Reporting of research: Ghosts in the machine BMJ

January 31, 2012

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3.

Reporting of research: Ghosts in the machine

If I tried to make money by deceiving people that a picture that I had

painted was the work of some great artist, the law would call it fraud.

Yet when pharmaceutical and medical device companies make money by

deceiving doctors and patients that their articles were written by

medical opinion leaders we call it ghost writing and gift authorship.

This double standard is because this form of financial " fraud "

is so prevalent amongst the most influential opinion leaders in the

profession and so many journals and organisations profit from it that we

have institutionalised this dishonesty in which everyone profits except

perhaps the patients who may get inappropriate treatment and potentially

those who pay for it. Dr Tony Rickards was a great cardiologist. His

memory has been sullied because he was unusually both a “ghost” and a

gift author on publications about the MIST Trial. Dr Rickards [now dead]

was named as an author of a letter h e had no part in writing, which

responded to correspondence he had not read, about a paper he had not

seen or written, which describing research in which he had not

participated. If editors ignore their rules on authorship why should

anyone else obey the rules?

T Wilmshurst, Consultant Cardiologist, British Medical

Journal

Sheri Nakken, former R.N., MA, Hahnemannian

Homeopath

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