GlaxoSmithKline, often paid ghostwriters to pen medical studies, editorials and a textbook that listed physicians as the authors.

The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is a nonpartisan independent watchdog that champions good government reforms. POGO’s investigations into corruption, misconduct, and conflicts of interest achieve a more effective, accountable, open, and ethical federal government. We take a keen interest in strengthening the integrity of federally funded science, and have particular concerns involving the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which receives around $30 billion a year in federal taxpayer dollars to fund biomedical research.

We are writing to urge that NIH curb the practice of ghostwriting in academia. As the Director of the world’s largest and most prestigious funding source for biomedical research, you must set policies that require NIH-funded academic centers to ban ghostwriting to strengthen scientific integrity.

According to the documents, GSK began to push sales of Paxil in the early 1990s with an extensive ghostwriting program run by the marketing firm Scientific Therapeutics Information (STI). For instance, STI wrote a proposal to organize GlaxoSmithKline’s Paxil Advisory Board Meeting in 1993 at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. STI chose Dr. Charles Nemeroff of Emory University as their speaker to lay out the meeting’s agenda and objectives. Dr. Nemeroff apparently led discussions on how to “evaluate clinical research/promotional programs” and “generate information for use in promotion/education.

Earlier this year, a study in a scientific journal analyzed how medical ghostwriting works. It found that simply acknowledging ghostwriters “does not accurately reflect their authorship role.” It also found that, of the top 50 medical schools, only 10 explicitly ban ghostwriting.


Links:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2814828/?tool=pmcentrez

http://www.pogo.org/pogo-files/letters/public-health/ph-iis-20101129.html

http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/drug-company-used-ghostwriters-to-write-work-bylined-by-academics-documents