The newly appointed editor of the New England Journal of Medicine has been criticised by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for overpraising a new asthma drug made by a company that hehad advised as a paid consultant.

Dr Jeffrey Drazen said his error had been an honest one and vowed he has learnt from it. “We were probably a little overzealous,” said Drazen, a prominent asthma researcher and chief of the pulmonary division at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who is scheduled to take the helm ofthe medical journal in July. “In the future, we'll be more careful,” he said.

Drazen's statement comes after news reports that the FDA had last year issued a …