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Inquiry Reveals Widespread Fraud in
Published Drug Research
The Observer, Sunday, December 7, 2003
An inquiry by the British newspaper The Observer reveals that hundreds of articles in medical journals claiming to be written by academics or doctors have been penned by ghostwriters in the pay of drug companies.
Scientific articles published in medical journals have a huge influence on which drugs doctors prescribe and on the treatment hospitals provide. But The Observer has uncovered evidence that many articles written by so-called independent academics may have been written by writers working for agencies that receive large sums from drug companies to market their products.
Estimates suggest that almost half of all articles published in journals are by ghostwriters. While doctors who have put their names to the papers can be paid handsomely for 'lending' their reputations, the ghostwriters remain hidden. They, and the involvement of the pharmaceutical firms, are rarely revealed. These papers endorse drugs and are paraded in front of physicians as independent research in an effort to persuade them to prescribe the drugs.
Dr. Richard Smith, editor of the British Journal of Medicine, admitted ghostwriting is a "very big problem." "We are being hoodwinked by the drug companies. The articles come in with doctors' names on them and we often find some of them have little or no idea about what they have written. When we find out [about ghostwriting), we reject the paper, but it is very difficult," he said.
This revelation about pharmaceutical research calls into question a large percentage of the information that physicians are taught about drugs. It also suggests that the peer review system for publishing such research is inadequate, and may be incapable of eliminating such glaring abuses.
Source: www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,11381,1101706,00.html.
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