How prevalent is "ghostwriting" in peer-reviewed medical journals? One study suggests that as many as 15% of all peer-reviewed articles were partially or wholly written by drug companies and then attributed to academics.

Are Drug Companies Improperly Influencing Researchers?

With more and more information surfacing about Vioxx, questions are being asked about how much influence drug companies have over the interpretation and publication of medical research. 

Reports are surfacing that Merck & Co., manufacturers of the drug Vioxx, conducted its own studies of the pain pill and then hired companies to take credit for the research.  This process, known as “ghostwriting,” has serious ethical implications.  Because the scientists whose names are on the reports didn’t do the majority of the research, it is hard to tell how fair and accurate the reports actually were. 

The Journal of the American Medical Association is now alleging that ghost-writing like this occurs as often as 16% of all research articles, 26% of review articles, and 21% of all editorials in the six major medical journals.  In most cases, the research sponsor (a drug company) would draft the report and then pay an academically affiliated investigator to put his name first on the report’s title page.  The academic did not always disclose to the medical industry that he was given financial support in exchange for the use of his name.

According to Joseph Ross at Mount Sinai, who led the JAMA study, “The academic authors are supposed to be the most objective members of the [research] team . . . to have them involved in the very last stage, and give the impression that they’ve been involved from the very beginning, is distorting.”  Drug research published in peer reviewed journals is critical in helping doctors and health care professionals make prescription descisions.

The leaders of America’s medical journals are now moving for new standards that will prevent this sort of ghostwriting to occur in the future.  The problem is that most research does start out “in house” at the drug company.  The results of the initial research are then passed on to future researchers who are supposed to supplement the previous results with their own study. 

Vioxx has been off the market since September 30, 2004, when clinical trials demonstrated that long-term use of the painkiller doubled a person’s risk of heart attack and strike.  Merck has reached a settlement for $4.85 billion with tens of thousands of patients. 

 

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