1 Boring Old Man

Why Does Academic Medicine Allow Ghostwriting?
^{A Prescription for Reform}
Society
by Jonathan Leo, Jeffrey R. Lacasse and Andrea N. Cimino
07/21/2011

ghost writer (n., orig. U.S.): a hack writer who does work for which another person takes the credit– Oxford English Dictionary

… To improve the credibility of biomedical research eroded by ghostwriting, the ICMJE should revise their approach to regulating authorship. As authors submit manuscripts to medical journals, each author should be required to sign a statement guaranteeing that no ghost authors participated in authorship or co-authorship of the submitted article, and that all medical writers are listed as authors on the byline. This simple move forward could have profound consequences for the medical literature as a whole. Much progress has been made relatively quickly in identifying ghostwriting as a problem, and we are now on the verge of largely solving this problem—if those with editorial influence in academic medicine will insist on policies to ensure that there are no undisclosed conflicts of interest haunting the contemporary medical literature.

^{QUESTION: But do you consider that the work that you did in terms of revising the draft of the article to incorporate the authors comments their analysis and their changes, Is that a host of hours in your mind?}
^{THE WITNESS: It was a lot of time.}
^{QUESTION: If STI or you had ghost written the Keller article would you have then… would there have been any need to do any of this work that we have been discussing?}
^{THE WITNESS: Can you tell me what you mean by ghost written?}
^{QUESTION: Ghost written is where the authors of the article have no input at all into the contents of the article.}
^{THE WITNESS: And then can you repeat the question please?}
^{QUESTION: With that identification of ghost writing in mind If STI or you had ghost written the Keller article would there have been any need to do any of the items that we discussed in terms of your editorial assistance?}
^{THE WITNESS: That’s a hard question to answer because that didn’t happen.}
^{QUESTION: Is it your testimony that you did not ghost Study 329… well excuse me Is it your testimony that you did not ghost write the Keller article which was published in the journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry?}
^{THE WITNESS: Based on your definition of ghost writing – absolutely.}
^{QUESTION: Would you have bothered to waste your time your effort and your energy doing all of this coordination with the authors if you were a ghost writer for the Keller article?}
^{THE WITNESS: I can’t answer that.}
^{QUESTION: Why can’t you answer that?}
^{THE WITNESS: Because I don’t believe I was a ghost writer.}

Ghost written is where the authors of the article have no input at all into the contents of the article.

I know that I’m perseverating on this point. A lot of us are – but for good reason. There was a period not that long ago when ghostwritten articles were common in the psychiatric literature – enough so as to have people posing the question, "Ghostwriting – how does academic medicine justify it?" Academic Medicine didn’t justify it, but Academic Medicine did quietly allow it. And most of the ghost-written articles that filled our journals stand unretracted and unmarked – silent monuments to a dark period in our history.

I’m thinking that just doing better in the future is not going to solve the credibility problem for psychiatry. We’re carrying too much baggage. We still have too many psychiatrists in "high places" who got there for the wrong reasons, way too many psychiatrists on "speaker’s bureaus" essentially functioning as pharmaceutical "detail men,"  and way too many people preaching the gospel of "evidence-based" medicine in a disingenuous way.