Written by Alex on September 18, 2009 – 10:27 am
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and others, including some editors of medical journals are saying they will work to curtail ghostwriting in medical journals. This self-regulated practice of allowing journals and the scientific community to police itself is apparently not working because now up to 11 percent ofarticles in medical journals are ghostwritten, according to an article in todays New York Times which you can read here.
Of course everyone would agree it is long past time this issue was resolved in such a way that the names on articles in medical journals were actually the names of the people who researched the article. It appears the practice of allowing ghostwriters – most often from the medical industry with a vested interest in presenting positive results of clinical trials – began with letting it slide when article were written about less serious procedures and drugs, such as diet drugs. Now, however, the article says even trials for “life and death” cancer and hematology medications are being presented by ghostwriters. We are, it would appear, at the bottom of the slippery slope of industry self regulation, which is a shame. It will be interesting to see if Congressional reform of the practice is successful or not. Updates as this continues over time.
As of now, a majority of medical journals are no longer published by not-for-profit medical societies anymore, but by for-profit global publishers, the biggest of which are Elsevier, Wiley/Blackwell, and Wolters Kluwer. Once the interests are sold to companies who have no vested interest in medicine, but for-profit publishers, editorial content suffers as a result.
There is tremendous pressure in academia to be “published”, thus there is pressure to comply with ghostwriting, especially when there is little harm involved to one’s personal career as a result, thus there are only too willing participants in ghostwriting meant to advance themselves as a result. A good place to begin would probably be ensuring medical doctors be required to take an ethics course prior to doing their residencies. But I doubt that is likely to ever happen.