JAMA editor sacked for publishing unpopular research

[Margaret Tarbet <tarbet@swaa.com>]

CHICAGO (CNN) -- The editor of the Journal of the American Medical
Association, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the
world, said he was fired Friday morning. 

Dr. George Lundberg, editor of JAMA for 17 years, confirmed he had
been called at home and fired by American Medical Association
Executive Vice President E. Ratcliffe Anderson Jr. 

Sources said the firing is related to a research article on college
students attitudes towards sex that corresponds with President
Clinton's impeachment trial. 

The article, to be published in next week's JAMA, looks at what
Americans mean by the phrase, "had sex." The 8-year-old study of 599
students found 59 percent of those asked said they would not say
they "had sex" with someone if it was oral sex. 

Lundberg, 65, did not give a reason for the termination, but he did
defend the publication of the article.  "I know it's a public health
issue," he told CNN. "The data shows that for Americans in their
20s, if one said as a doctor to a patient 'have you been having
sex?,' and they've been having oral and not vaginal sex, they would
say 'no' 60 percent of the time. Doctors have to be explicit or they
would get entirely inaccurate information." 

The author of the article, June M. Reinisch, retired director of the
Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction in
Bloomington, Indiana, said Lundberg told her Friday morning he was
fired because he published her research. 

"I'm absolutely shocked," she told the Associated Press. "This may
have to do with issues of academic freedom. There was nothing
unusual about this paper."