How the Vioxx litigation is pushing around the NEJM:

Earlier Monday, Dr. Gregory Curfman, executive editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, said there had been a connection between the first federal Vioxx trial in Houston and the timing of his journal’s publication of an editorial critical of a study used as evidence in that trial, reversing earlier statements . . .

. . . Curfman said the journal’s editors decided to publish the editorial online Dec. 8 because they believed his videotaped deposition would be played that day in the original trial. As it turned out, it was not played then . . .

. . . Curfman said that because his trial testimony was not an official statement by the journal, editors believed the editorial should be released first to be sure the information was clearly set out and understood by the public.

“As far as I was concerned, the issue was not the trial,” Curfman said during a second deposition, made in January. “The issue was my personal testimony and how it would be played and how it might be interpreted or misinterpreted by members of the media.”

(via PointofLaw.com)