Pharmaceutical ghost writers

Pharmaceutical companies pay professionals to write journal articles that are passed off as the work of academics. Here's how it works: 

Most clinical research on drugs is sponsored by the companies that make the drugs. Even though the research may be carried out by academic institutions, the sponsoring companies are involved in every detail of the research, including study design, data analysis, and decision about whether to publish. In this way, academic medical centers have become partners of the pharmaceutical industry, and, in a sense, academic researchers are little more than hired hands for the pharmaceutical companies. Loss of independence by faculty researchers is made up for by lucrative financial arrangements with drug company sponsors. For example, in 1998, the head of the Department of Psychiatry at Brown University Medical School made over $500,000 in consulting fees provided by a pharmaceutical company.

When it comes time to write up the results of the research, “publication planning” agencies step in. These are companies--more than 250 of them--who work with pharmaceutical companies to manage the marketing campaign of the soon-to-be new drug. In the words of one planning agency, they determine how to “connect data to key messages to support product positioning." To do this, they look at a range of marketing issues, such as how the new drug differs from other drugs on the market, which practitioners need to be reached, and what sort of scientific journals should be targeted. The articles are then written not by the academic researcher but by professional ghost writers who work for the publication planning agencies.

Here’s how the article gets written: The publication planning agency and drug company marketers first agree on a title for the article, then decide on a potential “author” for it—usually an academic physician with a reputation as a leader. The potential author agrees on a fee ($1000 to $2,500 per article). The ghostwriter writes the article (or an extended outline), submits it to the “author,” who then asks for changes or approves it. The article is then submitted to a journal, where, if all goes well it is published under the “author’s” name.

The chief editor for the British journal, Lancet, lamented, "journals have devolved into information laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry." 

Next week: Passing off marketing as education

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