According to the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) and The New York Times, Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff, chairman of psychiatry at the University of Miami medical school since 2009 and Emory University before that, and Dr. Alan F. Schatzberg, the chairman of psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine from 1991 until 2009 co-wrote a psychiatric textbook intended for primary care physicians — or did they?
The book, Recognition and Treatment of Psychiatric Disorders: A Psychopharmacology Handbook for Primary Care, has their names on it. But according to documents unearthed by the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington advocacy group, it was allegedly actually ghostwritten — at least in part — by a company called Scientific Therapeutics Information, Inc.
“Ghostwriting” is the practice that has been making the headlines in the past few years for pharmaceutical companies paying for professional writing companies to write supposedly unbiased peer-reviewed journal articles, which are then published under legitimate academics’ names. The academics who engage in this practice get the bonus of a journal article published in their name, along with a nice paycheck for lending their names to the effort.
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How is this not plagarism? I’m a grad student right now – if I turned in a paper with my name on it that someone else wrote I would get expelled. It’s unbelievable that these people can do stuff like this and face no consequences.
We all understand the problems with ghostwriting and pharma-funded articles and materials over the last ten years. But please, read the textbook and tell me where it acts as a marketing tool? Paroxetine is barely mentioned, and frankly, as SmithKline’s major branded drug at the time, involved in a head-to-head for market share with Pfizer’s sertraline, don’t you think this would be the perfect vehicle, if it is the pharma-funded advert you claim it is?
My point is, as long as the textbook is valid, balanced, informative and educational, why do you care who paid for it? I don’t say that Schatzberg and Nemeroff were right in what they did, but the information isn’t wrong or bad, and it needs to be out there to educate docs on how to use a wide range of psychoactive drugs safely and effectively, so what’s the problem?
Dr. John: Please consider the names “marketing ghostwriting” or “pharma-ghostwriting” instead of just plain ghostwriting!
Some of us who “ghostwrite” for authors do honorable work–we help busy people with great ideas and/or research convey their meaning in the written word. We help scientists, doctors, business people, and so forth get THEIR ideas across on paper and we don’t ad lib–we really just “write-up” or “present” the author’s ideas.
Anyway, it is just a semantical issue because the practice of a company writing up what amounts to a book-length advertisemtn and slapping some doctors’ names on it is pretty offensive.
Chris B is right, these professionals would not have included their prestigious names (which are prestigious for a reason) on a book that didn’t fully support their research findings and experiences with patients. What I don’t understand is why a CEO of a network that aims to support the mentally ill would be wasting his time searching for supposed ghost-writers of a 1997 book that has surely only enlightened its readers. Shame on you.
If you examine the draft, you will see that many sections appear verbatim in the finished book.
here’s the draft
http://pogoarchives.org/m/ph/gw/gw-attachment-d.pdf
Here’s the book on google books
http://tinyurl.com/236gdvc
Here’s a very good review of the bias and problems with the textbook after a review of the actual text by Dr. Carlat:
http://carlatpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2010/12/nemeroff-and-schatzbergs-textbook.html
Well worth the read if this topic interests you.
Here’s the editorial Nature just published on the controversy.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v468/n7325/full/468732a.html