A recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (J. Ross et al. J. Am. Med. Assoc. 299, 1800–1812; 2008) stimulated discussions of ghost-writing and guest authorship in several NPG blogs (summarized at Nautilus).
The article by Ross et al. documented a drug-industry practice of paying unidentified authors to write a paper, and adding as authors the names of academics who were not substantially involved in the research. The practice conceals the pharmaceutical industry’s role, it says, and potentially misleads doctors and other readers.
Integrity in medical research is paramount, according to the Spoonful of medicine blog, and yet it is common for principal investigators to comment on drafts by postdocs rather than actually writing a paper. The blog goes on to compare and contrast paid-for authorship (or non-authorship) with standard practice in academic laboratories.
Nature Network presents a discussion of the long history of honorary authorship and whether medical writers should receive an acknowledgement or credit as authors.
Nature 453, xii; 1 May 2008