, findings of efficacy at one week and 3 months can hardly be considered compelling evidence of efficacy in relieving the pain of OA.

  The point is not that paracetamol is ineffective; rather, its efficacy for chronic pain relief remains unstudied and unclear.

  Reference

  (1). Neame R, Zhang W, Doherty M: A historic issue of the Annals: three papers examine paracetamol in osteoarthritis. Ann Rheum Dis 2004; 63:897-900. 2. Zhang W, Jones A, Doherty M: Does paracetamol (acetaminophen) reduce the pain of osteoarthritis?: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Ann Rheum Dis 2004; 63:901-907.

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  Conflict of Interest:
  None declared.

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