SNEAKY SCIENCE: Scientists who list themselves as authors on articles secretly written by pharmaceutical companies should be deemed guilty of academic misconduct.
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When students pawn someone else's work off as their own, they get expelled. But when some professors do the same thing, they get a "pat on the back," and maybe even a few extra bucks. Scientists credited for research articles that were secretly penned by ghostwriters from pharmaceutical companies often are not reprimanded for their misrepresentations; rather, their ranks and career trajectories often improve.
Although this practice of undisclosed authors (with undisclosed commercial interests) writing articles under the pretense of unbiased scientific inquiry raises serious concerns about academic integrity, few institutions have policies to discourage it. The authors of a new study published in PLoS One hope to make medical ghostwriting a faux pas on par with plagiarism and data falsification.
After the results from their survey on ghostwriting prohibition policies revealed that 37 of the top 50 academic medical centers in the U.S. have none, Jeffrey Lacasse of Arizona State University's School of Social Work and Jonathan Leo of Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tenn., took the opportunity to propose an unambiguous policy on the matter in their article. "I think some people think they don't need a policy addressing ghostwriting because it would fall under plagiarism," Leo explains. "Maybe an administrator would say the plagiarism policy covers ghostwriting, but I think the profs would adamantly disagree."
Once medical publishing's "dirty little secret," ghostwriting is no longer under wraps, thanks in part to a 2009 federal court decision to release 1,500 documents describing the strategic placement of marketing messages into peer-reviewed medical literature. In their article Lacasse and Leo say these cleverly crafted advertisements from pharmaceutical companies shape the literature in subtle but important ways, and can even affect how clinicians perceive and prescribe treatments.
"Your typical family practice physician is bombarded with glossy reprints," Lacasse explains. "The more prestigious the university and the researcher's name on it, the more weight that's going to carry with the doctor."
Policies prohibiting ghostwriting in U.S.-based academic medical centers were recommended in a 2009 report on conflict of interest in medical research, education and practice published by the National Academies' Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C. In the report a quote from the dramatist Goethe reads: "Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do." But more than half of the centers investigated by Lacasse and Leo had no formal policies on ghostwriting or authorship whatsoever.
The top 10 academic medical centers have policies—five flat-out banning ghostwriting: Johns Hopkins University; Washington University in Saint Louis; Stanford University; the University of Washington in Seattle; and Columbia University. Five have "more ambiguous rules": Harvard Medical School (although the authors acknowledge that Harvard's authorship policy is so stringent that it makes ghostwriting nearly impossible); the University of Pennsylvania; the University of California, San Francisco; Duke University; and Yale University.
Despite a longstanding policy on authorship that indirectly prohibited ghostwriting, on July 1, 2009, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore (ranked second among U.S. medical schools by a U.S. News survey) explicitly banned the act as part of a larger policy on interaction with industry.
"The policy was developed for many reasons," explains Julie Gottlieb, associate dean of policy coordination. "But our main concern was the role of industry in academic medicine—its effects on research and the education and clinical care we provide. Ghostwriting is an issue that has cut across these missions to some extent, largely in the area of research. I think the overwhelming feeling is that it's not in accord with standards of professional practice—in research, education or clinical care—to put your name to something that you had no role in writing."
An allegation of ghostwriting at Johns Hopkins spurs an intense review process, which can lead to serious consequences depending on the findings. Provisions for addressing ghostwriting ban violations are outlined in their policy.
Harvard Medical School has long prohibited faculty members from engaging in ghostwriting through authorship policies, which state that everyone who is listed as an author should have made a substantial, direct, intellectual contribution to the work, and that honorary or guest authorship is not acceptable—is even deplorable. Yet ghostwriting is not explicitly banned.
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9 Comments
Add CommentFair enough. Maybe movie stars, athletes and other famous people should fall under the same rule - or they don't use ghostwriters for their memoirs...?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScientists should be good on science, on doing research - not on writing.
Ghostwriting research shouldn't be an ethical dilemma. It should be banned from all disciplines. Some famous has-been runs a lab with scores of graduate students who do the real research, and the has-been gets the credit?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with rarauj28. The ability to write about science, either in a published paper or a text book, is a rare talent indeed. Science writers should be honoured, not hidden behind the title "Ghostwriter". I think that the only change need be that the writer should be fully acknowledged on the front of the paper.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost science these days is a team effort. The writer is a legitimate member of the team.
Well put, Bill Case. As a PhD scientist-turned-professional science writer, I take the accuracy and integrity of the content seriously. Most writing these days is also a team effort, reflected in growing author lists on primary publications- this should be the case with reviews and other pieces as well.
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe emphasis on the term ghostwriting is highly misleading in this article on academic misconduct and corruption. Ghostwriters are simply anonymous professional writers who turn results and conclusions given to them by pharmaceutical companies into publication-ready manuscripts.
The problem lies with the academics who are willing to front as authors of these ghost-written papers. By so doing they assert that the results presented are genuine and the conclusion drawn are valid. This is obviously a barefaced lie. Since these "authors" were not involved in the study they have no way of knowing whether the data are genuine, massaged or outright fabricated. By agreeing to pose as authors - for a handsome fee you can be sure - they collude with the pharmaceutical companies in committing fraud.
The academics participating in this scheme really shouldn't have any illusions about the companies asking them to pose as authors. Big Pharma has little credibility left - too many of their dirty tricks have been exposed. So they try to buy the reputation of independent scientists. But these academics must surely wonder whether this time the data they are asked to present as their own are genuine.
In think there are two distinct issues being discussed and perhaps confused here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirstly there is the necessary attempt of a legitimate research group to put forward their research findings in the clearest way possible, employing a technical writer to do this. Secondly there is the issue of supposedly reputable professionals being asked to put their name/reputation against a piece of work they had nothing to do with.
I have no problem with the employment of a technical writer on the basis that the credited author has done the research and is signing off on the document. I would say that this is similar in some ways to novel writing, where the author (person with the idea) and the editor (person who knows how books read best) will revise a book between them. This does not mean the authors intent in the book is subverted, but can lead to a better reading book.
I agree however, that the technical writer should also be credited in the article, and that the source of the data/research is specified.
No editor was involved in the writing of this piece (and it shows)
In case someone mis-construes the last remark, I was referring to my own comment :-)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe issue is not ghostwriting; it's ghost management. As long as there is an unidentified entity behind the scenes (usually the pharma sponsor) directing the study and approving the content of the paper, everyone involved is just an actor.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe way to fix this is to do away with "authorship" entirely and list each entity and person according to their contribution, as they do in films. The director would be the pharma sponsor; the people currently listed as "authors" would be medical consultants (which is what they are), the publication company and medical writer would be indentified as such, and so on.
Of course this would pull the curtain from the Wizard of Oz show currently known as medical research and publishing. But that's the point. If the medical profession were able to see clearly who is responsible for the data, who wrote the paper, and who gave it the final stamp of approval, they might think twice before accepting the data as the result of objective science. In fact, we might see a movement to put research and publishing back in the hands of academic research centers.
The issue is not ghostwriting; it's ghost management. As long as there is an unidentified entity behind the scenes (usually the pharma sponsor) directing the study and approving the content of the paper, everyone involved is just an actor.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe way to fix this is to do away with "authorship" entirely and list each entity and person according to their contribution, as they do in films. The director would be the pharma sponsor; the people currently listed as "authors" would be medical consultants (which is what they are), the publication company and medical writer would be indentified as such, and so on.
Of course this would pull the curtain from the Wizard of Oz show currently known as medical research and publishing. But that's the point. If the medical profession were able to see clearly who is responsible for the data, who wrote the paper, and who gave it the final stamp of approval, they might think twice before accepting the data as the result of objective science. In fact, we might see a movement to put research and publishing back in the hands of academic research centers.