Thanks to Margaret Soltan's academic blog: http://www.margaretsoltan.com/?p=16887
...we have some great quotes related to ghostwriting. First, reportedly said by Mina Dulcan, the editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, two years ago to the BBC, after being told that a paper she had published was both ghostwritten and contrary to the known data: “I don’t have any regrets about publishing at all. It generated all sorts of useful discussion which is the purpose of a scholarly journal.”
Gloria Bachmann, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey, defended appending her name to a ghostwritten article to the New York Times: "This is my work, this is what I believe, this is reflective of my view.”
That in turn led to a comment on the blog: "I would like to go on record for the first time and declare that I am the author of Moby-Dick. It is what I believe. It is reflective of my view."
Showing posts with label ghostwriting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ghostwriting. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Ghosts of Christmas Present: Grassley Goes After Wyeth
As we find out from an article a week or so back by Duff Wilson in the New York Times--
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/business/13wyeth.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=wyeth%20duff%20wilson&st=Search
--Sen. Charles Grassley's (R-IA) campaign to expose corrupt practices at the medicine-pharma interface has netted an interesting internal document from Wyeth--analogous to some ghostwiting-related memos I discussed in HOOKED.
Grassley's team has unearthed a Wyeth memo detailing a campaign to sell its hormone combo Prempro, even after a major study revealed its association with increased breast cancer risk. The memo lists topics, titles, and outlines for a series of articles to be written by the staff of DesignWrite, a medical information company, with the goal of attracting putative academic "authors" for each article and then placing them in journals.
Grassley has demanded information from Wyeth and DesignWrite regarding the so-called authors and payments made to them. Wyeth denies that any of them received any money.
Reactions to this round of charges are interesting. Wyeth accuses Grassley of recycling outdated arguments, saying that besides not being paid, the academic "authors" had full editorial control over the final articles. This is of course the position of deniability that any drug firm can adopt with reference to ghostwriting. The putative author can, of course, exercise editorial control. Most are "too busy" and so elect not to, or to change only a few minor bits of language. Whistleblowers like David Healy have previously revealed how the attempt to actually exert serious editorial control quickly leads to the withdrawal of the invitation to be the "author" or to receive the opportunity in the future.
Of the two "authors" named by Wilson, one, Dr. John Eden, director of the Sydney Monopause Center in Australia, was purported author of an "Editor's Choice" feature in the May 2003 American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, denying that "definitive evidence" existed tying Prempro to breast cancer. Dr. Eden refused any comment for the article. The documents state that the draft manuscript was written by DesignWrite. The journal says it is investigating.
The second named "author" is Dr. Lila E. Nachtigall, director of the Women's Wellness Center at NYU. Dr. Nachtigall denied to Wilson that anyone had written any of her 1000 articles or three books, and denied any recollection of being provided with a draft or outline. (She also suggested that the U.S. Senate had more important things to worry about than to come pestering her.)
My hope is that each of these instances will be investigated to the hilt, and that if any of these academics are found to have actually engaged in ghost-authoring, their respective institutions should make a severe example of them--a penalty notably absent from previous instances of this offense, despite the fact that all agree that ghostwriting is the most inexcusable of all ethical lapses related to Pharma.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/business/13wyeth.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=wyeth%20duff%20wilson&st=Search
--Sen. Charles Grassley's (R-IA) campaign to expose corrupt practices at the medicine-pharma interface has netted an interesting internal document from Wyeth--analogous to some ghostwiting-related memos I discussed in HOOKED.
Grassley's team has unearthed a Wyeth memo detailing a campaign to sell its hormone combo Prempro, even after a major study revealed its association with increased breast cancer risk. The memo lists topics, titles, and outlines for a series of articles to be written by the staff of DesignWrite, a medical information company, with the goal of attracting putative academic "authors" for each article and then placing them in journals.
Grassley has demanded information from Wyeth and DesignWrite regarding the so-called authors and payments made to them. Wyeth denies that any of them received any money.
Reactions to this round of charges are interesting. Wyeth accuses Grassley of recycling outdated arguments, saying that besides not being paid, the academic "authors" had full editorial control over the final articles. This is of course the position of deniability that any drug firm can adopt with reference to ghostwriting. The putative author can, of course, exercise editorial control. Most are "too busy" and so elect not to, or to change only a few minor bits of language. Whistleblowers like David Healy have previously revealed how the attempt to actually exert serious editorial control quickly leads to the withdrawal of the invitation to be the "author" or to receive the opportunity in the future.
Of the two "authors" named by Wilson, one, Dr. John Eden, director of the Sydney Monopause Center in Australia, was purported author of an "Editor's Choice" feature in the May 2003 American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, denying that "definitive evidence" existed tying Prempro to breast cancer. Dr. Eden refused any comment for the article. The documents state that the draft manuscript was written by DesignWrite. The journal says it is investigating.
The second named "author" is Dr. Lila E. Nachtigall, director of the Women's Wellness Center at NYU. Dr. Nachtigall denied to Wilson that anyone had written any of her 1000 articles or three books, and denied any recollection of being provided with a draft or outline. (She also suggested that the U.S. Senate had more important things to worry about than to come pestering her.)
My hope is that each of these instances will be investigated to the hilt, and that if any of these academics are found to have actually engaged in ghost-authoring, their respective institutions should make a severe example of them--a penalty notably absent from previous instances of this offense, despite the fact that all agree that ghostwriting is the most inexcusable of all ethical lapses related to Pharma.
Monday, September 1, 2008
The Latest Of-All-the-Nerve Award
This month's Of-All-the-Nerve Award goes to Steven Ferris, PhD of New York University; Douglas Galasko, MD of UC-San Diego, and Louis Kirby, MD of Provista Life Sciences in Phoenix.
Back in April, JAMA published a paper on ghostwriting, based on revelations from the Vioxx litigation and the resulting disclosure of internal Merck documents (see previous post, http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2008/04/jama-to-pharma-and-its-allies-enough.html). As an example of a ghostwritten paper with academic "guest authors," Ross et al. discussed in some depth a paper (Thal et al. 2005) listing these gentlemen as co-authors. The three awardees thereupon wrote an angry Letter to the Editor to JAMA denouncing their inclusion in the article as guest authors.
They insisted that all had had "substantial roles" in designing and carrying out the trial. They then admitted: "The paper was initially drafted by Merck coauthors in August 2003, after discussion of the results had previously taken place with Dr Thal and Dr Ferris in June and July 2003. Drs Thal, Ferris, and Kirby were formally approached about being coauthors on the paper and an associated abstract in September 2003. Each critically reviewed the complete statistical report and contributed to revising the final manuscript."
Having this conceded the major point of the accusation against them--that a Merck ghostwriter had in fact been the real "first author" and that they had seen the paper only after it was sent to them, virtually already completed, by the company--Ferris, Galasko, and Kirby went on to complain: "This unsubstantiated allegation of guest authorship raises questions about flawed methodology in the study by Ross et al. It is poor science to draw broad conclusions about pharmaceutical practices from limited and highly selective information. Moreover, neither the authors nor JAMA contacted the presumed guest authors for comments or clarification regarding this material or the allegation of guest authorship prior to publication. A change in author names does not necessarily mean that those added were not involved: such name changes occur frequently as research manuscripts are revised."
"Unsubstantiated"? Ross et al., in their reply to the Letter, remind the readers that as part of their analysis, they had compared the draft prepared by the Merck ghostwriter with the published article, and found only minor changes in wording and organization--so much for the "contributions" to revising the final manuscript.
It may be of some significance that in order to disclose all of their financial relationships with industry, Ferris et al. required 22 lines of fine print following their Letter.
I guess their theory is that the best defense is a good offense. When caught red-handed passing off a ghostwritten paper as your own work, attack the methodology of the expose.
(Thanks to Roy Poses at the Health Care Renewal blog for guiding my attention to this letter.)
Ferris S, Galasko D, Kirby L. Guest authorship, mortality reporting, and integrity in rofecoxib studies (letter). JAMA 2008; 300(8):901-2.
Ross JS, Hill KP, Egilman DS, Krumholz HM. Guest authorship and ghostwriting in publications related to rofecoxib: a case study of industry documents from rofecoxib litigation. JAMA 299:1800-12, April 16, 2008.
Thal LJ, Ferris SH, Kirby L; et al. A randomized, double-blind, study of rofecoxib in patients with mild cognitive impairment. Neuropsychopharmacology. 2005;30(6):1204-1215.
Back in April, JAMA published a paper on ghostwriting, based on revelations from the Vioxx litigation and the resulting disclosure of internal Merck documents (see previous post, http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2008/04/jama-to-pharma-and-its-allies-enough.html). As an example of a ghostwritten paper with academic "guest authors," Ross et al. discussed in some depth a paper (Thal et al. 2005) listing these gentlemen as co-authors. The three awardees thereupon wrote an angry Letter to the Editor to JAMA denouncing their inclusion in the article as guest authors.
They insisted that all had had "substantial roles" in designing and carrying out the trial. They then admitted: "The paper was initially drafted by Merck coauthors in August 2003, after discussion of the results had previously taken place with Dr Thal and Dr Ferris in June and July 2003. Drs Thal, Ferris, and Kirby were formally approached about being coauthors on the paper and an associated abstract in September 2003. Each critically reviewed the complete statistical report and contributed to revising the final manuscript."
Having this conceded the major point of the accusation against them--that a Merck ghostwriter had in fact been the real "first author" and that they had seen the paper only after it was sent to them, virtually already completed, by the company--Ferris, Galasko, and Kirby went on to complain: "This unsubstantiated allegation of guest authorship raises questions about flawed methodology in the study by Ross et al. It is poor science to draw broad conclusions about pharmaceutical practices from limited and highly selective information. Moreover, neither the authors nor JAMA contacted the presumed guest authors for comments or clarification regarding this material or the allegation of guest authorship prior to publication. A change in author names does not necessarily mean that those added were not involved: such name changes occur frequently as research manuscripts are revised."
"Unsubstantiated"? Ross et al., in their reply to the Letter, remind the readers that as part of their analysis, they had compared the draft prepared by the Merck ghostwriter with the published article, and found only minor changes in wording and organization--so much for the "contributions" to revising the final manuscript.
It may be of some significance that in order to disclose all of their financial relationships with industry, Ferris et al. required 22 lines of fine print following their Letter.
I guess their theory is that the best defense is a good offense. When caught red-handed passing off a ghostwritten paper as your own work, attack the methodology of the expose.
(Thanks to Roy Poses at the Health Care Renewal blog for guiding my attention to this letter.)
Ferris S, Galasko D, Kirby L. Guest authorship, mortality reporting, and integrity in rofecoxib studies (letter). JAMA 2008; 300(8):901-2.
Ross JS, Hill KP, Egilman DS, Krumholz HM. Guest authorship and ghostwriting in publications related to rofecoxib: a case study of industry documents from rofecoxib litigation. JAMA 299:1800-12, April 16, 2008.
Thal LJ, Ferris SH, Kirby L; et al. A randomized, double-blind, study of rofecoxib in patients with mild cognitive impairment. Neuropsychopharmacology. 2005;30(6):1204-1215.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Ghostwriting: Some Updates
Ghostwriting, as I discuss in HOOKED, is one of the hardest practices at the medicine-Pharma interface to get a grip on. All parties to the transaction--the academic physician whose name appears as the author of the article; the medical writer who actually wrote the article; and the drug company that funded everything--either are paying good money, or are paid good money, not to talk about any of it. Yet if anything at all in the medicine-Pharma relationship ought to be an ethical no-brainer, this is it. It can never be right for people to lie, in print, in the pages of medical journals, about who did or did not write something. And for the academic physician, accepting money to put your name on an article you did not write, and henceforward listing that article in your curriculum vitae as if you had written it, has to be the slimiest of unprofessional behaviors.
For all these reasons, even brief anecdotes about ghostwriting are worth taking note of. Here are a couple (one thanks to Roy Poses' excellent Health Care Renewal blog-- see Links).
Most recently, Jean E. Sealey, professor emerita of physiology and biophysics at Weill Cornell Medical College, went public with an approach she had received to "write" a review on the new anti-hypertensive drug nebivolol (Forest Laboratories):
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2007/11/21/odd-ghostwriting-offer-raises-researchers-blood-pressure/
One of the commentators astutely asked why the Wall Street Journal placed this news item on its blog instead of doing an in-depth story in its print edition.
Going back a little ways, Danny Carlat, in his own excellent blog on psychiatry issues (http://carlatpsychiatry.blogspot.com/), reported on a paper for which one of the listed co-authors is Dr. C. Lindsay DeVane, Professor of Psychiatry and Vice Chair for research at the Medical University of South Carolina. The paper is a summary of a discussion that occurred as part of an "Expert Roundtable," and was published in the May 2007 issue of CNS Spectrums, where it was listed as eligible for CME credit:
http://carlatpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2007/09/author-calls-his-own-cns-spectrums.html
Dr. DeVane told Dr. Carlat that this paper is a "piece of commercial crap" and that the views expressed there are not his. He had not read the final version before it was published. The article was written after the discussion by a medical writer hired by i3 CME and funded by Bristol-Myers-Squibb. Dr. DeVane told Dr. Carlat that he found the draft text, which he was shown, "inaccurate, simplistic." He did not say whether he requested or demanded the right to edit "his" article. Neither Dr. DeVane nor Dr. Carlat addressed the question of 1) why Dr. DeVane allowed his name to appear on this article if it is untrue with regard to his views on the subject; and 2) whether any money changed hands at any point in the process. (One would assume that Dr. DeVane was paid expenses plus an honorarium to speak at the symposium, at the very least).
Just by way of further illustration of how hard it is to get a handle on the ghostwriting issue, I recently told a colleague of mine, who spends a lot more time than I do hanging out with journal editors, that the highest amount that I had ever been able to find in print, for the sum paid to the academic "author" of a ghostwritten paper for the privilege of using his name, was $1000. My colleague merely snorted.
For all these reasons, even brief anecdotes about ghostwriting are worth taking note of. Here are a couple (one thanks to Roy Poses' excellent Health Care Renewal blog-- see Links).
Most recently, Jean E. Sealey, professor emerita of physiology and biophysics at Weill Cornell Medical College, went public with an approach she had received to "write" a review on the new anti-hypertensive drug nebivolol (Forest Laboratories):
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2007/11/21/odd-ghostwriting-offer-raises-researchers-blood-pressure/
One of the commentators astutely asked why the Wall Street Journal placed this news item on its blog instead of doing an in-depth story in its print edition.
Going back a little ways, Danny Carlat, in his own excellent blog on psychiatry issues (http://carlatpsychiatry.blogspot.com/), reported on a paper for which one of the listed co-authors is Dr. C. Lindsay DeVane, Professor of Psychiatry and Vice Chair for research at the Medical University of South Carolina. The paper is a summary of a discussion that occurred as part of an "Expert Roundtable," and was published in the May 2007 issue of CNS Spectrums, where it was listed as eligible for CME credit:
http://carlatpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2007/09/author-calls-his-own-cns-spectrums.html
Dr. DeVane told Dr. Carlat that this paper is a "piece of commercial crap" and that the views expressed there are not his. He had not read the final version before it was published. The article was written after the discussion by a medical writer hired by i3 CME and funded by Bristol-Myers-Squibb. Dr. DeVane told Dr. Carlat that he found the draft text, which he was shown, "inaccurate, simplistic." He did not say whether he requested or demanded the right to edit "his" article. Neither Dr. DeVane nor Dr. Carlat addressed the question of 1) why Dr. DeVane allowed his name to appear on this article if it is untrue with regard to his views on the subject; and 2) whether any money changed hands at any point in the process. (One would assume that Dr. DeVane was paid expenses plus an honorarium to speak at the symposium, at the very least).
Just by way of further illustration of how hard it is to get a handle on the ghostwriting issue, I recently told a colleague of mine, who spends a lot more time than I do hanging out with journal editors, that the highest amount that I had ever been able to find in print, for the sum paid to the academic "author" of a ghostwritten paper for the privilege of using his name, was $1000. My colleague merely snorted.
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