PLoS Medicine: Being the Ghost in the Machine: A Medical Ghostwriter's Personal View

"Introduction

Ethical concerns about medical ghostwriting have been directed primarily at “guest” authors and the pharmaceutical companies that pay them. One voice that is largely missing is that of the ghostwriters themselves who, after all, create the documents that are in the ethical and legal crosshairs. Without them, one could argue, there can be no fraud, because it is they who create the fraudulent product.
For almost 11 years, I worked as a medical writer, creating a variety of pieces including the occasional ghostwritten article. For the most part, I never saw the finished paper, nor did I care to. This article describes what I did, why I did it, why I stopped doing it, and what I think might be done about the problem of fraud in authorship......"cont'd

full free access: PLoS Medicine: How Industry Uses the ICMJE Guidelines to Manipulate Authorship—And How They Should Be Revised

"The ICMJE guidelines will always be a work in progress, but the adjustments proposed here have the potential to end the self-concealment and authorial misrepresentations that mar industry's contributions to the literature. Furthermore, they have the potential to help industry achieve the enhanced respect its beneficial contributions to medicine deserve. Industry publications will always have a commercial valence alongside their scientific and medical content: this should henceforth be truthfully displayed, and no longer downplayed or concealed."

Credit where credit is due? Regulation, research integrity and the attribution of authorship in the health sciences