Over a year ago the Wall Street Journal published a piece “exposing” that some medical journal articles are – gasp – drafted by professional medical writers and then edited (often heavily so) by the bylined authors before they are published!
The New York Times must have missed it, because on Saturday the New York Times ran a very similar article. All the news that’s fit to print?
Here’s how Stephanie Saul began her article, “The pharmaceutical industry glimpsed its own ghost this week, and the apparition could not have arrived at a worse time for drug makers.”
Cute. Here’s a link to the complete article:
www.nytimes.com/2008/04/19/business/19ghost.html
The real question on the table is whether it’s right and appropriate for pharmaceutical companies to be involved in the drafting of medical journal articles that are based on their own studies of their own products. Hullo? Okay, let’s try this – how about, is it right and appropriate for pharmaceutical companies to blur the line between marketing and science? That’s a better question, but it presupposes that all marketing is bad and all science is good.
Let’s pursue that proposition. Who would think marketing and science make poor bedfellows? Well, cui bono? Surprise! The people at the front of the anti-marketing, pro-science queue are the editors of our medical journals. After all, if these self-appointed Sultans of Science cease to be the singular gatekeepers of new scientific information then, quite logically, the world will come to an end. The canard that ghostwritten articles in any way denigrate the nature of the material is such a transparent and disingenuous attempt on the part of medical journal editors to discredit the pharmaceutical industry that it is (or should be) embarrassing. It brings into real question the better (Marcia) angels of their nature.
Other folks with an agenda here (and who are portrayed in the New York Times story as “advocates”) are those who have a vested interest in not having more expensive drugs available for patient care – aka payers. And, of course, there’s the mandatory quote from Sid Wolfe.
Next time you read an op-ed in your favorite newspaper by a well-known personage consider if a ghostwriter was employed. Answer: Probably. Next time you hear your favorite politician give an address ask yourself if the speaker wrote the speech. Answer: Probably not. And then ask yourself this – does it make a difference? If the article or the address truly represents the beliefs of the “byline,” then it’s like that TV commercial, “We don’t make a lot of the things you use. We make a lot of the things you use better.”
Me, personally, I’d rather read articles that are well written. I also believe that if the incursion of professional writing assistance makes the articles better, then that’s a good thing because it tends to make dense data more easily understandable.
