The Lancet

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The Lancet is one of the oldest and most respected peer-reviewed medical journals in the world, published weekly by the Lancet Publishing Group, part of Reed Elsevier. It was founded in 1823 by Thomas Wakley, who named it after the surgical instrument called a lancet, as well as an arched window ("to let in light").

The present editor-in-chief is Richard Horton. The Lancet is, and has been, outspoken on several important medical issues - recent examples include criticism of the WHO in the African Malaria project, initially accepting and then rejecting the efficacy of homoeopathy as a therapeutic option and its disapproval of Reed Elsevier's links with the arms industry.

1 Impact
2 Data fabrication scandal
3 Journals family
4 External links

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Impact

The Lancet has a significant readership throughout the world with a high impact factor. It publishes original research articles, review articles ("seminars" and "reviews"), editorials, book reviews, correspondences, amidst other regulars such as news and corrigenda. The Lancet is considered to be one of the "core" general medical journals; the others being the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and the British Medical Journal.

However, it was subject to severe criticism after Dr. Horton, in an editorial, endorsed a possible link between MMR vaccine and autism, a matter of continuing controversy. He subsequently went on record to apologise for his position and admitted the journal's failure to note serious conflict of interest. When it published an estimate of Iraq civilian death toll - one hundred thousand - just two days before the November 2004 US Presidential Elections, it was accused of being political, and once again, Dr. Horton was accused of "scare-mongering".

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Data fabrication scandal

In January 2006, it was revealed that data had been fabricated in an article by the cancer researcher Jon Sudbø and 13 co-authors (including his brother Asle Sudbø) published in The Lancet in October 2005, [1]. The article was published after a "fast-track" review process, a controversial practice introduced by The Lancet in 1997. The fabricated article was entitled "Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and the risk of oral cancer: a nested case-control study". Lancet editor Richard Horton told leading Norwegian daily Aftenposten that this is the "worst fraud the world has ever seen" [2]. Within a week after this scandal surfaced in the news, the high-impact New England Journal of Medicine published an expression of editorial concern regarding another research paper published on a similar topic in the journal.

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Journals family

The Lancet has now given birth to a few sub-speciality journals, all bearing the parent title - The Lancet Neurology (neurology), The Lancet Oncology (oncology) and The Lancet Infectious Diseases (infectious diseases). All of them have established significant reputations as medical journals, though most started out publishing only review articles.

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