ArticlePLoS medicine2009
Ghostwriting: the dirty little secret of medical publishing that just got bigger.
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 22 papers, 2 of them syntheses 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
22 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Hiding negative trials by pooling them: a secondary analysis of pooled-trials publication bias in FDA-registered antidepressant trials.Psychological medicine · 2019Pooled it
- Systematic review on the primary and secondary reporting of the prevalence of ghostwriting in the medical literature.BMJ open · 2014Pooled it
- Stakeholder views about the responsibilities of principal investigators in multicenter randomized controlled trials.Clinical trials (London, England) · 2026Article
- How big is the medical writing industry? Why it matters.Health promotion international · 2025Article
- What did the scientific literature learn from internal company documents in the pharmaceutical industry? A scoping review.Cochrane evidence synthesis and methods · 2023Review
- Assessment of clinical trial protocols for pathology content using the SPIRIT-Path guidelines highlights areas for improvement.The journal of pathology. Clinical research · 2022Article
- Writers Blocked: On the Wrongs of Research Co-authorship and Some Possible Strategies for Improvement.Science and engineering ethics · 2015Article
- Publication planning: promoting an ethics of transparency and integrity in biomedical research.International journal of clinical practice · 2015Article
- Promoting transparency in pharmaceutical industry-sponsored research.American journal of public health · 2012Article
- Challenging medical ghostwriting in US courts.PLoS medicine · 2012Article
- Ghostwriting revisited: new perspectives but few solutions in sight.PLoS medicine · 2011Article
- 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
- Promotional tone in reviews of menopausal hormone therapy after the Women's Health Initiative: an analysis of published articles.PLoS medicine · 2011Article
- Conflicts of interest at medical journals: the influence of industry-supported randomised trials on journal impact factors and revenue - cohort study.PLoS medicine · 2010Article
- Estrogen implants: embodiments of deeper problems in the marketing of drugs.Journal of general internal medicine · 2010Article
- 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
- Conflicts of interest, authorship, and disclosures in industry-related scientific publications.Mayo Clinic proceedings · 2010Article
- Transgression in scientific communication.Indian journal of anaesthesia · 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
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
PubMed holds no abstract for this paper.
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.