The student-run Harvard Health Policy Review, which last week pulled down from the Internet a controversial article detailing an alleged incident of editorial harassment by the editors of the prestigious Journal of Health Economics, is back online today with an abject apology by its student editor to the editors of JHE. On the HHPR's home page, Kevin Huang wrote:

After performing an internal investigation, we have found that during the editing of Ethical Standards for Healthcare Journal Editors: A Case Report and Recommendations by Donald W. Light, PhD and Rebecca N. Warburton, PhD, the editors of Journal of Health Economics (who were subjects of the article) were NOT contacted to verify statements made in the article.

In retrospect, this was a clear, unprofessional mistake on our part and we apologize to all parties involved. As the Harvard Health Policy Review prides itself on its principles of presenting original, academic research, as well as maintaining an unbiased and balanced discussion of the greater issues of health policy, we have regrettably failed to meet both of these standards in this instance.

However, the Light/Warburton article remains online because, Huang wrote in an email to another faculty member obtained by GoozNews, "we made a previous commitment as a journal to publish Dr. Light's article."

Earlier today, Richard Frank, one of the editors of JHE, told the Newark Star-Ledger's Pharmalot blog that the decision to pull down the website, while coming after an email from him complaining about the article, was entirely the students' call.

“I sent an e-mail to Huang saying that I felt the way they dealt with the article - by not fact checking or offering the ability to respond- I felt it violated my sense of fair play. (Pulling down the website was) their call, but I just didn’t want to be associated with the publication anymore…My e-mail never indicated any action on my part, other than not wanting to be affiliated with the publication. It was a personal decision…Whatever action they took was on their own."

Huang confirmed that account:

We panicked. We thought that we had might have inadvertently published something that was potentially very biased and/or unsubstantiated.

But in another email today, (see all the emails here), Huang also expressed fear that Light would sue if he failed to repost his article. "He (Light) has a past history of pursing legal action for this sort of thing," he wrote. In the Light/Warburton HHPR article, they recount how they only got their article published in JHE (it was a response to the Joseph DeMasi study claiming it costs $800 million to develop a new drug) by getting hotshot New York trial lawyer to threaten a lawsuit.

Holy moly. Pissed off faculty mentors. Litigious professor-authors. It's tough being an undergraduate student editor these days.

Before we heap all blame for this incident on the humiliated student editor Kevin Huang, let's review the facts in light of one other responsibility of the adult-professors in the room: the duty to teach.

There is no doubt that the original Light/Warburton article is a one-sided recitation of a case history that essentially accused the editors of JHE of wielding their red pens on a submitted article to exclude uncomfortable information (the alleged industry ties of the DiMasi et al study authors, which was the subject of the Light/Warburton critique submitted to JHE). While Light and Warburton referred to several written communications between the editors and themselves generated during their critique's two-year-long editing process, none were cited in the footnotes of their HHPR article.

The student editors could have dealt with this in any of three ways. First, they could have fact checked the article by asking Light and Warburton to provide documentary evidence of their more controversial assertions, especially the claim that the editors did not think it necessary to publish a conflict of interest disclosure in the DiMasi study. While the pharmaceutical industry helps fund the Tufts university center that employs some of the authors, it didn't fund the study itself. The Light/Warburton article at several points makes reference to letters they received from JHE editor Thomas McGuire "on Harvard Medical School stationery." Providing those documents would have documented their assertions, but the student editors failed to ask that references be included in the text.

The second option would have been to ask Light and Warburton to include responses from the JHE editors (Harvard professors Joseph Newhouse, Richard Frank and Thomas McGuire) within the text of the article -- the sort of "he said, she said" more commonly found in journalism. Given the history between the authors and their erstwhile editors at JHE, that probably wasn't a viable option.

Finally, the student editors could have invited an immediate response from the editors of JHE, which could have run in the same edition of the HHPR. Indeed, when the Light/Warburton submission came in, it seems rather remarkable that the students didn't see the juicy controversy that had been dropped in their laps for what it was.

Okay, the kids got it wrong. I run into this all the time when dealing with young journalists and students. "Get the other side" and "If your mother says she loves you, check it out" are first principles in publishing and basic to fairness and accuracy. Sadly, for far too many young writers, they are among the hardest research habits to learn.

That said, let's now revisit the reaction of Harvard economics professor Richard Frank. Here's the first few sentences of his original response to the young editor of this non-peer-reviewed, non-indexed, student-run journal on which he served as a faculty adviser:

I am writing to sever my ties with the Harvard Health Policy Review. You recently published a paper by Light and Warburton that contained extensive personal attacks on my colleague Thomas McGuire and the Journal of Health Economics of which I am an editor. My concern is that the journal violated my standards for fair play and reasonable scholarly discourse.

If you were a student editor, how would you feel after receiving that email from one of the more prominent academicians in your prospective field? "You violated my standards, so I quit." Not, "Hey student-editors, you messed up here. Here's how you can make it right."

After receiving this email, the student editor "panicked." Instead of standing up for his authors (the first rule for editors, who, after all, approved the original publication), he yanked the article from the Internet. That was his second big mistake.

When that brought the press knocking on his door, Huang pled guilty. Meanwhile, Frank told inquiring reporters that, hey, I had nothing to do with that decision. Yeah, right.

So, Harvard students, the lesson for today is this: freedom of the press is a tricky affair, and if you stumble in its exercise and cross people with power -- especially those who are supposed to be your teachers and mentors -- you may be putting your reputation, not to mention your future prospects, at risk.