Complaints about the ethics of medical ghostwriting have increased in the last decade, but little has changed. Corruption of the scientific literature through ghostwriting persists in medicine due to the enormous profits for all stakeholders, including the pharmaceutical industry that creates the publication strategy, academic researchers acting as key opinion leaders (KOLs) for industry, universities employing KOLs, medical journals and their proprietors, including medical societies and publishers, and medical communication companies employing ghostwriters. Ghostwriting openly infringes academic standards and, in many cases, as recently argued by Stern and Lemmens in PLoS Medicine, contributes to fraud. Typically, the practice involves industry-financed writers generating articles that either promote the sponsor companys products or discredit competing ones, with eventual authorship credited to academic researchers who provide little or no input, thereby concealing industry involvement and contributing to distorted drug profiles. Read more: Challenging Medical Ghostwriting in US Courts (2012) - plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1001163
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 06:30:00 +0000
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