Via Crooked Timber comes another story about the depths plumbed by Elsevier:

Merck paid an undisclosed sum to Elsevier to produce several volumes of a publication that had the look of a peer-reviewed medical journal, but contained only reprinted or summarized articles–most of which presented data favorable to Merck products–that appeared to act solely as marketing tools with no disclosure of company sponsorship… Disclosure of Merck’s funding of the journal was not mentioned anywhere in the copies of issues obtained by The Scientist.

Elsevier has been involved in shady dealings before, but this is a new one for me. I recently turned down a request to review a paper for an Elsevier-published journal (citing their business practices), and this piece of news confirms my decision.