Healthy Skepticism Library item: 16429

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

Ghostwriting: The Dirty Little Secret of Medical Publishing That Just Got Bigger
PLoS Med 2009 Sep 8; 6:(9):
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000156

Abstract:

If you are an editor, author, reviewer, or reader of medical journals, or if you depend on your doctor or health care provider getting unbiased information from medical journals, then the 1,500 documents now hosted on the PLoS Medicine Web site [1] should make you very concerned and angry. Because, quite simply, the story told in these documents amounts to one of the most compelling expositions ever seen of the systematic manipulation and abuse of scholarly publishing by the pharmaceutical industry and its commercial partners in their attempt to influence the health care decisions of physicians and the general public.