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WHAT'S THIS?
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COMMENTARY << Authorship
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Ghosts in the machine
Published 6 December 2011
Ghostwriting in medical publishing on behalf of big drug companies has a long history, finds Rachel Hendrick in this BMJ article, and oversight of the practice has its problems.
[Link to original source material]
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Ghostwriting: myths and realities - part 2
Published 8 November 2011
Adam Jacobs continues with his myth-busting article in pharmaphorum and says "the fact is that we simply don't know how many papers are ghostwritten".
[Link to original source material]
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Ghostwriting: myths and realities - part 1
Published 1 November 2011
Adam Jacobs writes in pharmaphorum and says "there's been a lot of guff written about medical ghostwriting lately, in blogs, in the mainstream media, and in peer-reviewed journals".
[Link to original source material]
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Honorary and ghost authorship
Published 25 October 2011
Patricia Baskin and Robert Gross of Neurology write in the BMJ, about their approach to honorary and ghost authorship in their journal.
[Link to original source material]
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Honorary and ghost authorship in high impact biomedical journals: a cross sectional survey
Published 25 October 2011
In this OA article in the BMJ, Jospeh Wislar and others report evidence of honorary and ghost authorship in 21% of articles published in major medical journals in 2008.
[Link to original source material]
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Ghostwriting Revisited: New Perspectives but Few Solutions in Sight
Published 30 August 2011
The PLoS Medicine Editors write in PLoS Medicine that "the problem lies deeper than terminology. Everyone involved in the medical publishing industry, including journals, institutions, and the bodies that oversee research, need to take specific action to eradicate the seemingly endemic corrupt authorship practices that remain within the medical literature"
[Link to original source material]
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Being the Ghost in the Machine: A Medical Ghostwriter's Personal View
Published 9 August 2011
Linda Logdberg writes in PLoS Medicine that "For almost 11 years, I worked as a medical writer, creating a variety of pieces including the occasional ghostwritten article. For the most part, I never saw the finished paper, nor did I care to. This article describes what I did, why I did it, why I stopped doing it, and what I think might be done about the problem of fraud in authorship..."
[Link to original source material]
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How Industry Uses the ICMJE Guidelines to Manipulate Authorship - And How They Should Be Revised
Published 9 August 2011
Alastair Matheson claims in PLoS Medicine that rather than obstructing industry, the current International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines provide a ready tool for misattributing authorship. Industry also relies on selective interpretations of key authorship concepts.
[Link to original source material]
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Legal Remedies for Medical Ghostwriting: Imposing Fraud Liability on Guest Authors of Ghostwritten Articles
Published 2 August 2011
Simon Stern and colleagues argue in PLoS Medicine that the practice of ghostwriting could be deterred more effectively through the imposition of legal liability on the "guest authors" who lend their names to ghostwritten articles.
[Link to original source material]
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Professor files complaint of scientific misconduct over allegation of ghostwriting
Published 13 July 2011
Bob Roehr reports in the BMJ that a complaint of scientific misconduct has been filed with the US Office of Research Integrity regarding a ghostwritten paper on paroxetine (marketed as Paxil), published in 2001 in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
[Link to original source material]
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Only full access to trial data will show signs of ghostwriting, meeting hears
Published 10 May 2011
Ann Silversides reports in the BMJ from a workshop on the ethics of ghost authorship at the University of Toronto on 4 May - particularly interesting for the responses from several correspondents, including ISMPP.
[Link to original source material]
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Ethics code for professional medical writers emphasises transparency and completeness of research reporting
Published 8 December 2010
The BMJ reports that the International Society for Medical Publications Professionals, an independent, not for profit organisation, has revised its code of ethics in line with evolving developments in medical publishing. The aim is to ensure integrity and transparency in the publication of medical research.
[Link to original source material]
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Bitter pills for drug companies
Published 17 September 2010
Melanie Newman reports in the BMJ that after criticism that massive fines are failing to dissuade drug companies from engaging in fraudulent business practices, the US government is turning to more radical enforcement measures.
[Link to original source material]
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The Haunting of Medical Journals: How Ghostwriting Sold “HRT”
Published 7 September 2010
An analysis by Adriane J. Fugh-Berman in PLoS Medicine looks at how drug companies use ghostwriters to insert marketing messages into articles published in medical journals and calls on the medical profession to take action to prevent the “unscrupulous relationships” between the industry and academia.
[Link to original source material]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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Hit and myth: curse of the ghostwriters
Published 8 August 2009
The Bad Science Column in the Guardian argues that ghostwriting should be stopped.
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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]
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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]
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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]
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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]
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