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'Dr. Nobody' Says 74% of Medical Schools Don't Ban Ghostwriting

By Jim Edwards

Updated on: February 2, 2010 / 9:20 AM EST / MoneyWatch

Seventy-four percent of top medical schools have no policy prohibiting ghostwriting, according to a new study in Public Library of Science Medicine. The study was conducted by Dr. Jonathan Leo (top) and Jeffrey R. Lacasse, whom regular readers will remember were responsible for twisting JAMA into knots when they pointed out -- correctly -- that one of its authors had failed to disclose a conflict of interest with Forest Labs (FRX). A JAMA editor famously called Leo "a nobody and a nothing" for doing that.

The pair point out that only 26 percent of schools have a policy that prohibits ghostwriting. Among the companies that have been exposed as providing ghostwriters for medical and academic authors recently are Forest, AstraZeneca (AZN), Merck (MRK), Wyeth and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

The pair (from Arizona State University's School of Social Work in Phoenix and Lincoln Memorial University-DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine in Harrogate, Tenn., respectively) conclude that ghostwriting is a danger to public health:

We are not aware of any other academic fields where it is acceptable for professors to allow themselves to be listed as authors on research papers they did not write, or to purposefully conceal the contributions of industry coauthors in order to mislead readers.

Pharmaceutical companies have used ghostwriting to market sertraline [17], olanzapine [18], gabapentin [19], estrogen replacement therapy [20], rofecoxib [2], paroxetine [4],[21], methylphenidate [22], milnaciprin [23], venlafaxine [24], and dexfenfluramine [25]. Ghostwriting is now known to be a major industry [26].

They urge medical school deans to institute an immediate ban on ghostwriting.