(Press-News.org) An editorial this week in PLoS Medicine concludes that in the two years since extensive ghostwriting by pharmaceutical giant Wyeth to promote its hormone drug Prempro was exposed through litigation intervention by PLoS Medicine and The New York Times, medical ghostwriting remains a prevalent problem with few concrete solutions in sight. This week also sees the launch of the PLoS Ghostwriting Collection, which documents everything published across the PLoS journals on the topic.
Among these are three new articles published earlier this month in PLoS Medicine that provide new perspectives on medical ghostwriting. In a Policy Forum article, Simon Stern and Trudo Lemmens make the case for imposing legal liability on the ''guest authors'' who lend their names to ghostwritten articles. In a personal perspective, Alastair Matheson argues that the current International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines allow for industry to exaggerate the contribution of named academic authors and downplay those of commercial writers, contending that the ICMJE guidelines should be fundamentally revised and the concept of origination given comparable importance to authorship and contributorship. In another personal perspective, former medical writer Linda Logdberg says why she acted as a ghostwriter.
The editorial quotes recent anecdotal evidence that ghostwriting remains prevalent (and has even affected PLoS Medicine), in contrast to the protestations of some in the pharmaceutical industry that ghostwriting is an outdated practice. The editorial argues that the novel and interesting suggestions from Stern, Lemmens and Matheson will have little effect until there is a fundamental change in the attitude of all involved in the publication of medical articles. The editorial concludes that "Everyone involved in the medical publishing industry, including journals, institutions, and the bodies that oversee research, need to take specific action to eradicate the seemingly endemic corrupt authorship practices that remain within the medical literature—starting by accepting the extent of the problem."
###Funding: The authors are each paid a salary by the Public Library of Science, and they wrote this editorial during their salaried time.
Competing Interests: The authors' individual competing interests are at http://www.plosmedicine.org/static/editorsInterests.action. PLoS is funded partly through manuscript publication charges, but the PLoS Medicine Editors are paid a fixed salary (their salary is not linked to the number of papers published in the journal).
Citation: The PLoS Medicine Editors (2011) Ghostwriting Revisited: New Perspectives but Few Solutions in Sight. PLoS Med 8(8): e1001084. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001084
IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER:
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1001084
PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: www.plos.org/press/plme-08-08-editorial.pdf
CONTACT: medicine_editors@plos.org
Ghostwriting remains a fundamental problem in the medical literature
2011-08-31
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
New Stanford method reveals parts of bacterium genome essential to life
2011-08-31
STANFORD, Calif. — A team at the Stanford University School of Medicine has cataloged, down to the letter, exactly what parts of the genetic code are essential for survival in one bacterial species, Caulobacter crescentus.
They found that 12 percent of the bacteria's genetic material is essential for survival under laboratory conditions. The essential elements included not only protein-coding genes, but also regulatory DNA and, intriguingly, other small DNA segments of unknown function. The other 88 percent of the genome could be disrupted without harming the bacteria's ...
Death rates in newborns remain shockingly high in Africa and India
2011-08-31
Neonatal mortality—deaths in newborns, aged 3 weeks and under— has declined in all regions of the world over the past two decades but in 2009, more than half of all neonatal deaths occurred in five countries—India, Nigeria, Pakistan, China, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Furthermore, over the past 20 years, more than 4% of all babies born live in India died during the first month of life.
These shocking findings come from a comprehensive and detailed analysis led by Mikkel Z Oestergaard, from the World Health Organization and partners published in this week's ...
Mobile phone data help track populations during disasters
2011-08-31
Mobile phone positioning data can be used to monitor population movements during disasters and outbreaks, according to a study published in this week's PLoS Medicine. The study, conducted by Linus Bengtsson and colleagues from the Karolinska Institute, Sweden and Columbia University, USA, finds that reports on the location of populations affected and in need of assistance can be generated within hours of receiving data.
Population movements after disasters make it difficult to deliver essential relief assistance to the right places and at the right scale. In this geospatial ...
Rural areas at higher risk of dengue fever than cities
2011-08-31
In dengue-endemic areas such as South-East Asia, in contrast to conventional thinking, rural areas rather than cities may bear the highest burden of dengue fever—a viral infection that causes sudden high fever, severe headache, and muscle and joint pains, and can lead to a life-threatening condition, dengue hemorrhagic fever.
In a study led by Wolf-Peter Schmidt from the Nagasaki Institute of Tropical Medicine, Japan, and published in this week's PLoS Medicine, the authors analysed a population in Kanh-Hoa Province in south-central Vietnam (~350,000 people) that was affected ...
Health systems research needs overhaul
2011-08-31
In the conclusion to a three-part series of articles addressing the current challenges and opportunities for the development of Health Policy and Systems Research (HPSR), Sara Bennett of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore USA and colleagues lay out an agenda for action to help build the field: 1) local actors, including policy-makers and researchers, must have a greater say in determining the nature of HPSR conducted; 2) a better shared understanding of theoretical frames and methodological approaches for HPSR, including journals, methods training, ...
Viruses in the human gut show dynamic response to diet
2011-08-31
August 31, 2011 – The digestive system is home to a myriad of viruses, but how they are involved in health and disease is poorly understood. In a study published online today in Genome Research (www.genome.org), researchers have investigated the dynamics of virus populations in the human gut, shedding new light on the gut "virome" and how it differs between people and responds to changes in diet.
"Our bodies are like coral reefs," said Dr. Frederic Bushman of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, senior author of the study, "inhabited by ...
Study shows balloon pump use prior to angioplasty does not reduce heart muscle damage
2011-08-31
DURHAM, N.C.—Inserting intra-aortic balloon pumps prior to angioplasty in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) does not reduce the scope of heart muscle damage, a condition referred to as infarct size, according to a new study conducted by Duke University Medical Center researchers.
The findings were published online today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and presented at the European Society of Cardiology in Paris, France.
The intra-aortic balloon pump works by increasing the blood supply to the heart, which reduces the heart's ...
Stanford/UCSF scientists invent new way to disarm malaria parasite
2011-08-31
STANFORD, Calif. —A novel technique to "tame" the malaria parasite, by forcing it to depend on an external supply of a vital chemical, has been developed by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of California-San Francisco. The scientists have, in effect, created a domesticated strain of Plasmodium — the one-celled parasite that causes malaria — that would no longer cause this dreaded disease.
Their findings not only make it possible to grow large volumes of this modified parasite, but also reveal how the parasite's very survival ...
Sleep Train Inspires Area Companies to Help Foster Children Too
2011-08-31
The profound success and awareness of the Sleep Train Foster Kids Program has inspired a number of other companies and organizations in the area to support regional foster children too. Collecting important material items and cash to contribute to current Sleep Train drives, area companies and organizations are leveraging Sleep Train's successful infrastructure and marketing efforts to offer their support for foster children.
This summer alone, Under the Nile, a Milpitas-based cotton apparel company, hosted a drive to support Sleep Train's annual collection of pajamas, ...
Rotavirus vaccination of infants also protects unvaccinated older children and adults
2011-08-31
[EMBARGOED FOR AUG. 30, 2011] Vaccinating infants against rotavirus also prevents serious disease in unvaccinated older children and adults, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This helps reduce rotavirus-related hospital costs in these older groups. The results of the study are published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases and are now available online.
Rotavirus is a major cause of severe diarrhea in infants and young children. Before the vaccine, rotavirus was responsible for 58,000 to 70,000 pediatric hospitalizations each ...