Few Top Med Schools Have Ghostwriting Policy
6 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // February 2nd, 2010 // 12:48 pm
Only 13 of the top 50 medical schools in the US have a clear policy that prohibits ghostwriting, according to a survey published in PLoS Medicine. The argument goes that ghostwriting hurts patients and raises costs for taxpayers, because prestigious academic names are used to promote drugs that might be expensive or less effective than alternatives. The issue has gotten a lot of traction lately - the Senate Finance Committee asked med schools about their policies (see here and here) and Wyeth and Merck have gotten bad press over the practice.
The survey found “that 10 schools explicitly prohibit ghostwriting and seven include some definition of ghostwriting in their policy, while three prohibit ghostwriting without defining the term. And 13 schools have an authorship policy that does not clearly ban all aspects of ghostwriting and the most common reason is a failure to require all qualified authors be listed. Three schools have stringent authorship policies that prohibit the practice, but do not mention ghostwriting by name…The majority of schools - 52 percent - had no published policies at all on either ghostwriting or authorship.”
The authors, who suggest schools enact strict policies and the NIH should withhold funding for those that don’t, conclude by saying “it is ironic that ghostwriting, a major threat to public health, is generally not prohibited within institutions that exist to train physicians and improve the public health. In this way, academic medical centers enable the pharmaceutical industry to covertly shape the medical literature in favor of commercial interests…The practice of ghostwriting explicitly violates the usual norms of academia.”
Ghost from Flickr Creative Commons mattwi1s0n
where is my handout
universities- get with the program.
pharmavet
We need much more rigorous definitions of ghostwriting. Example, what about the professor who does a drug study, collects the data, then sends the data to a medical publishing company to have Powerpoint slides made for a medical meeting on the company’s dime. The slides come back, the prof edits them, sends the slides back to the publisher for changes, then gets them back for presentation. This is a universal practice. In the past the prof would likely send the materials to the university’s graphic arts dept., but the reality is that these depts don’t exist anymore; hence the need to go to outside companies. Most profs are not very good at creating Powerpoints, and it’s a waste of their time to ask them to learn the skill. Are we to tell the profs that they can no longer send their data to “ghostwriting companies” for slide prep, and they will have to create their own slides in the interest of “scientific integrity”?
Never got NIH or pharma money ever, thanks
It seems OK to draw a line between journal articles — the “papers of historical record” — and transient Powerpoint presentations.
But what about presentations at big professional meetings like ASCO etc?
Chris
We cannot really get rid of “ghostwriters”. No “Key Opinion Leader” can realistically run clinical trials, see patients, teach classes, read the literature, attend medical meetings AND write 30 articles, reviews or book chapters a year! The major change that I see happening is that the “ghostwriters” are either added as authors or acknowledged at the end of the article. Some people do this now, but perhaps not enough. In my experience, the KOLs always review and comment on the manuscripts, (and the manuscript, in many cases, cannot be submitted without this assurance) but rarely write them.
Jack Friday
http://pharmagossip.blogspot.com/2010/02/why-are-pfizers-ghostwritten-hormone.html
Michael Kirsch, M.D.
Ghostwriting is a spooky issue. There’s a continuum ranging from editing to ghostwriting to outright plagiarism. I have no argument if investigators hire writers to package their papers in standard written English and present data clearly for the readers. These scriveners, of course, should have no relationship with any of the studies’ sponsors of have any other conflicts of interest. This is not a deep ethical issue. Most high school kids would know the right thing is to do in these circumstances.
See http://bit.ly/14SgLT