Emory e-mail suggests media manipulation

Documents released in a U.S. Senate Finance Committee hearing in September suggest that Emory University officials tried to downplay the controversy surrounding an esteemed but embattled faculty member.

Dr. Charles Nemeroff, one of the nation’s leading depression researchers, is under Senate investigation for allegedly failing to disclose $1.2 million he received from pharmaceutical companies from 2000 to 2007. In some cases, Nemeroff gave talks or published research that bolstered the companies’ products.

In July 2006, the Wall Street Journal published an article stating that Nemeroff failed to disclose payments he received from a company, Cyberonics Inc., whose product he wrote favorably about in a prestigious medical journal where he served as editor. Nemeroff later said he submitted a detailed disclosure about his relationship with the company, but it didn’t make it into print.

The day after the WSJ story ran, Nemeroff received an e-mail from Claudia Adkison, executive associate dean of the Emory University School of Medicine. The e-mail was released several weeks ago by the Senate committee:

“In working on handling the reporter, I tried to make this story go away because Emory’s name is in the middle of it. I have been grateful that the reporter was not sophisticated enough to ask all the right questions.”

Adkison also wrote that the reporter “was mostly right. He just doesn’t know all the facts.”