Ghostwriting Scientific Papers
There’s a very disturbing article by Natasha Stringer in today’s New York Times. In it, she outlines how a pharmaceutical company paid to have a review article written by a consulting company, got a well placed physician to agree to sign on as the “author” (with minimal input as to its content), and then submitted the article to a medical journal as though it had been written by the physician (without disclosing the true authors or their connection to the pharmaceutical company). The paper highlighted in the article was one of 26 similarly created papers which
emphasized the benefits and de-emphasized the risks of taking hormones
which redounded to the benefit of the company, which made the hormone drugs. Later studies showed, however, that the hormones increased the risk of cancer, stroke, heart disease, and dementia.
The paper trail laying out how this shocking scenario played out, all of which is available on the Times’ website, was released as part of a court case. It is a staggering breach of professional norms to act in the ways described. If a student did this, they would probably be brought up for academic discipline…. (via WEIT)
