|
WHAT'S THIS?
|
COMMENTARY << Authorship
|
Towards more uniform conflict disclosures
Published 30 June 2010
The BMJ reports the updated ICMJE conflict of interest reporting form. Note this editorial was published simultaneously in all ICMJE member journals.
[Link to original source material]
|
|
|
US senator calls for tougher rules on ghostwriting
Published 30 June 2010
The BMJ reports that Senator Charles Grassley and the US Senate Committee on Finance have called for tougher rules and better disclosure about ghostwriting of journal articles. In a report issued on 24 June they have asked medical journals, medical centres, and the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to impose stricter rules.
[Link to original source material]
|
|
|
Most leading US medical schools lack rules on ghostwriting
Published 8 February 2010
Janice Hopkins Tanne writes in the BMJ about the survey of the top 50 US medical schools that found that only 13 have policies prohibiting ghostwriting of scientific articles.
[Link to original source material]
|
|
|
Ghostwriting at Elite Academic Medical Centers in the United States
Published 2 February 2010
An article by Jeffrey Lacasse and Jonathan Leo in PLoS Medicine reviews ghostwriting policies at academic medical centers and notes that few have public policies which prohibit this behavior, and that many of the existing policies are ambiguous or ill-defined. They propose an unambiguous policy which defines participating in medical ghostwriting as academic misconduct akin to plagiarism or falsifying data.
[Link to original source material]
|
|
|
Chinese academia ghost-writing 'widespread'
Published 5 January 2010
BBC News Online reports more than $100m (£63m) changes hands in China every year for ghost-written academic papers, according to research by a Chinese university.
[Link to original source material]
|
|
|
How Industry Views the Research It Sponsors
Published 30 November 2009
Roy Poses writes about GPP2 on the Health Care Renewal Blog, and says "these guidelines are remarkable for the questions they raise about how people from industry view clinical research and how it should be reported in medical journals."
[Link to original source material]
|
|
|
Good publication practice for communicating company sponsored medical research: the GPP2 guidelines
Published 29 November 2009
Written by a team led by Chris Graf, and published in the BMJ, in response to changes in the environment in which authors, presenters, and other contributors work together to communicate medical research the International Society for Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP) has updated the good publication practice guidelines.
[Link to original source material]
|
|
|
Senator asks US medical schools about rules on ghostwriting
Published 24 November 2009
Janice Hopkins Tanne reports in the BMJ that Senator Grassley has asked 10 leading US medical schools to disclose their rules on the involvement of their teaching staff in ghostwriting. Several universities have told the BMJ that they had policies on ghostwriting and plagiarism and were in the process of responding to Senator Grassley.
[Link to original source material]
|
|
|
A ghostly undertaking
Published 24 November 2009
As medical ghostwriting comes under increasing scrutiny, Les Rose asks in an article in pharmaphorum.com, whether the ability to communicate in writing should not be a specialism in its own right.
[Link to original source material]
|
|
|
Medical Schools Quizzed on Ghostwriting
Published 17 November 2009
The New York Times reports that Senator Charles E. Grassley has written this week to 10 top medical schools to ask what they are doing about professors who put their names on ghostwritten articles in medical journals — and why that practice was any different from plagiarism by students.
[Link to original source material]
|
|
|
Don’t give up the ghost
Published 14 October 2009
Christopher Martyn, associate editor, BMJ reflects on why the role of ghostwriters in medical publishing is not, and should not be, the same as in popular, celebrity publishing. He also makes the point, however, that athough medical ghostwriting has had pernicious effects, openly acknowledged ghostwriters may improve medical publishing.
[Link to original source material]
|
|
|
US survey favours acknowledging medical study ghostwriters
Published 29 September 2009
News in the BMJ that Pharma Marketing News, a US online journal, found that three quarters of respondents to a small survey of its readers thought that drug companies’ use of professional writers to write articles for medical journals was acceptable as long as it was clear who wrote the article and who endorsed the content.
[Link to original source material]
|
|
|
Letter - Medical Ghostwriting
Published 21 September 2009
A letter in The New York Times from Cindy W. Hamilton, President of the American Medical Writers Association responding to an earlier article (Ghostwriting Is Called Rife in Medical Journals, 11 September). Cindy makes the point that "Ghostwriting is unethical and must be distinguished from collaboration between researchers (authors) and professional medical writers, whose contributions and financing are disclosed" and goes on to invite othes to join AMWA and promote transparency and awareness of ethical guidelines.
[Link to original source material]
[Link to original article of 11 September 2009]
|
|
|
More than 20% of articles have a "guest" author, study shows
Published 15 September 2009
Fiona Godlee reports in the BMJ that at least a fifth of articles published in medical journals are likely to have a guest (or honorary) author, and journals are not doing enough to tackle the problem, say two studies presented at the Sixth International Congress of Peer Review and Biomedical Publication in Vancouver last week.
[Link to original source material]
|
|
|
Ghostwriting Is Called Rife in Medical Journals
Published 10 September 2009
The New York Times reports that six of the top medical journals published a significant number of articles in 2008 that were written by ghostwriters financed by drug companies, according to a study released Thursday by editors of The Journal of the American Medical Association. The new study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a medical journal, was made public Thursday morning at an international meeting of journal editors in Vancouver.
[Link to original source material]
|
|
|
Court documents show Glaxo used CASPPER (the friendly ghostwriting program) to promote Paxil
Published 19 August 2009
The Los Angeles Times reports (again about events from some time ago) that GlaxoSmithKline used a sophisticated ghostwriting program to promote its antidepressant Paxil, allowing doctors to take credit for medical journal articles mainly written by company consultants, according to court documents obtained by The Associated Press.
[Link to original source material]
|
|
|
Senator Moves to Block Medical Ghostwriting
Published 18 August 2009
The New York Times reports that a growing body of evidence suggests that doctors at some of the nation’s top medical schools have been attaching their names and lending their reputations to scientific papers that were drafted by ghostwriters working for drug companies — articles that were carefully calibrated to help the manufacturers sell more products. Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who has led a long-running investigation of conflicts of interest in medicine, is starting to put pressure on the National Institutes of Health to crack down on the practice.
[Link to original source material]
|
|
|
Wyeth paid ghostwriters to draft articles promoting its hormones, PLoS Medicine and New York Times say
Published 11 August 2009
The BMJ picks up on the New York Times story about court documents that show Wyeth paying a medical communications company to draft articles promoting the use of its hormone replacement therapies.
[Link to original source material]
|
|
|
Hit and myth: curse of the ghostwriters
Published 8 August 2009
The Bad Science Column in the Guardian argues that ghostwriting should be stopped.
[Link to original source material]
|
|
|
Medical Papers by Ghostwriters Pushed Therapy
Published 4 August 2009
The New York Times reports that newly unveiled court documents show that ghostwriters paid by a pharmaceutical company played a major role in producing 26 scientific papers backing the use of hormone replacement therapy in women, suggesting that the level of hidden industry influence on medical literature is broader than previously known.
[Link to original source material]
|
|
|
Guest authorship, mortality reporting, and integrity in rofecoxib studies
Published 27 August 2008
This issue of JAMA devotes considerable space to further debate on guest/ghost authorship and mortality reporting in rofecoxib studies, with 13 letters on the topic. Some of the letters add further thoughts to the debate. However, some come from authors defending themselves against the accusations of guest authorship, accompanied by replies from the authors of the original article and editorial.
[Link to original source material]
|
|
|
Guest authorship and ghostwriting in publications related to rofecoxib
Published 16 April 2008
Ghostwriting and guest authorship are discussed in the April 16 2008 issue of JAMA. Two related articles in the same issue of JAMA are also available via the link below.
[Link to original source material]
|
|
|
Ghostwriters Used in Vioxx Studies, Article Says
Published 15 April 2008
This article in the New York Times comments on articles in JAMA on ghostwriting and guest authorship on rofecoxib publications.
[Link to original source material]
|
|
WHAT ELSE?
|
NEWS ALERT!
Do you want to be alerted to important news and events relevant to publication planning?
Sign up here.
|
|
|
|
|
|
[View details here]
Strategic Medcomms Forum 2010: Reshaping the healthcare conversation
30 September 2010
Oxford University Musuem
The first of a series of annual events where we consider how the global medical and pharmaceutical industry engages with its stakeholders and we identify and debate future directions and implications for medical-marketing activity.
[View details here]
Organized by NetworkPharma.
|
|
|
|
|
