Ghostwriting - What's the Harm?
SOURCE: http://thestar.blogs.com/ethics/
Aug. 31st, 2009 by Stuart Laidlaw of Toronto Star on his medical ethics blog:
Ever since the Toronto Star broke the story of a McGill University professor's involvement with ghostwriters, there has been a growing debate across Canada about the practice.
In an unsigned editorial put online this morning, the Montreal Gazette asks, "What's the harm?" After all, it says, there's no evidence Sherwin intended to deceive anyone and the article in question was in line with the rest of her scholarship.
It's an important question. Across the country in Victoria, BC, the Time Colonist offers an answer:
Why is that important? First, DesignWrite is paid by pharmaceutical giant Wyeth to promote its drugs. But there was no mention of those co-authors in the article. That could mislead readers into believing the report was independent, when it was not.
Second, the article concluded that estrogen therapy helps prevent memory loss. But Wyeth is a producer of estrogen-based medications. In the research field, such an obvious conflict of interest could invalidate the findings, if it were known.
The danger, in other words, isn't just that bad science gets portrayed as good, but that good science gets dismissed as tainted. Both outcomes are dangerous to public health.
The Gazette seems to understand this, too, concluding its editorial with a discussion of the importance of the issue and a comparison to politicians -- who rarely write the speeches they give.
And this is different from writing speeches for politicians. The people who do that are usually partisans who share the views of their employer and who, in fact, might well be part of the team developing both policy and political strategy. In other words, both writer and reader share essentially the same goal.
That is very much not the case with a drug-company employee and a scientist. The aims they serve are quite different and often opposed. And maintaining that difference is often quite literally a matter of life and death. Sherwin's "error" suggests that at the very least, academics need to update and clarify the ethics that guide them.
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