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Concerns over ghostwritten medical journal articles could lead to tighter rules and more severe punishments from individual journals, reports the New York Times.

In its most extreme form, ghostwriting involves slapping the name of a scientist as an author on the piece who played no role in writing the article. Typically the sponsors of the ghostwritten articles are pharmaceutical companies. Read about a bevy of examples here and here and here.

Sen. Chuck Grassley has been investigating ghostwriting for some time, and some medical journal editors are speaking up as well, saying that voluntary disclosure agreements about industry ties or contributions to the papers aren’t enough, according to the NYT.

For instance, a recent editorial in PLoS Medicine, one of the Public Library of Science journals, urged journals to identify and retract articles that were ghostwritten, and to banish those authors from subsequent publication in the journal.

Here’s an excerpt from the editorial:

It’s time to get serious about tackling ghostwriting. As has been shown in the documents released after the Vioxx scandal, this practice can result in lasting injury and even deaths as a result of prescribers and patients being misinformed about risks. Without action, the practice will undoubtedly continue. How did we get to the point that falsifying the medical literature is acceptable? How did an industry whose products have contributed to astounding advances in global health over the past several decades come to accept such practices as the norm? Whatever the reasons, as the pipeline for new drugs dries up and companies increasingly scramble for an ever-diminishing proportion of the market in “me-too” drugs, the medical publishing and pharmaceutical industries and the medical academic community have become locked into a cycle of mutual dependency, in which truth and a lack of bias have come to be seen as optional extras.

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Originally posted here: 
Medical Journal Ghostwriting: Time to Do Something?