Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13715

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Kamerow D.
Who wrote that article?
BMJ 2008 May 3; 336:(7651):989
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/336/7651/989

Abstract:

Authorship issues are a common obsession of medical journal editors. We fuss about them a great deal, fretting about who contributed what to a paper, who was responsible for the work and its conclusions, and what should qualify a contributor to assume the august title of “author.” The quantity and, to a lesser extent, the quality of authored publications have a lot to do with who gets promoted in academia, who gets tenured, and who gets jobs at prestigious universities. So naturally there is a great desire among academics to get their names on as many papers as possible, preferably at the head of the (often lengthy) list of authors…

The stakes are raised substantially, though, when the drug industry becomes involved. In support of their products, drug companies sponsor carefully orchestrated campaigns to pass off sympathetic, if not biased, research and review articles as the work of academic scientists rather than of their own or contracted employees. Ghost authorship takes on a new meaning when health communication companies write papers on contract, recruit prestigious authors for them, and then disappear from view…

Keywords:
MeSH Terms: Authorship* Drug Industry Interprofessional Relations Periodicals as Topic*