Title:
'Ghost' and 'Guest' Authors Still a Concern for
Medical Journals
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
Last week, we discussed one problem for medical
journals: the question of authorship. You would
think that all the scientists who took part in a
research study would be listed as authors. But that
is not always the case. Sometimes there are honorary
authors and ghost authors. Honorary authors, also
called guest authors, receive credit in a published
study but had little to do with designing it or
writing the article.
Ghost authors work on studies but are not credited.
Sometimes they are paid by drug companies to place
articles in journals to support the companys
products. One example was described in September at
a meeting of international medical journal editors
in Vancouver, Canada.
Three researchers at the University of California at
San Francisco presented information about a drug
companys marketing campaign that included placing
research articles in medical journals.
In the nineteen nineties, the drug company Parke
Davis paid another company, Medical Education
Systems, to produce journal articles in support of
one of its drugs. Medical Education Systems worked
with authors chosen by Parke Davis to research,
develop and write articles for publication.
Editors of the journals that published the studies
did not know about the companies involvement.
Another study presented at the meeting was done by
editors at the Journal of the American Medical
Association. Researchers questioned authors of nine
hundred articles published last year in six top
medical journals.
They found that twenty-one percent of the papers
published in those journals had honorary authors.
Eight percent had ghost authors. Two percent had
both.
They compared this to a similar study in nineteen
ninety-six. It found that nineteen percent of
articles had honorary authors, twelve percent had
ghost authors and two percent had both.
The researchers noted the drop in the percentage of
ghost authors from twelve percent to eight percent.
Annette Flanagin and Joe Wislar said they were
pleased about the decrease but had hoped it would be
larger.
Some researchers and editors say changes must be
made to stop such false author claims. Some have
called for journals to identify ghostwritten
articles and ban their authors from future
publication.
And thats the VOA Special English Education Report.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
