You may recall that Schering-Plough and Merck caused a ruckus two months ago when they provided an overdue update to a long-delayed clinical trial of their blockbuster cholesterol med, which was being compared to Zocor. The reason for the flap - the drugmakers changed the endpoint and appointed an anonymous panel of experts to review the techniques used to measure the results.

In fact, the lead investigator, John Kastelein, wasn’t privvy to the decision, Forbes reports. It’s “shocking” that Kastelein would not be party to discussion of the ENHANCE trial, Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist at Yale University, tells the mag. “There should be a scientific committee that’s independent running a study. He should be taking a leadership role.”

Of course, changing endpoints is a scientific no-no and the move caused outrage at a time when drugmakers are under increasing scrutiny for the way they handle clinical trial data. Merck and Schering-Plough quickly backtracked and decided to leave the endpoint alone, but by then, the episode damaged their reputations and prompted a congressional investigation.

But who is on that secret panel? Forbes has the list. It’s not a wide-ranging committee of experts on clinical trials, but instead a group with expertise on studying the arteries with imaging technology, the mag writes. Four are top experts in the field of using ultrasound to take pictures of artery plaque.

The panel: J. Robin Crouse and Gregory Evans of Wake Forest University, who conducted a study using Crestor, a rival cholesterol drug from AstraZeneca; Orloff, medical director of Medpace, a company that conducts clinical trials for drug firms and the former head of the FDA division that handled the approvals of Zetia and Vytorin; Michiel Bots of the Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care University Medical Center Utrecht, Netherlands, who has worked on similar studies and James Stein of the University of Wisconsin, who has conducted studies on the treatment of heart disease in patients with HIV and how various substances affect artery walls.