← Previous Post: | Next Post: →

 

“Try explaining to a history prof that on the other side of campus a prof is getting credit for work he didn’t do!”

Yes, well, word is getting around about semi-literate medical school professors credited with having published 2,785 scholarly articles. It just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Scientific American describes the phenomenon and summarizes a recent study of the subject:

Scientists credited for research articles that were secretly penned by ghostwriters from pharmaceutical companies often are not reprimanded for their misrepresentations; rather, their ranks and career trajectories often improve.

Although this practice of undisclosed authors (with undisclosed commercial interests) writing articles under the pretense of unbiased scientific inquiry raises serious concerns about academic integrity, few institutions have policies to discourage it.

… Once medical publishing’s “dirty little secret,” ghostwriting is no longer under wraps, thanks in part to a 2009 federal court decision to release 1,500 documents describing the strategic placement of marketing messages into peer-reviewed medical literature. In their article [the authors] say these cleverly crafted advertisements from pharmaceutical companies shape the literature in subtle but important ways, and can even affect how clinicians perceive and prescribe treatments.

“Your typical family practice physician is bombarded with glossy reprints,” [one author] explains. “The more prestigious the university and the researcher’s name on it, the more weight that’s going to carry with the doctor.”

Ah yes. If Cardinal Newman were writing The Idea of a University today, he’d write The idea of a university is to gain enough prestige to make its medical faculty worth ghosting.

Margaret Soltan, February 5, 2010 12:25PM
Posted in: ghost writing

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=21104

2 Responses to ““Try explaining to a history prof that on the other side of campus a prof is getting credit for work he didn’t do!””

  1. Colin Says:
    February 5th, 2010 at 2:23PM

    Newman (in 1857, in Dublin) on the purpose of publishing in scholarly journals: “Professors will write: 1. To puff themselves to the world; and 2. to be doing something lest their Professorships should be taken away.” Quite.

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:
    February 5th, 2010 at 2:33PM

    Wonderful, Colin. Thanks for that.

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

Archives

Categories