Jeffrey Lacasse (Ariz. State Univ.) and Jeffrey Leo (Lincoln Memorial University) have published an article in PLoS Medicine entitled Ghostwriting at Elite Academic Medical Centers in the United States. Like all articles in PLoS Medicine, the article is available full-text, open-access. The article lacks an abstract, but here is an excerpt of the Background section (citations omitted):
Medical ghostwriting, the practice of pharmaceutical companies secretly authoring journal articles published under the byline of academic researchers, is a troubling phenomenon because it is dangerous to public health literature is thus a serious threat to public health . . .
In 2009, the Institute of Medicine recommended that US-based academic medical centers enact policies that prohibit ghostwriting by their faculties. However, to date, there has been no systematic assessment of ghostwriting policies at academic medical centers. Since US-based academic medical centers generate biomedical research for a worldwide audience, we chose to conduct the first such investigation on elite US-based academic medical centers. Our methods are shown in Box 1. We sought to describe the current policy situation at US-based academic centers and then to propose an ideal ghostwriting policy.
Lacasse and Leo have made a career out of simultaneously debunking the chemical imbalance theory of depression and illustrating its prominence in DTC marketing, mass media, and popular culture regarding depression and mental illness.
Leo, it should also be noted, was the central figure in a recent publication ethics controversy involving the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The current article, of course, is recommended.
(h/t Pharmalot)
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