{"id":65803,"date":"2016-05-23T14:09:13","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T18:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=65803"},"modified":"2016-05-23T15:40:59","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T19:40:59","slug":"a-thorny-problem-this-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2016\/05\/23\/a-thorny-problem-this-one\/","title":{"rendered":"a thorny problem, this one…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Reading through Sergio Sismondo’s Ghosts in the Machine<\/a> was confirming, validating my own impression that there is a  secretive commercially driven enterprise manipulating the processes by which we know about medications. I knew it was there, but I really didn’t know it was so ubiquitous, nor did I know it was a profession. But there were parts of his essay I just didn’t get. This<\/a> was one of them:<\/div>\n
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Implicit in many of the exposes of ghostwriting in the medical science and popular literature is an assumption that ghostwritten science is formally inferior. Given the very high acceptance rates of ghost-managed papers, that assumption is questionable in general – though it may be right about important cases. Pharmaceutical company research, analysis, and writing results in knowledge. It is not different from other medical research, analysis, and writing in the fact that companies and their agents make choices in the running of clinical trials, in interpretations of data and established medical science, and in the messages they convey in papers and presentations. This point is straightforwardly suggested by STS’s longstanding commitment to symmetry. It is justified by the results of canonical studies that have shown how science is choice-laden. Thus, the work of pharmaceutical companies to produce research and place it prominently in medical journals is not merely a corporate use of the patina of science. It is science, though it is science done in a new, corporate mode.<\/font><\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
It was one of those paragraphs you read over and over with the same question·mark look on your face. And apparently I’m not the only one [see Leemon McHenry’s Ghosts in the Machine: Comment on Sismondo<\/a>]:<\/div>\n
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The commercial medical science that has created the ghostwriting industry is a corruption of science<\/font><\/strong><\/em>, and not merely as Sismondo puts it "science done in a new, corporate mode."<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Which is what I think. Back to Sismondo, there was a part of Ghosts in the Machine<\/a> that I really liked reading:<\/div>\n
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Everybody systematically connected with publication planning wants established formal rules of conduct. As sub-contractors, publication planners would like to reduce uncertainty, so that they can plan ahead and so that they can produce exactly the papers that will satisfy all of the different parties with whom they interact. Both publication planners and pharmaceutical companies want formal rules to guide and cover their work, to legitimize it so that its exposure does not amount to scandal…<\/font><\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
In the course of life, I spent almost a decade as an educator\/administrator. And as much as I enjoyed those years, there was one part I had no problem getting away from. It was hearing the question, "What is your policy about …?<\/font><\/em>" To me, that meant "give me a rule so I’ll know how close to the line I can get without consequences<\/font><\/em>" [and then the search for the loopholes began]. Here’s another solution that we might initially think we could agree with: <\/div>\n
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PUBLICATION ETHICS AND THE GHOST MANAGEMENT OF MEDICAL PUBLICATION<\/a><\/div>\n
by SERGIO SISMONDO AND MATHIEU DOUCET<\/div>\n
Bioethics<\/font><\/strong>. 2010 24[6]:273–283.<\/div>\n
[full text online<\/a>]<\/div>\n

It is by now no secret that some scientific articles are ghost authored – that is, written by someone other than the person whose name appears at the top of the article. Ghost authorship, however, is only one sort of ghosting. In this article, we present evidence that pharmaceutical companies engage in the ghost management of the scientific literature, by controlling or shaping several crucial steps in the research, writing, and publication of scientific articles. Ghost management allows the pharmaceutical industry to shape the literature in ways that serve its interests. <\/p>\n

This article aims to reinforce and expand publication ethics as an important area of concern for bioethics. Since ghost-managed research is primarily undertaken in the interests of marketing, large quantities of medical research violate not just publication norms but also research ethics. Much of this research involves human subjects, and yet is performed not primarily to increase knowledge for broad human benefit, but to disseminate results in the service of profits. Those who sponsor, manage, conduct, and publish such research therefore behave unethically, since they put patients at risk without justification. This leads us to a strong conclusion: if medical journals want to ensure that the research they publish is ethically sound, they should not publish articles that are commercially sponsored.<\/font><\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But then the doubts come creeping in. How would journals be financed? Industry is the only act in town able to finance trials. Where would physicians get information? package inserts? Who says the FDA Approval tells us enough to make clinical decisions? Who says the FDA is uncorruptable? And so on, and so on, and scooby-dooby-do…<\/p>\n

A thorny problem, this one…<\/font><\/em><\/strong> <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading through Sergio Sismondo’s Ghosts in the Machine was confirming, validating my own impression that there is a  secretive commercially driven enterprise manipulating the processes by which we know about medications. I knew it was there, but I really didn’t know it was so ubiquitous, nor did I know it was a profession. But there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65803"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65836,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65803\/revisions\/65836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}