PLoS Medicine has just published a study which found that essentially ALL reports from clinical trials in one European survey (40 over one year) were written by industry ghost-writers rather than clinicians (all if we use the most liberal definition of ghost-writer, nearly all if a strict definition is used.) Conflict of interest and financial disclosure policies should preclude such nonsense, or perhaps such reports should be marked as advertisement. (Or, for the sake of public health, tossed.)
This is deeply disconcerting:
This study is the first that has systematically examined the prevalence of ghost authorship using a cohort of protocols and corresponding publications. The authors conclude that "ghost authorship in industry-initiated randomised trials is very common, and we believe that this practice serves commercial purposes". They go on to urge that in order to reduce the prevalence of ghost authorship, existing guidelines such as those drawn up by the International Committee on Medical Journal Editors, World Association of Medical Editors and European Medical Writers Association, are followed. This action could increase the chance that publications accurately, fairly, and comprehensively reflect the data collected from trials
A related perspective by Liz Wager, an independent editorial consultant, who has been involved in drawing up guidelines for medical writers, discusses the implication of these findings further.
Full article available online, here, at PLoS Medicine: http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040019
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