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16 April 2008

JAMA article on ghostwriting medical studies

The Journal of the American Medical Association published a piece today on ghostwriting of medical research. Thanks to the Vioxx lawsuits, the authors say that they found documents ``describing Merck employees working either independently or in collaboration with medical publishing companies to prepare manuscripts and subsequently recruiting external, academically affiliated investigators to be authors. Recruited authors were frequently placed in the first and second positions of the authorship list.’’ One of the exhibits uses a placeholder ``External author?’’ for the expert to be named. Obviously the idea that a pharmaceutical company is pre-writing clinical studies is as controversial as doctors possibly signing off on them without really being involved. A NYT article has some comments, and Merck has released a press statement.

Ross, J et al (2008) "Guest Authorship and Ghostwriting in Publications Related to Rofecoxib. A Case Study of Industry Documents From Rofecoxib Litigation" JAMA 299(15):1800-1812.

Posted by Sebastian Bauhoff at April 16, 2008 10:54 PM

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