The dishonest and utterly diabolical practice of ghostwriting is widespread in most respected medical journals. It’s when the pharmaceutical company sponsors writers to publish bogus research on their products. Since the medical journals rely on the honor system to get disclosure on writer’s funding, we never find out that the study on that diet pill was actually run by the people who want to sell it.
This article in the New York Times explains that this procedure has become more widespread than we would like to think. It started with anti-depressants and painkillers but has since been tied to drugs that could make people very sick and even kill them.
Shame on you pharmaceutical companies! At least the medical journals such as the one featured in this article, Blood, are implementing no-tolerance policies to ghostwriting. Considering that the sole purpose of medical journals is to progress the field of medicine and human health, it would make sense that they would want to publish good information and unbiased studies.
Cover, September 2009 issue of Blood