Medical ghostwriter

Medical ghostwriters are employed by pharmaceutical companies and medical-device manufacturers to produce apparently independent manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals, conference presentations and other communications. Physicians and other scientists are paid to attach their names to the manuscripts as though they had authored them. The named authors may have had little or no involvement in the research or writing process.

The American Medical Writers Association speaks to the topic as follows:

"Ghost authoring" refers to making substantial contributions without being identified as an author. "Guest authoring" refers to being named as an author without having made substantial contributions. "Ghostwriting" refers to assisting in presenting the author's work without being acknowledged. The term "ghostwriting" is often used to encompass all three of these practices.

The rules for authorship and contribution of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE, informally known as "the Vancouver Group" from the locale of the group's first meeting, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) are a single, universally-respected set of guidelines for describing authorship of and contribution to professional medical publications. The document "International Committee of Medical Journal Editors: Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors" is considered the definitive statement of ethical requirements for how authorship in medical journal articles (the prime forum for medical professional publication) and the degree to which a given writer is deemed to have contributed to the content of a medical journal article are determined. Compliance with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals is voluntary. A list of medical journals which have stated that they follow the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals is maintained by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.

How closely individual medical journals and authors of medical journal articles comply with ICMJE guidelines is a largely self-policed matter. The ICMJE document "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Publishing and Editorial Issues Related to Publication in Biomedical Journals: Corrections, Retractions and "Expressions of Concern" is the section of the ICMJE Uniform Requirements laying out guidelines for how potential or actual scientific error and scientific fraud ought to be dealt with. It refers readers to the relevant guidelines from the Committee for Publication Ethics (COPE) - specifically COPE's flowcharts outlining a systematic approach toward scientific error and possible fraud.

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