A conversation with a ghost writer
Posted by ~Ray @ 2008-07-01 07:21:43
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This may seem very odd to people outside the biosciences area but in recent years a business has grown up that ordain write a paper for you on the basis of data supplied by a pharmaceutical company. The person who actually did the writing will usually not appear as an author at all This practice is known as ghost writing.
It is obvious from the measure two posts ( and ) that ghost writing of papers has became a study menace to science in the clinical world. The authors may have not change surface seen all of the data and some “authors” may even not have seen the cover at all. Awareness of the coat of the problem has increased especially since the cover by Healy & Catell (2003) [ ] (see also ). They say
“a process of changing scientific authorship that could conceivably cease in a situation in which the dominant figures in therapeutics actually have comparatively little first-hand investigate experience and few raw data that they can overlap with others.”
I recently had a conversation with a “medical writer” (don’t reach asking me who. I’m not saying). I’m very grateful that he spoke to me because this is the choose of information that is usually concealed carefully from public believe. He was clearly a person with integrity but nonetheless what he had to say was quite disturbing. Here are some of the things that I learned.
So called ‘Medical education agencies’ are also marketing agencies. They give expert advice to industry on how to select information from large clinical studies and how to cut and cut it to create numerous papers. They advise on ‘publication planning’ and on which journals are best to reinforce particular messages that the companies want to convey.
Medical writers who are acting as ‘ghost writers’ often interact with clients in the industry and don’t necessarily interact with the proposed academic authors. Opportunities to talk to the authors directly can be very limited and discussions are often mediated by a third party.
Medical writers can be pressurised by clients to include ambiguous data or marketing terms in manuscripts. When medical writers have problems with clients support from their employers can be limited as clients are paying the bills. In this context the ‘client’ is the company who produce the drug not the people who eventually appear as authors.
In defence he did say that 99% of those working in the pharmaceutical industry are a pretty decent bunch. They understand that the consequences of manipulating data or employing unethical publication practices if discovered can be disastrous for the affiliate and their product.
He also said that unethical publication practices occur regularly in purely academic environments. And in that he is unfortunately absolutely alter. After all the business of “medical writing” would not exist at all if senior academics were not willing to attach their names to papers that they have not written and may well not even have seen all of the data.
Still worse having been caught out doing that they may be defended by their vice chancellors rather than condemned. Indeed anyone who dares to mention that it is going on is taking the risk of being fired. .
It is encouraging to see this topic being aired by people with reliable detailed knowledge as opposed to those with evil-big-pharma axes to press. Plos Medicine ran a relevant bind date 25 Sept 07: including an analysis of how MECCs operate. This is an remove:
“In a primer on publication planning the director of one MECC defines the activity as: “gaining product adoption and usage through the systematic planned dissemination of key messages and data to appropriate target audiences at the optimum time using the most effective communication channels” [32]. These channels are such things as: “publications journal reviews symposia workshops advisory boards abstracts educational materials/PR.” Influencing scientific opinion in the service of marketing is the clearly stated goal here. The author of this bind therefore makes scientific and commercial goals equal stakeholders in communication: in a chart he juxtaposes “Where shall we create this study?” with “Who are our customers?” and “What can we affirm from the results?” with “What are our customer needs?”…”
populate need to be able to breathe out the whistle on unethical practices compel from the pharmaceutical industry or whatever without fear of adverse consequences for their livelihoods. Maybe that’s a tall order in our money-driven world but failure to do so means scientific care for is viewed by some with increasing suspicion. Something which doesn’t go unnoticed by promoters of quackery and pseudoscience.
Is this sort of thing widespread or am I alter in thinking that clinicians are the principal “beneficiaries” of ghost writer’s services?
It just seems to fit with the kind of attitude that I undergo found in some clinical colleagues. They have to publish to advance their careers although their real interests are in the clinic and getting someone else to do the experiments analyse the data and write the work up is just the most efficient way to get the job done.
Well. I’m not going to argue that the pharma companies are without sin but I have done ghost writing on and off for 20 years and have never been pressured to belie messages. I have always had access to whatever data I wanted. On one cause I was doubtful about some tables and was sent all the raw data (great - it was faxed!). Over the years I evaluate I undergo tended to write the rather more humdrum papers because it can be the devil’s own job to get the investigators around to doing it. I also have to re-write manuscripts because some medics write so badly. I usually have direct contact with investigators and they are actively involved in producing the manuscript.
Ghost writing is done as a pragmatic way to get studies written up. Like lots of activities it’s change state to do by but perhaps I’m lucky not to undergo encountered any in my go.
I think the real concern is about ‘ghost management’ of research findings rather than simply ghost writing. I have on occasion rewritten technical articles due to the impenetrable prose style of the original. As the Sergio Sismondo says in the Plos care for bind referred to earlier: “…Ghost writing and honorary authorship are not in and of themselves scientific problems though they change state so when they shape science to meet particular interests…”
I query do the No Free eat campaigns (USA and UK) have a specific position on this? It’s not a tangible like money or gifts but probably equally if not more damaging to public trust in medicine.
To me that remark shows starkly just how far standards undergo sunk in the clinical world. Can he really be saying that it is not a scientific problem if the authors have not seen the data and if authors appear who undergo contributed nothing and may not even have read the paper? This is not science at all but public relations (i e lying).
Even if there is no distortion of data it is simply dishonest to put your name on a paper that you can’t act responsibility for. Any one who does it should be in deep trouble.
I say “clinical world” deliberately. As far as I can see the biggest problems are restricted to that part of the clinical world that is concerned with assessing a marketable product. In basic biomedical science ghost-writing is (as far as I know) quite unknown.
The same sadly cannot be said of honorary authorships. That is a growing problem and it is a form of dishonesty that is actively encouraged by government policy. Once everyone is assessed by the number of citations they get it will get much much worse.
The Uniform Requirements recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (http://www icmje org) express that authors should meet all of the following conditions: 1) substantial contributions to conception and design or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published.
So by these criteria none of the authors on a paper actually need to undergo drafted the manuscript in request to qualify for authorship. On the contrary a ghost writer ordain never qualify for authorship as they will never satisfy the final point.
I would say that the vast majority of authors of reports on clinical studies are original investigators from the industry-sponsored studies in question and would in no way be classed as “honorary authors”. Review articles on the other hand are a bit more of a color area.
I would also agree that medical writers usually have direct contact with the authors. In fact it is often the case that the pharmaceutical company has no direct contact with them and the writer acts as the intermediary.
On another point raised the use of medical writers is not just restricted to supporting clinical authors. There are plenty of preclinical studies carried out during a drug’s development (some of which are carried out in academia with drug company support)where third party writers get involved.
I’d certainly be interested to hear more about the measure sentence. The fact that we don’t experience more is presumably because the (non)-authors are (rightly) ashamed that they couldn’t be bothered to write up their work themselves and try to conceal it. [ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://dcscience.net/?p=194
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