{"id":38706,"date":"2013-09-10T08:00:28","date_gmt":"2013-09-10T12:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=voices&p=38706"},"modified":"2013-09-08T19:33:38","modified_gmt":"2013-09-08T23:33:38","slug":"when-the-author-of-an-article-is-not-the-writer-of-the-article-is-transparency-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2013\/09\/10\/when-the-author-of-an-article-is-not-the-writer-of-the-article-is-transparency-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"Have We Solved The Problem of Ghostwriting?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several years ago, in the midst of the Vioxx litigation, I became aware of the practice of ghostwriting throughout academic medicine. In general, marketing arms of pharmaceutical companies wanted to seed the peer-reviewed journals with articles published by academics. They would identify an academic and provide him or her drafts of the article. Sometimes they would pay the academic for the review. Sometimes the author was a consultant to the company, and there was no direct payment for the review. The article would typically not acknowledge the relationship \u2014 or who actually drafted the article. Joe Ross, Kevin Hill, David Egilman and I wrote about this practice in an article published in JAMA<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even after publishing that article, I have received invitations to be a first author on review articles that would be drafted for me. I was usually approached by a medical writing company. I have been offered payment for my trouble. I have been told that the effort would not take much of my time. As you might imagine, I do not respond to such inquiries.<\/p>\n

In a recent issue of a well-regarded, peer-reviewed journal, I ran across a review article by a prominent academic physician that focused, in part, on a controversial subgroup interaction found in a manufacturer-sponsored clinical trial of a new drug. In my opinion, the content was favorable for the new drug.<\/p>\n

The article is completely transparent about its genesis. There is a statement that staff from a medical communications company assisted in drafting the article. The article also states that the manufacturer of the new drug paid for the medical writing support. The author was not paid for the article and disclosed no conflict of interest. However, the disclosure does not explicitly state whether the author had a financial relationship with the pharmaceutical company.<\/p>\n

In the past, this article may have been ghostwritten. Now, the connection with the medical writing company is transparent \u2014 as is the relationship between the pharmaceutical company and the medical writing company. I wonder if this is progress.<\/p>\n

Do you see any problem with this practice?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several years ago, in the midst of the Vioxx litigation, I became aware of the practice of ghostwriting throughout academic medicine. In general, marketing arms of pharmaceutical companies wanted to seed the peer-reviewed journals with articles published by academics. They would identify an academic and provide him or her drafts of the article. Sometimes they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":211,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1966,1813],"class_list":["post-38706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-ghostwriting","tag-journals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38706\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}