Study 329: the big fraud is finally under review
A recent legal challenge could finally force the retraction of a fraudulent study that sold Paxil as “safe and effective” for teenagers.
It began with a lie.
In 2001, the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP) published a paper declaring that the antidepressant paroxetine (Paxil) was “generally well tolerated and effective” for adolescent depression.
That conclusion was false.
The manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), knew from its own data that the drug failed to outperform placebo and carried a serious risk of suicidal behaviour.
Instead of telling the truth, GSK hired a public-relations firm to ghostwrite the paper, enlisted academic co-authors who never saw the raw data, and used the publication to promote Paxil to doctors treating children.
It became known as Study 329 — one of the most infamous cases of scientific fraud in modern psychiatry.
For years, the fraud stood unchallenged. Regulators issued warnings but never forced a correction. The journal refused to retract. The paper remained in circulation — cited hundreds of times, shaping prescribing habits, and legitimising a lie that cost young lives.
Now, more than 20 years later, one lawyer is taking on the medical establishment to hold the journal and its publisher accountable.
His lawsuit alleges they knowingly sold and profited from a false and deceptive scientific article — one that continues to mislead the public and endanger adolescent mental health.
Could Study 329 finally be retracted from the scientific record?
How GSK rewrote failure as success
By the late 1990s, GSK had completed clinical trials testing Paxil in adolescents. The first, known as Study 329, failed to show any meaningful benefit.
In one internal email, company executives admitted the results were “commercially unacceptable” and that disclosure of the poor efficacy data would “undermine the profile of paroxetine.”
Rather than accept the failure, GSK set out to disguise it as success. The company hired a PR firm to draft a manuscript that cherry-picked favourable outcomes and buried unfavourable data.
None of the drug’s primary endpoints were met, but by selectively analysing secondary measures, the authors claimed Paxil was “effective and well tolerated.”
The paper listed 22 authors — two were GSK employees, and most had never reviewed the raw data or disclosed their financial ties to the company.
Once the article appeared in print, GSK’s sales force distributed it to thousands of doctors as “proof” that Paxil worked in teens.
Within three years, the company made more than a billion dollars from what it called the “adolescent market.”
Fraud and fatalities
The deception didn’t stay hidden.
Regulators in the UK, Europe and the U.S. soon uncovered the safety concerns and warned that Paxil increased suicidal thoughts and offered no therapeutic benefit for young people.
In 2003, the FDA concluded: “There is currently no evidence that Paxil is effective in children and adolescents with major depressive disorder.”
Nearly a decade later, in 2012, GSK pleaded guilty and paid a $3 billion settlement to resolve criminal and civil charges brought by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
The DOJ explicitly cited Study 329 as evidence of fraud in promoting Paxil for adolescents, marking one of the largest healthcare fraud settlements at the time.
But here’s the kicker.
JAACAP refused to retract the article — protecting its reputation, and its profits, while the fraudulent science stayed in print.
A lawyer takes on the publishers
In September 2025, attorney George W. Murgatroyd III filed a complaint in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia under the ‘DC Consumer Protection Procedures Act.’
The filing seeks to “redress the knowing publication, distribution, and continued sale of a false and deceptive medical article that has misled physicians, consumers, and institutions for over two decades and continues to endanger adolescent mental health and safety as well as public trust in scientific integrity.”
The 2001 article — Efficacy of Paroxetine in the Treatment of Adolescent Major Depression, by Keller et al. — claimed, “Paroxetine is generally well tolerated and effective for major depression in adolescents.”
According to the complaint, that definitive claim was “false and deceptive.”
The filing cites internal company documents, regulatory findings, and deposition testimony showing that Paxil was “unsafe and not effective for such treatment.”
Despite “indisputable, overwhelming evidence” of fraud, Murgatroyd alleges that the journal and its publisher “knowingly continue [their] false and deceptive trade practice by distributing and profiting from the Keller article as if it were valid scientific literature.”
“It’s not,” the filing states. “The article is a promotional piece for Paxil masquerading as medical science.”
Murgatroyd is asking the court to compel JAACAP to retract the article, publish a corrective notice, and pay attorney’s fees.
Journal acts
Weeks after the lawsuit landed, JAACAP issued an Expression of Concern, acknowledging “concerns that have been raised about the article” and promising a review.
For two decades, the journal’s leadership had resisted every demand for transparency. Now, for the first time, it has formally placed a warning on its own paper.
The move follows years of external pressure, including a 2015 BMJ reanalysis by Le Noury et al. known as Restoring Study 329.
That reanalysis found that Paxil was no better than placebo and that adverse events — including suicidal ideation and behaviour — were grossly underreported.
GSK had masked many of those events under the euphemism “emotional lability.” The reanalysis also exposed that the study protocol had been changed after the fact to improve apparent outcomes.
A retraction that could reshape publishing
If the court orders a retraction, it could establish that journals can be held liable for the harm caused by fraudulent research they continue to sell.
Murgatroyd told me the ripple effects could be significant.
“It would be devastating,” he said. “They could lose their job. They could not get funding. The National Institutes of Health could cut them off if they’re doing any projects. The journal could be downgraded.”
It would also expose the deep entanglement between professional societies, journal editors, and the pharmaceutical companies that fund them.
The complaint alleges that JAACAP and Elsevier refused retraction “in an apparent attempt to shield at least five of the Keller article authors who are prominent members of AACAP from possible ramifications of retraction.”
If proven, that would mean a professional guild protected its own reputation at the expense of children’s safety.
Beyond Paxil
The Study 329 scandal is not an isolated case — it’s a window into how psychiatry, and much of modern medicine, became corrupted by industry control.
The same tactics — ghostwritten manuscripts, selective reporting, buried suicide data — shaped the very evidence base for antidepressants.
Even JAACAP itself repeated the pattern, publishing two fluoxetine (Prozac) trials used to win FDA approval for paediatric depression. A later reanalysis found those studies, too, concealed suicide attempts and exaggerated benefit.
One author, Dr Graham Emslie, appears on both the Paxil and Prozac papers. Despite the revelations, the journal again refused to correct the record.
The pattern is unmistakable: conflicted authors, missing data, and journals unwilling to admit error.
Nonetheless, Murgatroyd remains hopeful for a retraction of Study 329.
“Everything about it was bad, and the fact that it ended up killing kids just made it beyond the pale,” said Murgatroyd. “You cannot trust the drug company to accurately report on its findings.”
For the families who lost children, and for a generation misled by corrupted science, that reckoning is long overdue.
Further reading:
The antidepressant trial that misled a generation of teens [LINK]
Investigative journalist Paul Thacker writes on this topic too [LINK]
How do you describe a money making enterprise that has no conscience about people lives when promoting their products? They don’t even have to worry about regulatory agencies who are supposed to be what their name implies. They’re all psychopaths with an abundance of power and influence over our lives. This is the stuff nightmares are made of.
I feel sick to the core reading this......... but it is no surprise.
How many other and similar cases are there where Big Pharma have fraudulently and knowingly falsified reports to bring a product to market knowing that deep harm to vulnerable people will result.
Thank you Maryanne for your diligence and persistence to bring such examples of outright fraud to the open.