ArticlePLoS medicine2009
What should be done to tackle ghostwriting in the medical literature?
Article in PLoS medicine, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Systematic review on the primary and secondary reporting of the prevalence of ghostwriting in the medical literature.BMJ open · 2014Pooled it
- How big is the medical writing industry? Why it matters.Health promotion international · 2025Article
- Insights of Healthcare Professionals into Medical Writing Support at a Tertiary Care Hospital in Saudi Arabia.Cureus · 2024Article
- Ten Ways to Improve Getting a Scientific Manuscript Accepted.Head and neck pathology · 2024Article
- Assessment of clinical trial protocols for pathology content using the SPIRIT-Path guidelines highlights areas for improvement.The journal of pathology. Clinical research · 2022Article
- A brief guide to the science and art of writing manuscripts in biomedicine.Journal of translational medicine · 2020Review
- Open collaborative writing with Manubot.PLoS computational biology · 2019Article
- Ghostwriters in the scientific world.The Pan African medical journal · 2018Article
- Author contributions to ecological publications: What does it mean to be an author in modern ecological research?PloS one · 2017Article
- Publication planning: promoting an ethics of transparency and integrity in biomedical research.International journal of clinical practice · 2015Article
- Article
- Hiring a professional medical writer: is it equivalent to ghostwriting?Biochemia medica · 2014Article
- SPIRIT 2013 explanation and elaboration: guidance for protocols of clinical trials.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2013 · on this mapArticle
- Challenging medical ghostwriting in US courts.PLoS medicine · 2012Article
- Coauthorship and institutional collaborations on cost-effectiveness analyses: a systematic network analysis.PloS one · 2012Article
- How industry uses the ICMJE guidelines to manipulate authorship--and how they should be revised.PLoS medicine · 2011Article
- Exorcising ghostwriting…. Ghostwriting could potentially have serious repercussions for science and should therefore be treated as research misconduct.EMBO reports · 2011Article
- Legal remedies for medical ghostwriting: imposing fraud liability on guest authors of ghostwritten articles.PLoS medicine · 2010Article
- Ghostwriting at elite academic medical centers in the United States.PLoS medicine · 2010Article
- Open Medicine's ghost and guest authorship policy.Open medicine : a peer-reviewed, independent, open-access journal · 2010Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
background to the debateGhostwriting occurs when someone makes substantial contributions to a manuscript without attribution or disclosure. It is considered bad publication practice in the medical sciences, and some argue it is scientific misconduct. At its extreme, medical ghostwriting involves pharmaceutical companies hiring professional writers to produce papers promoting their products but hiding those contributions and instead naming academic physicians or scientists as the authors. To improve transparency, many editors' associations and journals allow professional medical writers to contribute to the writing of papers without being listed as authors provided their role is acknowledged. This debate examines how best to tackle ghostwriting in the medical literature from the perspectives of a researcher, an editor, and the professional medical writer.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.