[ti:'Ghost' and 'Guest' Authors Still a Concern for Medical Journals] [ar:Bob Doughty] [al:Education Report] [by:WWW.51VOA.COM] [00:00.00]This is the VOA Special English [00:03.28]Education Report. [00:05.30]Last week, we discussed one problem [00:09.03]for medical journals: [00:10.61]the question of authorship. [00:13.58]You would think that all the scientists [00:17.16]who took part in a research study [00:19.62]would be listed as authors. [00:22.09]But that is not always the case. [00:25.77]Sometimes there are honorary authors [00:29.81]and ghost authors. Honorary authors, [00:34.22]also called guest authors, [00:36.78]receive credit in a published study [00:39.75]but had little to do with designing it [00:43.25]or writing the article. [00:45.77]Ghost authors work on studies [00:49.11]but are not credited. [00:51.16]Sometimes they are paid by drug companies [00:55.09]to place articles in journals [00:58.01]to support the company's products. [01:01.14]One example was described [01:03.92]last month at a meeting [01:05.79]of international medical journal editors [01:09.30]in Vancouver, Canada. [01:11.62]Three researchers [01:13.43]at the University of California [01:15.85]at San Francisco presented information [01:20.12]about a drug company's marketing campaign [01:23.50]that included placing research articles [01:26.73]in medical journals. [01:28.91]In the nineteen nineties, [01:31.79]the drug company Parke Davis [01:34.66]paid another company, [01:36.97]Medical Education Systems, [01:39.50]to produce journal articles [01:42.27]in support of one of its drugs. [01:45.45]Medical Education Systems worked [01:49.32]with authors chosen [01:50.88]by Parke Davis to research, [01:53.82]develop and write articles for publication. [01:58.35]Editors of the journals that published [02:02.08]the studies did not know [02:04.03]about the companies' involvement. [02:06.65]Another study presented at the meeting [02:09.95]was done by editors at the Journal [02:13.63]of the American Medical Association. [02:16.59]Researchers questioned authors [02:19.83]of nine hundred articles published [02:22.80]last year in six top medical journals. [02:27.04]They found that twenty-one percent [02:30.22]of the papers published in those journals [02:32.91]had honorary authors. [02:35.79]Eight percent had ghost authors. [02:38.93]Two percent had both. [02:41.51]They compared this to a similar study [02:45.37]in nineteen ninety-six. [02:48.18]It found that nineteen percent [02:51.82]of articles had honorary authors, [02:55.40]twelve percent had ghost authors [02:58.25]and two percent had both. [03:02.12]The researchers noted the drop [03:05.04]in the percentage of ghost authors [03:07.61]from twelve percent to eight percent. [03:11.54]Annette Flanagin and Joe Wislar said [03:15.44]they were pleased about the decrease [03:18.50]but had hoped it would be larger. [03:21.53]Some researchers and editors say [03:25.49]changes must be made to stop [03:28.71]such false author claims. [03:31.32]Some have called for journals [03:34.20]to identify ghostwritten articles [03:36.94]and ban their authors from future publication. [03:42.12]And that's the VOA Special English [03:46.50]Education Report, [03:48.21] written by Nancy Steinbach. [03:51.28]I'm Bob Doughty.