Criticism of the NEJM continues in the Avandia mess:

NEJM executive editor Gregory Curfman told BioCentury, a publication covering the drugs industry. ‘What happens in the media is beyond our control.”

The problem with that statement is that it looks as if NEJM did everything it possibly could to ensure that the study by Nissen and Kathy Wolski made headlines: It was given expedited peer-review; it was accompanied by an editorial commissioned from two longstanding critics of drug regulation which questioned whether Avandia (rosiglitazone) provided any actual health benefits to patients; it was posted online on the morning of May 21, hours ahead of its scheduled press embargo of 5pm; and — in a miraculous feat of congressional speed — it managed to elicit a flurry of press releases from Congress by noon of the same day, which included scheduled oversight hearings on the drug on June 6.