A new article is out in PLoS Medicine on "ghost management." Here is an excerpt from the open-source essay:
This article enlarges the focus from ghost writing to the more general ghost management of medical research and publishing: when pharmaceutical companies and their agents control or shape multiple steps in the research, analysis, writing, and publication of articles. Such articles are “ghostly” because signs of their actual production are largely invisible—academic authors whose names appear at the tops of ghost-managed articles give corporate research a veneer of independence and credibility.
They are “managed” because those companies shape the eventual message conveyed by the article or by a suite of articles. As discussed below, a substantial percentage of medical journal articles (in addition to meeting presentations and other forms of publication, which are not the focus here) are ghost managed, allowing the pharmaceutical industry considerable influence on medical research, and making that research a vehicle for marketing.
Recommended.
(h/t LL)
Sounds like you know your stuff. Your commentary on my current series of posts on health care reform would be very welcome. I've frankly been finding it hard to get comments from people who seem as up on this stuff as I am, and I'm no expert, just a guy who's been dragged through the system for fourteen years and counting due to progressive illness.
Posted by: Paul M Martin | September 27, 2007 at 12:05 PM