tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post8334925189207202459..comments2024-03-27T01:34:23.434-04:00Comments on Pharma Marketing Blog: Senator Grassley Sees Pharma Ghost Writing Problems. Do You?Vladhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04114063498108633047noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-8767005405909768542009-11-24T19:28:19.876-05:002009-11-24T19:28:19.876-05:00Oh, without doubt. And when an institution like t...Oh, without doubt. And when an institution like the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia has scientists like the ones who'd deliberately destroyed study data and criminally refused to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests for such materials, isn't it nice to have hackers (or was it insiders at the CRU who couldn't stomach the deceit any more?) ripping off the perpetrators' e-mail records and making massive information dumps accessible on untouchable Russian file transfer sites?<br /><br />"Making the information available" may well become a standing requirement in clinical research as well as in the climate sciences before the dust from this blow-up settles.<br /><br />The intellectual integrity and honesty of the peer review process throughout the scientific world has now been called into question, and I suspect that this call is both warranted and long overdue.<br /><br />We'll all be the better for it, and of that I have no doubt at all.Tuccihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13178237464138398261noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-77807797955006922942009-11-23T07:25:06.522-05:002009-11-23T07:25:06.522-05:00Many institutions limit access to their online inf...Many institutions limit access to their online information. Making this information available will be an asset to all.Writing a Research Paperhttp://www.researchpaperspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-2370253958156796442009-08-25T11:19:16.610-04:002009-08-25T11:19:16.610-04:00Regarding your concluding inquiry, I will leave it...Regarding your concluding inquiry, I will leave it to others to assess my psychiatric state. No, I don't think you, or other editors or proofreaders, should be listed with the authors. My more important point remains on my prior comment. A party with a vested financial interest in a study should not hire writers to 'assist' authors. When this arrangement is not disclosed, it only deepens the ethical misconduct.Michael Kirsch, M.D.https://www.blogger.com/profile/07555280388086931097noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-43821058542136570492009-08-25T09:38:15.761-04:002009-08-25T09:38:15.761-04:00Dr. Kirsch, I don't mind being "disclosed...Dr. Kirsch, I don't mind being "disclosed" when I've done the necessary work to get a manuscript into shape for submission to a journal and help bring it through peer review, but if boilerplate medical writers wind up getting <b>cited</b> on the "authors" line in NLM indexing, you're going to start seeing essentially unqualified wordsmith types (like me) showing up in literature searches as if we were "experts" in clinical areas all over the map.<br /><br />I'm a primary care grunt. I've participated in a couple of low-impact Phase IV studies, recruiting and following a few patients now and then. But I've never written a research grant application or done any of the hard work that resulted in the clinical trials data I've helped to mold into journal articles. <br /><br />You want <b><i>me</i></b> showing up on a PubMed search as a respectable and noteworthy "author" in a field like hepatology or infectious diseases?<br /><br />Pardon the expression, but are you nuts?Tuccihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13178237464138398261noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-24573710580548886382009-08-25T07:31:37.308-04:002009-08-25T07:31:37.308-04:00Hi Rich,
First, there is a difference, at least i...Hi Rich,<br /><br />First, there is a difference, at least in my mind, between ghostwriting and editing. When you are unraveling an MD's tangled syntax and molding the manuscript into standard written English, I regard this as editing. You are not providing the facts and interpretations, merely packaging them. I think, however, we both agree that such 'editors' should not be undisclosed hired scriveners by drug companies who are angling for a favorable light to be cast onto these medical studies. www.MDWhistleblower.blogspot.comMichael Kirsch, M.D.https://www.blogger.com/profile/07555280388086931097noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-71097889105039356882009-08-24T19:56:37.594-04:002009-08-24T19:56:37.594-04:00Dr. Kirsch, there are a lot of people in the profe...Dr. Kirsch, there are a lot of people in the profession - many of them talented, diligent researchers - who can't put words on paper to save their lives. I didn't believe that such things could happen until I'd been in practice for a couple of years and had a colleague come to me asking me to "look over" a manuscript he'd been sweating over for months. It was a simple review paper, and it was easy to hammer into shape.<br /><br />Easy for me. For him? Not so. And yet I didn't have his familiarity with the literature, or his perception that such a review paper would be useful to his colleagues in his area of specialization. <br /><br />He knew what needed to be said, and why it was needed. I didn't. I knew how it could be written so the information could be understood and appreciated. <br /><br />That's what medical "ghostwriting" really is, insofar as I've had experience as such a ghostwriter. The authors with whom I've worked have either been too damned busy or (believe me) too damned inept at putting black on white to do what I do with minimal effort. <br /><br />At the same time, I acknowledge that I haven't got their grasp of the areas in which they work, their understanding of the research in the field, their abilities to innovate, to investigate, to crack things open and peer inside and make sense of what they find.<br /><br />I could no more ghost<b><i>author</i></b> in these folks' areas of expertise than I could play offensive line for the Chicago Bears.<br /><br />But I can help them express themselves, and in so doing I get to work with some of the smartest people in the medical profession. <br /><br />I've found that a lot of American physicians - especially the people who go into research - are grown-up "science geeks." You knew them in college, didn't you? The geniuses who skewed the curve in biochemistry and calculus, but who had to lean on Cliff's Notes to get through the dumbest courses in the English Department.<br /><br />Well, if we shut off these people from the help they need to write lucidly on the research they do (and the knowledge they gain in the course of attacking those research areas), we're just screwing ourselves out of access to information we need as a profession.<br /><br />As for crediting ghostwriters like me, be advised that if that were the case, then I'd wind up with my name all over the literature in a bunch of therapeutic areas where I'm no more entitled to be called an "expert" than is my Aunt Emily's pet poodle. Senator Grassley wants people citing <b>me</b> - or any other nuts-and-bolts medical writer - as an "authority" simply because I've done some word processing and know how to make reference management software work properly?<br /><br />Between the journalism school root weevils of <i>The New York Times</i> and the bloated popularity contest winners in Washington, I think the stupidity level has passed "flaming" right into "incandescent."Tuccihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13178237464138398261noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-74126223426327337842009-08-24T13:08:13.219-04:002009-08-24T13:08:13.219-04:00I give up. Is there any controversy here? Doesn&...I give up. Is there any controversy here? Doesn't signing your name mean that you wrote it? I've been writing for yrs and every word that appeared under my name was my own. Good luck defending the spooky ghostwriting policy. See www.MDWhistleblower.blogspot.com for some advice for these academics who are considering signing away their integrity.Michael Kirsch, M.D.https://www.blogger.com/profile/07555280388086931097noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-54510260538261031412009-08-21T16:59:04.520-04:002009-08-21T16:59:04.520-04:00Senator Grassley and his partisans are hypocrites ...Senator Grassley and his partisans are hypocrites of the purest, most feculent sort. These are professional politicians who emphatically do not write the contents of the bills they sponsor or sign, and yet they object to physicians making use of trained, experienced, talented professional medical writers participating in the creation of lucidly readable, properly researched, and publishable peer-reviewed scientific articles in the clinical literature.<br /><br />I would ask that the readers - and the writers commenting on this "scandal" - turn their attention to legislators like Sen. Grassley and their derelictions of responsibility with regard even to <b><i>reading</i></b> the contents of the bills they vote upon, and forget about the Potemkin Village fraud of these "Malevolent Jobholder" hand-waves over medical ghostwriting.<br /><br />As both a physician <b>and</b> a medical writer, I'd be happy to have my name included on the list of authors in cases where I've made substantive contribution to the content of any such publication. Those of my colleagues in medical writing - most of them with doctorates or other advanced degrees in the sciences, pharmacologists, nurses, and other clinically experienced individuals - would qualify also for authorship credentials. <br /><br />But in most cases, I freely acknowledge that all I'd contributed to the manuscripts that came under my hand was some fiddlin' research work (tracking down and citing references, etc.) and fixing errors of grammar, spelling, format, and the like. The research and thought in each instance was that of the authors I was supporting, and I've never felt the need to take any of the credit that was rightfully theirs.<br /><br />That would have been unethical.Tuccihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13178237464138398261noreply@blogger.com