Medical Editors Launch the Age of "Ghostbusting"

A movement by editors to eradicate ghostwritten articles in medical journals is featured in today's NYT. The perhaps-too-cute term for the movement, "ghostbusting," was coined by the editors of Blood in January.

The most draconian of proposed steps to thwart ghostwriting—which typically involves an unacknowledged medical writer who is employed (either directly or indirectly) by pharma—include immediate article retraction, lifetime banning of the named author, and a report to the author's institution for investigation. Editors at PLoS Medicine recently described these punishments and their disdain for ghostwriting in firm, albeit clumsy, terms.

Medical journal editors need to decide whether they want to roll over and just join the marketing departments of pharmaceutical companies. Authors who put their names to such papers need to consider whether doing so is more important than having a medical literature that can be believed in.

Ideally the Age of Ghostbusting heralds an era of the medical writer as a contributing author and not the avoidance of the medical writer by the physician author—who generally can't write his way out of a paper bag.