ArticleMens sana monographs2008
Medical ghost-writing.
Article in Mens sana monographs, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 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
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- 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
- Knowledge, Attitude and Perception of Research Ethics and Research Ethics Committees among Post-Graduate Residents of Neurosciences - A Nationwide Analysis from Pakistan.Pakistan journal of medical sciences · 2024Article
- Individual and Institutional Corruption in European and US Healthcare: Overview and Link of Various Corruption Typologies.Applied health economics and health policy · 2018Review
- Taking responsibility for health in an epistemically polluted environment.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2018Article
- Ghostwriters in the scientific world.The Pan African medical journal · 2018Article
- Hiring a professional medical writer: is it equivalent to ghostwriting?Biochemia medica · 2014Article
- Of sophists and spin-doctors: industry-sponsored ghostwriting and the crisis of academic medicine.Mens sana monographs · 2010Article
- Accountability or acknowledgment? Untangling authorship and medical writing support in scientific publishing.Perspectives in clinical researchArticle
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 at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Any assistance an author receives with writing a scientific article that is not acknowledged in the article is described as ghost-writing. Articles ghost-written by medical writers engaged by pharmaceutical companies who have a vested interest in the content have caused concern after scandals revealed misleading content in some articles. A key criterion of authorship in medical journals is final approval of the article submitted for publication. Authors are responsible for the content of their articles and for acknowledging any assistance they receive. Action taken by some journals and medical writer associations to encourage acknowledgement is an uphill task in the light of disinterest from the pharmaceutical industry and ignorance or similar lack of interest by those who agree to be named authors. However, acknowledgment alone is not sufficient to resolve medical ghost-writing; issues of how the acknowledgement is formulated, permission to acknowledge and access to raw data also need to be tackled.
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.